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thoughts from not quite halfway through term 3

Teachers open the door, you enter by yourself. 

- some fortune cookie wisdom my mum received this week

Last Friday I awoke to an email from one of my tutors from university, asking me if I’d be keen on coming in and giving a short presentation to students about to embark on their final practicum. “The topic is very flexible,” she said, “you could talk about the amount of work involved, interactions with students, challenges involving managing your time and generally looking after yourself, etc.” As I stared at my phone screen at 6am I had several thoughts about this: 

1. Mate, you sent this at 12.07am - you’re a teacher! How were you awake? 

2. This is at 4 o’clock on a school afternoon - I can barely get to my house by then, let alone my university in the city 

3. I am deeply unqualified for this 

So, of course, I agreed, “I would love to come and talk to your students - I’ll begin putting together a presentation!” I put together some beautiful slides on how to survive the first year and then, as if by some sort of karmic intervention, I went on to have one of my worst weeks to date. My god, it’s been a doozy. All the same, I’m going to share with you, reader, the advice I have for anyone about to embark on their first year of teaching. 

How to survive your first year, or: advice from someone who isn’t qualified to give it 

1. Data doesn’t make a school 

MySchool is a resource which is intended to provide information to parents, students and educators about schools around Australia. I’m not a parent, so I can’t vouch for how useful it is/isn’t but I do have very vivid memories from using the website in my final year of university. Each time I received my practicum locations I would have a look at the ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage), percentage of students speaking languages other than English, percentage of students who are Indigenous, NAPLAN data, and all for what? Data doesn’t tell you what the kids are going to be like, whether they’re going to be kind, funny, polite, quirky, horrid, mean, etc. 

For the record, the kids at my school are, for the most part, some of the most polite and friendliest children I have ever met. They’re funny and weird and they’re great. There is no way to know what you’ve gotten yourself in for until you meet the students you’re going to teach for yourself. Don’t scare yourself out of enjoying your time at school before you get there. Data means shit. 

2. Say yes to lots of things, but not to everything 

You’re going to be tired. You’re going to be so tired. You’re also going to want to make people happy. Find some balance between the two. This is going to be hard. 

Of course, it makes sense to volunteer for all sorts of things, and make yourself known at school, particularly if you’re casual or temporary. However, there is such a thing as doing too much. Your job already involves heaps of work as it is, and it’s important to remember that. 

3. Build support networks that are made of teachers (not just the ones that you work with) 

I’m lucky to work with some really excellent people who are also my friends, but I’m very conscious of talking to teachers outside my own school gates as well. I like to have an idea of what is happening in other schools, to hear what other staff rooms are like, and to know what teaching strategies my friends are putting in place. It helps in grounding your perspective when you hear that other people are dealing with the same shit you’re dealing with. 

Talk to other first years, and try not to lose touch with the people you studied with. It’s easy to let friendships fall by the wayside when work seems far more important or at the very least, far more pressing. But as important as work is, without your mental health in ship shape, work is going to feel like someone has taken a big fart in your brain. As of late, I’ve isolated myself from my friends and it’s been detrimental to my heart and my head and it’s important to be able to take notice when that is the case. Make sure you stay connected. 

Basically, find someone to love you the way Leslie Knope loves Ann Perkins. 

4. Bedtime isn’t just for children 

Set a bedtime, try to stick to it. Avoid the temptation to stay up until stupid o’clock creating lessons - if you’re tired and cranky when you have to teach them, the kids aren’t going to care that you’ve peppered your slides with fun gifs. And I know this goes without saying, but you’re just going to feel better if you get the amount of sleep you’re supposed to.

My self-imposed bedtime has fallen by the wayside recently and as a result, I found myself falling asleep in my staffroom last week, watching a ridiculous documentary about mermaids (totally relevant to what Year 7 are currently learning - not to worry!) I turn into a bit of a mess when I’m tired - emotional reactions become amplified tenfold and it’s generally pretty ugly. A student on Friday said “I know why Miss is so angry. You need to get your eight hours” and, as much as it irritated me at the time, there’s probably a grain of truth to it (of course, it would be nice if they weren’t all talking over me too, but, you know, credit where credit’s due). 

5. You’re human first, teacher second 

The kids aren’t always going to agree with you - this is going to annoy you because deep in your heart of hearts, you believe that you are always right (the problem is, of course, is that the kids believe they’re right too). Accept this and move on - it’s not your job to make people see things from your point of view, it’s futile and you’ll give yourself a bellyache. 

Sometimes days are going to be shit. Sometimes whole weeks are going to be shit. But! you never have to live the same day again, learn your lessons and carry on you funky little warrior. 

You’ve got family, friends, significant others, pets, etc. that love you - sometimes they don’t understand what’s going on at school, and it’s not really their job to. Try not to be a dick. 

Sometimes you’ve just got to say ‘bugger it’ and move on. Ask yourself how bad it really is - is anyone going to die? Nah? You’re probably doing alright. 

You’re doing your bloody best. You wouldn’t expect more from your kids, so why expect more from yourself? 

And look… of course I’m terrible at following my own advice, but I’m trying to put some positive energy out there, in the hopes of catching some of it back. Look after yourselves. 

