APOLOGISE FOR THAT!

Sorry!

I took a day off yesterday. I wasn’t well. I wasn’t well Tuesday either, but I went in anyway. I found myself texting my staff (and my boss) apologising for being ill.

Bad isn’t it? I never have time off, and yet on the rare occasions I fall ill, I feel I have to apologise.

Here’s why...

If I don’t go in, my pupils have a BAD day. I feel guilty even saying it, but it’s true. I have wonderful and very capable support staff, who work really hard and who are great with the children, but when I’m not there the atmosphere changes. It’s partly me, partly just the autism.

“You’re not my teacher... you can fuck off!” sort of thing. But times a million.

They will all behave like animals if I am ever away, or on a course or whatever. They will be rude, spiteful and often violent, but they don’t do it if I’m there. Mainly just because of my presence alone – I don’t have to DO anything.  They just keep it together when I’m around, and if they can’t, they allow me to steer them through and talk them round.  I can calm them down, pretty fast. They don’t let other people get anywhere near that stage, once they’re angry.

But I’m not all “Ooh, get me. Check me out” about it. It’s not a good thing. It means I have THE GUILT if I’m ever off.

They will all have a bad day, my staff will have a horrendous day with all the children kicking off at once, and then they will all go home and take it out on their families. The pupils, this is, not the staff.

Though they might too, I don’t know.

So it gets to a point by which 25 or 30 people all have a horrendous day because I didn’t go in.

So I just go in. Even if I’m not well. And by the time you’ve got up to phone in sick, AND spent an hour writing your cover lessons for the day, you’d be at work anyway. It’s rarely worth it, especially when you add the fall-out to the occasion.

A friend who teaches next door, who has exactly the same with his class, put it this way:

“Me at 10% is better than someone else at 100%” and he hit that nail right on the head.

It’s easier to muddle through and do some slightly crappy, fun, lazy lessons to ensure the day runs smoothly, than to try and hand it over to someone else. Because YOU have to pick up all the pieces and hand out all the consequences and sanctions when you get back. It’s a nightmare.

You feel guilty; you know you’re setting up 30 people for a rough day and you know it will be carnage when you return.

So I rarely take a day off, but my throat hurts so much! Talking all day Tuesday destroyed it, and I couldn’t face it Wednesday. So I sent my cover notes, made my apologies to all concerned and a few people who weren’t but I felt guilty about, and I went back to sleep.

And I felt tons better- I wonder what happened in my absence?  We’re about to find out. I can pretty much guess though – it’s always the same pattern.

So yes – sorry about that, staff, pupils and parents.  Sorry you got kicked and spat at and abused because I didn’t come into work.

But if I got hit by a bus, you’d have to cope, so it’s probably worth practising.

You know the funny thing?  Next year, when these kids move up a class, my presence won’t mean a damn thing to them. And the kids coming up to my class, suddenly *they’ll* start responding only to me instead of their current teacher next door, and they'll start giving everyone else a rough ride.

Did I say funny?

I meant annoying. Sorry.

Day 20: Get real. Share something you’re struggling with right now (#BEDM).

Honestly?  I don’t have a lot of worries. I don’t struggle often.

Occasionally stuff happens and I sort it out, by one means or another, and then I move on to whatever’s next, but generally I lead a very stable, untroubled life.

But there is this one thing...

I have, for the last 3 years, been undertaking my masters degree. It has, in the main, not been a struggle. It’s not that demanding really. You have to turn up, you have to write essays and assignments every couple of months, but it’s designed for practising teachers, so time-wise, it’s really not been that big a deal.

Of course, doing anything like that on top of working full time in a damn nuisance at times. It’s kind of hard to get motivated having been teaching all day.  But generally it’s not vexed me too much.

Then this year I have had to write my dissertation.

After school. In the evenings. Or at weekends.

And fucking check me out- I’ve been a MACHINE! I have burned through it at amazing speed. And the quality has not, it appears, suffered as a result.

Why then, do I include this as my nod to struggling?

Ay, gentle reader, there’s the rub. The reason I have worked at such a ferocious pace on this undertaking is not because I am motivated, inspired and captivated by my study. It is not because I am conducting important, valuable and stimulating research. It is not because I am enthusiastic about improving myself, expanding my mind and advancing our understanding of educational theory.

It is because I. DO. NOT. WANT. IT. IN. MY. LIFE. ANY. MORE.

I cannot wait for the day that I don’t have to think about. That there isn’t this little voice in the back of my head whispering ‘you should really be working.’ Because whilst it doesn’t tax me particularly, and the rate of work necessary isn’t especially strenuous, I simply cannot live with THE GUILT.

Sometimes I go for weeks without doing any work at all on it. You might extrapolate from this that it therefore doesn’t concern me. But it’s ALWAYS THERE. The guilt. It’s still there waiting to be done.

Consequently, I have pushed it through at quite astonishing speed. My dissertation supervisor congratulates me on my enthusiasm. Little does she know that I am not enthusiastic. I am not motivated. I am motivated only by the prospect of NEVER HAVING TO SEE HER STUPID FACE AGAIN.

And you know what?

Today I finished it.

It’s sort of been finished for a while now. But today I opened up my ridiculously massive 12MB Word document and did the final sorting out. Margins, contents page numbering, formatting – Essentially, making it look pretty.

And you know? It was a bit of a struggle. Every time you make a tiny adjustment, stupid bloody Word shunts everything around, and all your chapters move down a bit. Then all your page numbering is wrong, and all your graphs and figures are suddenly on different pages. It was actually quite stressful. Right at the bitter end, you just want to do it, save it, close it and forget about the fucking thing, but it wasn’t that straight forward.

But now it’s done.

Now I don’t have to worry about The Guilt any more...