The second year
Teaching is not the first career I've trained for, so I had the
benefit of something to compare it to. Before I was a teacher I had gone a fair
distance down the road of qualifying as a solicitor, specialising in criminal
defence and immigration. I'd spent years of my life and tens of thousands of
pounds getting to that point. I worked at three law firms, initially as an
unpaid intern and then moving in to paid positions. Six months unpaid is a rite
of passage most wannabe solicitors have to go through.
I started at my last first and initially
thought:
"I'm not enjoying this, but it's
probably because I'm new and it’s difficult not knowing anything".
After a few months I wasn't new anymore
but my feelings hadn't changed. I put on a brave face.
"It's better than
nothing".
Then moving to:
"I don't like this at all".
Then:
"I really dislike this"
Finally the slow acknowledgement of what
I'd really known all along.
"I hate this"
The point that I realised that practicing
law was completely wrong for me was when I noticed that the feeling of dread at
going back on Monday would come on at lunch time on Saturday. Something had to
change. I distinctly remember sitting upstairs at Coventry Crown Court waiting
for a sentencing hearing of a violent mugger with a serious drug additions and
it was there and then that I decided that the was going to become a teacher.
Over the past three years, through PGCE,
NQT and RQT I've lived in fear of that feeling returning, but it never has. I
tell you all of this in the hope that you have no idea what I'm talking about
and you certainly can't relate at the moment. If you're sitting there and you
relate you need to do something about it, immediately.
NQT year is tough and I was certainly not
overjoyed throughout. At first teaching was the only thing that existed in my
life. My time was absorbed by making resources from scratch, drafting and
redrafting schemes of work, attending CPD and implementing new strategies.
There was no room to anything else and what I was doing lacked the polish which
comes from using a reflection cycle. During RQT the emphasis moves away from
doing everything from scratch towards modifying and perfecting and as a
consequence lessons become more cohesive.
Having 12 months employment under my belt
I felt more prepared and in control so I'm able to manage my workload better.
The only way that I have been able to achieve this is by creating my own rule
book. I get to my office at 7:15 and I have an alarm set for 5pm but I aim to
have left work before that. If the alarm does go off I stop what I'm doing
immediately and go home. The only thing that I take home is marking, no more
than one set. No emails after 9pm and no work at all on a Friday night. I allow
myself one revision to a lesson plan, and that's it. I eat a proper lunch which
I make from scratch and it has to be eaten before I leave (I'm still working on
this one, sometimes you'll see me in the car at five past five eating my
sandwich because I haven't managed it).
As an NQT you are going to be sprinting
through each half term and then spending the holidays recovering, but this is
not a sustainable way to live your life and you're unlikely to survive more
than a year like that. It can lead you to feel a bit like the person I
described at the start. If anything struck a chord with you, I strongly suggest
that you make yourself that set of rules and actually stick to them. I'm a self-confessed
work-aholic but my rule book has made sure that college is still important but
there is now room for other things and the experiences I describe before,
they're a very distant memory.
