Author: primaryteachew

After posting a tweet this week which informed the twitter world that I was off work with anxiety last year, I felt relieved.

For a long time, I felt it was something I wasn’t ready to talk about. I wasn’t ashamed, but I felt as though my confidence was still too low to put that out there. For me, it wasn’t the stigma that was attached to mental health that made me worry about speaking out – I was very open with people who knew me. It was because I still feared the person who made me feel that way (especially as they still make comments about me today!), despite no longer having to work with them.

But then, what happened to me, happened to someone else I previously worked with. Someone who then asked me for help. And it suddenly made me think, what if by speaking out, I could help even one more person? What if, it could be the support they need?

During my time off work – all 5 months of it – I was really lucky to have support not just from my ‘real-life’ friends, but also support from a number of people on Edu-twitter. It was, other than Love Island, one of the ways Charlotte & I actually connected! People gave me advice, help and most importantly, friendship during that time. People I hadn’t even met, even took the time to send me flowers and gifts to cheer me up.

For obvious reasons, I won’t go into too much detail about what happened -but I felt I was bullied while in the work place. I was told I was inadequate and ‘poor’ at my job, lacked empathy and even had a ‘poor appearance’. I was being made to feel like I wasn’t even just a rubbish teacher, but an awful person. I questioned on a daily basis whether teaching was the job for me. Looking back now, I can’t believe it got to the point where I contemplated leaving the only job I ever wanted.

The negative atmosphere was so awful, that 6 of us left the school (which was one-form entry) that year. 3 of us handed in our notice with no other job to go to.

I applied for only one job during my time off, because it just seemed so perfect; it almost seemed like fate. A local school wanted an experienced Year 6 teacher – a new school, which had not yet had a Year 6 cohort. Not only was it for the year group I loved but it was also a new challenge.

I looked round the school and put in my application that same day.

I, in my naivety, thought that leaving my previous school and moving to a new, supportive environment would be the end of my work anxiety. I was so wrong! My first appraisal was mostly just me crying and saying how rubbish I thought I was at my job (and there are still always tissues on the table when I go in now!).

Only after months of being treated with respect, supported whenever I asked for it (and even sometimes when I didn’t!) and given opportunities to progress have I realised that it really wasn’t me who was the problem.

After the tweet, I had several DM’s which asked me for advice or support, as well as teachers who were sharing their own experience. I didn’t send a tweet to make myself feel better – I wanted to help even one other person going through the same as me. But seeing those messages and comments made me feel proud that I had reached the point I am at now – which I didn’t expect.

My DM’s are always open. If you feel alone, or that you need support, I’m always willing to listen.

Emily

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You know the rest of the saying.

‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ – (thanks Stephen King).

But is this always the case for teachers when in the holidays?

Recently there has been some chatter about whether or not teachers should use their holidays to do lots of work: be that planning, marking or assessment.

Admittedly, it is hard to switch off as a teacher. You have a to-do list as long as your arm (and usually your arm resembles that of Mr Tickle), and it feels like you need to constantly keep going just to feel on top of your work .

And then – if you count it – there’s all the ‘life admin’ you feel like you need to complete now you finally have time! That opticians/doctors/dentist/solicitor appointment you keep putting off; that stack of paperwork sitting in the corner; your car MOT/service (or recall that is 3 months overdue…).

A holiday can sometimes feel like a week of chores…if you let it.

Holiday is the chance we all get to think about our wellbeing. To recharge, ensure we are ready and prepared to return to the classroom and give the children the best education we can but equally, not forgetting ourselves in this. Although that in itself is an ever-growing issue – your wellbeing shouldn’t just be something we attend to in our holidays.

What sometimes gets lost in most messages promoting it, is well-being is something that is personal to every single individual. Wellbeing is about doing what is right for you. React to what you need – your body will often decide that for you. If you need to rest, then do so. If you choose to read educational books in your holiday, then great. Gym? Bake? What ever it is that makes you feel better, then do that. Even if what makes you feel better is making a start at ploughing through some work on your to do list. If it makes you feel better, then why not?

