Hurrah! Home! Six weeks or so to please myself what I do, no timetable to stick to, no feeling like I’m stuck on a treadmill. Time to rest, relax, create, use my mind.
Does it sound like I don’t like teaching? Actually, teaching I do, generally, enjoy. The beaurocracy, the curriculum that doesn’t do much to enthuse staff or pupils, the endless rounds of reporting, assessing just to prove what you already know about the pupils’ progress, the red tape, the statistics, the piles of paper that are generated to feed the great paper monster, the assumption that education is like a factory production line with equal ‘quality’ of raw materials going in so the quality coming out should be the same (we’re talking about human beings here, not inanimate computers). I could go on… the actual work of teaching, of helping pupils to progress either in the subject or personally, of seeing them grow and work towards their potential, the fun, the laughter, the enjoyment of the lesson, that is what I like…
I feel thin and stretched, much as Bilbo did when he gave up the One Ring. Perhaps the government dictates are the educational version of that insidious One Ring, the power in the world of Sauron who produced his armies on a production line …
Art is the Adventure 