On New Year’s Eve, I posted the following status on Facebook from a lounger by the pool of our family holiday in California: ‘We’re leaving 2019 feeling extremely blessed to have our happy and healthy family and excited for what 2020 has in store.’
Fast forward three months and we’re at the end of the first week of the Corona virus pandemic ‘lock down’ that the government hasn’t officially called a lock down. I am isolated with my husband, 2 children and dog. We’re lucky because we have a modestly sized 3 bed semi and a large garden, so when the sun has shone this week, my children have played outside, entertaining themselves like it’s any normal mild Saturday. I am grateful for this normality.
But I find myself with too many thoughts whirling around my mind – far too many for a Facebook status rant. So here I am, writing my first ever blog.
Let’s rewind a few weeks.
I’m a secondary English teacher and a head of department. I have 2 Y11 classes. Last year I taught half of the entire year group (alongside my precious colleague and friend who I’ll call Deirdre) because of various reasons outside of our control. This year I was taking through students that had been with me since Y10 (top set) and a Y11 group I inherited at the start of the year. Completely ying and yang in terms of ability and work ethic so preparing both groups for their exams has been hard work but entirely rewarding and I felt they both had great potential.
But a few weeks ago, SLT started referring to a ‘Corona plan’ and I thought they were being ridiculous. My husband kept asking if I wanted him to go and get some stuff for the food cupboard and bathroom cabinet and maybe some extra cleaning products, but I always do the shopping and I thought he was being ridiculous. My mind was completely focussed on Y11 and the impact of the February mock data and what we (my team and I) were going to do about the gaps that needed filling. I was the one being ridiculous.
As usual, my job, or more specifically, my students were consuming my every thought. It was only a few weeks earlier that my head had kindly allowed me to alter my timetable for a few days to allow me to go into school to teach Y11 and then leave early so I could return home to be with my poorly eldest daughter. She had actually been taken to hospital with suspected meningitis (thankfully a false alarm), but not until I had been in school to teach my Y11 classes first. Retrospectively, I should be ashamed of who I made priority then, but truth be told, I’d do it again and there are lots of teachers who would do the same. And this is the issue with our profession: our students are our lives.
So, when Ireland enforced school closures because of the growing number of Coronavirus cases in Europe, I panicked. How on earth would I teach Y11 from home? There is no way the majority of our students would continue working – they’re just not that driven or focussed or mature. Experienced members of staff were telling me to stop stressing over something I had no control over and that all schools would be in the same boat if Boris was to follow Ireland’s decision. But I could not be pacified. My students had worked too hard. My team had worked too hard. I had worked too hard.
Then, on Wednesday 18 March 2020, Boris Johnson dropped a bomb: all examinations were cancelled. He gave us no other information than that. From that moment, my phone was on fire. I was flitting between conversations with my team, my headteacher, my family, but mostly, my students.
‘What does this mean, Miss?’
‘What will happen, Miss?’
‘What do we do now, Miss?’
These children turned to me every day of every week for answers, but I had none. I told them to stay calm and that we would discuss the next day.
I barely slept all night. I cried a lot. I got up at 5am defeated by my thoughts.
For those of you thinking that I was being ridiculous, you do not teach. Or if you do teach, you aren’t in it for the same reasons that I am.
I get up every day for my students.
My school is a special place to me. I live within the community that it’s located in and I had an amazing time when I trained there five years ago so I jumped at the opportunity to return when a role became available. However, the school was going through a period of extreme change – new head, changing staff and students without clear boundaries. The school had lost its glowing reputation within the community – my community – and for the next two and a half years, I would work the hardest I had worked in my life to help improve it. I found great joy and pride in being part of this immense journey, but I also regretted it. Many times.
When behaviour is difficult, teaching is difficult. I had to work harder than every student in front of me to ensure that the Y11 groups I was preparing for exams were focused and, at least, listening. I have always been able to create strong relationships with students because I have very clear boundaries and an obvious love of my subject, so once in my room, students work regardless of their ability or behavioural record. However, like any teacher knows, students can’t breeze through exams just off lesson time alone. So, for two years, taking Y11 through their exams was exhausting. Many succeeded, but too many didn’t.
As previously mentioned, I took half of an entire year group through their four English GCSE papers and sometimes I wonder how I am still alive to recount the tale. You’ll be wondering why this was the case. It was the result of an extremely fractured department due to lots of movement and role changes, plus long-term absence and maternity leave. I went from becoming 2nd in department (in my 3rd year of teaching) to head of department by the end of the same year. I was given very little guidance on how to do the job, but with Deirdre by my side, we just flourished. We built our team and transformed the curriculum. We enthused and engaged students who had previously disliked English and our Y11s were working harder than ever.
In fact, my Y11s this year were a breath of fresh air to me. For the first time in a few years, motivated and aspirational students outweighed the unmotivated and apathetic children. I had orchestrated the change to the curriculum (following successful schools and logic!) that meant we would teach Literature in Y10 and Language in Y11 with flashbacks of Literature. This was not done previously, but my intention is not to be rude about past decisions – everyone makes decisions for their own reasons.
I had the best year teaching Literature. My amazing students read A Christmas Carol in various accents – Australian Fred being a particular highlight. We acted out Macbeth with a hilarious ‘American sassy girl’ lead, played brilliantly by a boy in the class. And I gave them the shock of their lives (courtesy of Deirdre’s genius idea) when I played a consequences game for An Inspector Calls that involved me standing on a chair and tipping a full glass of water onto the floor. And boy were they learning. Their work was phenomenal, and they knew every text inside out. The Language performance was even better. My kids just seemed to be able to unpick the subtext of any text I gave to them and they could argue their backsides off in any P2, Q5 response.
My other class had had various teachers through Y10 and I had a lot of gaps to fill and students to engage, but it was working. They were working extremely hard and their grades were increasing. It was working.
Are you beginning to understand how devastating it was to hear that exams were cancelled? For the first time in years, I had students that were working on and above their targets, but more importantly, I had students that were not aiming to scrape a pass, but working as hard as possible to achieve the highest grades possible. I also had a Y11 team that was giving it their all to ensure these students were given as much support as necessary and we were all happy to go to work.
Our students, our department and our school were on course to achieve the best results in years, but the virus robbed us of the chance to go into the exams and show off what we’d been working on.
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