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you ever just say fuck it………. im gonna watch someone carve a bowl out of wood on youtube.com

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Google street view in Rome

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Drilling a square hole. 

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Ain’t nothing wrong with eating some bread dipped in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and various herbs

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pebble: finally… after 6 million long years I have finally washed up on shore. no longer am I a slave to the tides, no long-

me [picking up pebble and chucking it into the ocean]: haha sploosh

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every time a tv show/movie shows someone under 25 with their ringer on full volume I lose a year off my life like we haven’t taken our phones off vibrate since 2010 I couldn’t tell you what my ringtone was if my life depended on it

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Kids are interesting. I’m babysitting a 9 year old boy right now who’s homework is to write a fictional story and he wrote about how in millions of years the sun will expand killing everything and one man fell asleep at the beach and missed all the official announcements about the world ending but he managed to be the only survivor of the solar flares because he applied SPF 100 sunscreen.

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thoughts from hump week

“Miss, you know, I’ve been thinking…” 

“Yes?” 

“Well, most teachers are women, but most of the principals are men. I reckon that’s ridiculous.” 

- One of my Y7 girls on IWD 

There’s been a lot happening over the last few weeks (both in school and in my personal life), which is why I have been so incredibly slack in the upkeep of the blog. This seems to be a recurring theme in my life; I’ll catch up with friends that I haven’t seen in months and I’ll say “I have been incredibly busy, which is why I haven’t caught up, but the busy-ness is a result of lots of incredibly mundane stuff - I don’t know that I have all that much to tell you!” A skill I am trying to practise is finding hidden gems in mundanity and when I think back to the events of the last couple of weeks, there have been some golden learning moments. To detail them all would be a tedious exercise, both for the reader and me, but some of them are worth sharing.  

The Three Little Piggies are a great metaphor for what teaching feels like 

Way back in week three, I was having an absolutely horrendous week, I felt overwhelmed and some of my classes were getting the better of me. After one particularly hideous lesson with one of my Year 7 classes (picture TOTAL anarchy) I went back to the staff room, I sat quietly for a minute or two and then I bawled my absolute guts out. Couldn’t breathe, snotty nose, an absolute mess. 

My head teacher said to me something along the lines of: “You know, the story of the three little pigs is really quite a good metaphor for what teaching feels like. For now, you feel like you’re made of straw, and you’re likely to be knocked down, should anyone so much as breathe in your direction. Eventually, you’ll be made of sticks, and you’ll still be unsteady but you’ll be stronger than before. It takes a while to have a teaching style that feels like it’s made of bricks. Unfortunately, that can take as long as the time it took you to get through university. At university, they try to convince you that you’re building a house, but really, you’re just laying the concrete scaffold.” 

Man, it was beautiful, I wish I could have recorded it, I felt like I’d never heard anything so sage in my life. I’m constantly grateful for the women I work with, they were a good, cohesive team before I walked in, and, I’m so happy to get to be a part of it, even if it is only temporary. 

#PressforProgress 

This week International Women’s Day came and went and we endured the usual nonsense (i.e. lots of blokes posting about being good feminists because they love their mum, grandma, sisters and girlfriend) but, for the most part, it passed without a great deal of consequence. Though I had planned on incorporating IWD into my lesson planning for the day, it was an incredibly busy week and I let it get the better of me. 

That being said, International Women’s Day does raise lots of interesting conversations (not, “Why isn’t there an International Men’s Day?” though - there is mate, it’s the other 364 days of the year. Be quiet for once). One of my Year 7 girls said to me “Miss, you know, I’ve been thinking… Well, most teachers are women, but most of the principals are men.” It’s very cool to see kids being made aware of these structural issues: executive positions are more often than not, held by men, whilst the “easy” work is done mostly by women. It’s a trap that many of us fall into, myself included. This week, in a moment of reflection declared “woah, I can’t believe I get paid to look after other people’s kids!” As someone who doesn’t have a particular inclination towards motherhood, I sure spend a hell of a lot of time telling kids “hey hey, I’m not your mother.”

I understand why it happens of course - teachers, by the nature of our profession are there to nurture students; to provide safe and comfortable environments for our kids to grow, and figure out their identities. The issue is that nurturing is seen as mother’s business, while men are told to provide and to do so with a degree of stoicism. This isn’t helpful for anyone, not for the women who are doing the lion’s share of the emotional labour, or for the men who feel that they are not allowed to. 

I teach a lot of very cool young women, and I think, as teachers, it’s important to try to reflect on what a privilege our job really is. It’s hard work, that’s for damn certain, but it’s exciting. If we do our job right, our students leave our hands as critical thinkers, who question the world they live in, and make it a better place. 

Now we’re getting somewhere…

I think that’s probably enough for me for the time being. I do finally feel like I’m on a bit of a roll now, which is a relief. There’s only 5 weeks left in the term and they’re going to be filled with lots of exciting stuff (Harmony Day, Year 7 camp, the athletics carnival). I don’t know when we’ll meet again, but I’ll try not to leave it as long as I have. 

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mainecoonqueens on ig