The Exasperated Teacher Blog UK

“And into the fire!”

July 2017

I’ve heard this be said to me, quite a lot, when I describe my new teaching job to colleagues and friends. I’m moving school to teach year 6 when I currently teach year 3. The children will be older, with bigger attitudes and more hormones than I’m currently used to, but I don’t see it as an awful challenge and I certainly wouldn’t accept a job that I didn’t think I could handle.

I’m resilient and feel prepared knowing that my teaching partner (in crime) is going to be an amazing person to work with. Together we will destroy the year 6 SATs (or die trying!) and have an absolute whale of a time with our cohort. Yes, there are quite a few characters in the mix, however, I feel that if I can just about survive teaching his lordship for 13 months, then teaching these rascals for 10 months will be fine. Not easy, but fine.

As the week moved on and people said the words more often. I began to think negatively about myself. Were they saying this because they didn’t think I’m capable of the challenges to come? Did they believe I wouldn’t be amazing at this new job prospect? Was I really going to fail like everybody seemed to assume? Then I decided to answer myself “No!” I’m going to be totes amazeballs at this. I’m going to work just as hard as I have done in the past, I’m going to love this new class as much as I’ve loved all of my other classes in the past and I’m going to be more successful than any other year.

Cut to December 2017

The fire is hot but I’m on the brink of a burn out. I’m exhausted, my year 6s are exhausted, my TAs are exhausted, my teaching-partner-in-crime is exhausted. We are all fighting off sore throats, colds, flu, sickness bugs, sleep deprivation and the children have attitudes bigger than Mount Kilimanjaro. This week, was our third week of assessments. We’ve already had 2 assessment weeks in a row this term and “we” decided to do another this week in order to start implementing this new intervention “therapy” in January. It’s the last full week of school before we break up for a Christmas holidays and we have so many tasks to finish. And so many to start as well.

We’ve basically abandoned the normal, rigid timetable for assessments in the first session and then DVDs or Christmas stuff in the second sessions and afternoons. They have struggled to maintain enthusiasm for assessments and today I promised it would be the last one (until we come back in January) because I’ve worked them to their absolute limits for this term. Marking the assessments has confirmed this, for many of them have not done particularly well. They need a break. I need a break.

How many days until we break up for Christmas now? 😫