Dean, my artist partner for the reflective practice project, wrote to me (when I thought that one of the teenagers stabbed in North London was an ex-student of mine):

“made me think about how it must be for teachers to have to deal, cope and work with these problems. It kind of makes me think more and more why we all need to escape into other things in our lives, just to keep us going and to make us feel something positive. I was thinking when I meet people and they ask me what I do I find it difficult to explain because what I do changes so much. Children and young people will say I want to be an artist, they straight away ask if I earn lots of money, am I famous,do I know anyone famous. Adults tend to say, what a lovely job wish I could get paid for doing nice things, your lucky, its not a proper job. I suppose its about perceptions, what do people say about being a teacher?”

I went to the London School of Economics, where I studied Philosophy. Many of my peers now have jobs in major banks or corporations in the city. Some of them were earning near six-figure salaries when I was training (and getting myself into more debt). Though I now earn a wage I’ll never complain about I also have always, throughout my career, had something else. Since I started teaching I think I’m the only person I’m in touch with from university who has been able to genuinely say that I love my job. I have to stop myself from talking about it (because I know others find the conversation boring, unless they’re teachers themselves) with people. So to answer Dean’s point, above, people have one of three reactions.

The first is that I get long holidays and I’m lucky. This is usually said tongue in cheek, and my response is usually “you do it then!”

The second response I get to being a teacher is “I could never do that!” I think that’s quite a common reponse, usually borne of an image of young people as difficult and moody, and that you need incredible patience (I actually think that as an effective teacher you need to teach yourself to have patience at the right times, but also be able to have a frantic/ siege like mentality of ‘get it done now’) – plus that you “can’t do anything to them anymore” ignoring the fact that being able to hit children never stopped them behaving badly or doing things wrong and failed to build the relationships that I think are central to gaining an environment for successful learning.

The third response is usually if they’ve heard me talking about my job, or an anecdote, and it’s usually friends who say “you really are so lucky”. I think this is because when I talk about my job it comes through that I love my job. And I agree that I’m lucky.

The whole of this post so far has been stimulated by Dean writing “It kind of makes me think more and more why we all need to escape into other things in our lives, just to keep us going and to make us feel something positive.”

And then I think about personally difficult times that I’ve had over the last 8 years. There’s probably two or three, and I think every one of them has resulted in me “escaping” into work because that’s where it’s possible for me to “feel something positive”. So far from escaping work, I usually become more engrossed in it.

The last time I felt positive at work after I did some loo-posters for the toilets (we have displays for colleagues to read while they’re doing their thing) for our “No hands up week” next week, then phoned a parent, then created a schedule for observing all the colleagues in the Learning Area that I line manage. This took me half an hour, and I felt positive because I felt productive, and I’d done something that was useful and will have (some) impact.

There have been a few tragedies at work. I remember at a previous school where I was called to the headteachers office on Monday morning and told that a student in my year group had witnessed his mum being murdered on Saturday night, or when a student died at my last school. I think we get through them and move on a bit quicker at work, because even when I feel close to a student at work, it’s still not personally close. A distant friend outside of work passing away is probably harder to personally deal with than a student at school (and I’m not in any way trying to belittle any school tragedy) for me personally.

And so I don’t think work is something I need to “get away from” except to recharge (my holidays). I don’t need to find something positive (unless it’s been hard or I feel I’ve been crap at work) because most of my positive experiences are at work (though as I’m writing that, I wonder if most of my negative ones are too; probably).

The other part of Dean’s message made me think about what students get out of school. They definitely get security, the opportunity to develop relationships, to socialise, to develop skills and to acquire knowledge. Why though? I think students often see their reasons for being at school to be “to get a good job”. I think this is what the students who ask Dean if he earns a lot of money are thinking. Part of this must be because I’ve always taught in schools where there is a lot of poverty around, and education is seen (rightly, I suppose) as a way out of that. I’m not sure it’s generally valued for education’s sake, though I wish we could do something about that.

At the same time, at the school council conference one (fairly feisty, by her own admission) Year 10 student was asked where she was happy in school, and she said (paraphrased) “I’m happy everywhere. I think that’s why I don’t get in trouble any more – like I did in year 9. I like all of my lessons, especially the one I chose, and though I find Science frustrating, I have to say I’m happy in school more than anywhere else”.

I think she wants to “get a good job” but I also think she’s enjoying her last few years of being a child and the process of growing up. Stuff like that makes me happy and feel positive.

Incidentally, isn’t it sad that throughout the 20th century parents always expected their kids to have a better life than them. They no longer do (there’s some research on this I read somewhere but I can’t find it). Says a lot about our “system” I think.