It is becoming incresingly evident through even just a scroll through your EduTwitter timeline that we are the problem. We are often judged for doing what we believe is right for us. ‘But it’s the holidays?’ often ripples across EduTwitter and essentially has the knock on effect for making people feel worse. Especially as we need to remember, a lot of people have their twitter as a purely professional, educational outlet. Just because they haven’t tweeted about their personal life and down time, doesn’t mean they haven’t had any. Because it’s exactly that: personal time.

On the other hand, it is extremely important for us to recognise that we understand there are added pressures: the setting you may work in, work load and of course, your own personal life. There is often the added pressure of ‘being busy’ and showing that you are going above and beyond to prove your worth, because let’s face it, a lot of us attach our own value to the responses we get online. It may help temporarily but in the end you will just burn out. This is not a sustainable way of working.

Someone may enjoy spending the majority of their holidays working. Another person may choose to leave their work at school and switch off for the whole break. There is no right or wrong.

And that’s the single most important thing to remember; it is about what works for you.

‘Teachers get too many holidays” – but we deserve them…to do absolutely anything we want with.

Emily

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With the news today that both Labour and Conservatives want a change to the way SATs are used, do they have a place in primary education?

In the primary schools of the not so distant past, SATs were not the pressurised test that they have now become demonised as today; in fact, I’m sure if you ask most people who had their tests in the early 2000’s, they’d barely be able to tell you their experience of them (one of us only has a memory of being excited to do the extension SATs and not anything else surrounding the tests – yes sorry, I was that child!).

So, a question that has to be asked is: why have SATs become as pressured as they are now?

Of course, data has an evident part in this. With school rankings, Ofsted grading and even some teacher pay progression connected to SATs results in recent years, there is a heavy reliance on them to be data driven rather than centred around the ability of the child. Of course as teachers, we want every child to do the absolute best they can, but with such a focus on data, children are now ever-increasingly being seen as a number, a statistic. There is – in some schools – the idea that it doesn’t matter what a child is capable of because they must pass the test.

I know that when I was at a previous primary school I was told I must get 96% data. Never mind that the missing 4% was a child who wasn’t even taking the test. Never mind that there were clearly children in the class who were not making rapid enough progress to be expected to pass. Never mind any SEN barriers they had.

As a teacher, most of us won’t pass on that pressure to the class; if you look on twitter you see endless tweets of teachers who create a fun, safe learning environment for their class where tests aren’t perceived with stress or worry by the children. And often, if this is not the case, the pressure is coming from above.

And we don’t always mean SLT or headteachers, but that over-arching ‘above’ that we all inevitably know is there.

It could be argued that another cause of the pressure for children and adults is the greater access to social media and the internet. With other schools scores – even children’s scores on personal accounts – being accessed with the click of a button, it is creating a wider awareness (and let’s be honest, competition) of the scores connected with the tests. Gone are the days of ‘ignorance is bliss’ where a child came home with their levels and you had to actively search for further information on it.

Let’s say, though, that one of these policies is brought in at some point in the (near, so they say) future, we have to consider what they are going to implement instead of the Year 6 SATs. Would this reduce workload? Or would there be an increase in the need for evidencing where a child is, before they’re sent off to secondary? And are we going to expect secondary to get no further information than a teacher judgement of ‘yay or nay’.

It’s not that it won’t work; we’d make whatever happened work. We’re teachers, that’s what we do. But it would need time and thought as to what would fill the void rather than rushing through their abolition.

Having always enjoyed, and done better, at tests in school, I know I find tests quite useful. There is no need for them to cause so much stress and anxiety in children if approached in the right way.

It is the way tests data is held accountable to teachers and schools which needs to change, rather than the tests themselves.

Emily

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