I wish I could go back to college.
In college you know who you are.
You sit in the quad, and think, “Oh my God!
I am totally gonna go far!”

How do I go back to college?
I don’t know who I am anymore!

Avenue Q

Well it’s not quite that extreme, but it is currently 19.06 on a Thursday and I’ve been home for ten minutes. This morning I woke up at 5, left for school at 7am and no matter what I do at the moment, I don’t feel like I’m getting anything right.  I’m sure I am but i’d forgotten how much there is to do, how little time there is to do it and there’s loads of brand new stuff too.

I haven’t written on here in quite a while and I have been wary about it too.  As a teacher you can open yourself up to all sorts of trouble with an online presence, but writing makes me feel better when I’m feeling rubbish so I’ll just have to keep doing it.

I’ve spent nearly four weeks in my new school.  It’s a lovely place, the staff have been very friendly and welcoming; nearly all of the established teachers (a few of us are new) have offered to help out if I get stuck.  The children are polite and friendly, most of my class work really hard and do everything I ask of them, but there’s a few that are really challenging me at the moment.  I know they are just testing the waters and seeing how far they can go, but even so it’s making me so frustrated and upset.

It’s been a difficult week/month for many reasons:

1) I’m poor.  It’s my own fault, so don’t feel sorry for me. I have no expendable income, or actual income, until next week and so I have not really done anything socially with the few people I know here or to meet new people.  I bought a ticket to see Gillian Anderson in A Street Car Named Desire a couple of weeks ago, but I as so exhausted and worried that I wouldn’t get things ready for the next day that I didn’t go.  I went home, worked until 8 and was asleep by 9.  I didn’t really regret it too much because I felt so much better the next day, but I can’t just work every evening.  At some point something’s going to have to give or I’ll burn out.  Surviving on almost a month of working at least a 12 hour day each day, plus extra time at weekends, with an average of 6 hours sleep a night is enough for me.

2) I’m not a morning person, but I’m training myself to be. I’ve grown to hate the alarm from my battered Nokia, but I’ve not been late for school yet.  I may have fallen asleep on my morning bus once or twice.

3) As a new person to the school, area and class I’m having to learn and do a lot of things from scratch.  I’m having to make resources to go on my classroom walls as there wasn’t a lot left for me to use.  There’s new policies and procedures that need to be learned.  Names of staff – you get introduced with first names but then are always referring to them as their ‘teacher name’.  Learning about the children – not just names, allergies, ability levels but also what they are like as people, who they get on with, who they don’t.

4) Regular readers may remember that it’s getting to that anniversary time, next week is two years since Dad and Gaggy died and I’m not able to go to the ashes site or anything.

5) There are a few children that are really trying to push me and I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but I do.  I’ve asked for some help and support so that I can get on top of it and that should help to make everyone’s day better in the class.  The deputy is coming in to watch my behaviour management tomorrow because I’ve asked her to so that she can give me some ideas and tips to help me get better at dealing with things.  It’s still making me a little stressed though as today’s lessons didn’t go the way I’d hoped they would and so now I feel like I have to re-plan everything to sort tomorrow out.

I feel like this is a woe is me post and I don’t mean it to be.  I’ve had my first mentoring meeting and he agrees with the points I’ve decided to work on and says I have to focus on the things I feel like I’m doing right as well as recognising what I feel I could get better at.  I know this, it’s just hard to see when you feel like you’re trying everything you can to get ahead and keep on top of things, but it seems like you’re actually getting no-where.

I bought a folder for all my every day information that says on the front:

Do more of what makes you happy.

At the moment I’m not very good at that, but next week I’ll not be so cash strapped.  I’ll be able to buy the glasses I need to make reading things happen!  I’m going to see about joining the choir so that at least for the hour or two that that’s on I’m not thinking about what my differentiated WALT and WILFs should be. I’ll be able to take up invitations to go out and meet people.  And I’m going to try to get as much stuff done in advance so that each night at 8 I can go ‘That’s enough now.’ and go to sleep before midnight.

It’s 19.37 and I’ve got planning and resourses to do, but first I’m going to make some brownies for the Macmillan coffee morning tomorrow.