this talk: is about life as a newly qualified teacher - with Amy Butland
Everyone knows teaching is a stressful job. It’s the only one I know where you are congratulated on making it through every tiny milestone – every term, half term, week, day, morning, and ten minute times tables starter. My training year was the most stressful thing I have ever done. By November I was in crisis about whether to quit or not, kept mainly by the fact that I had paid £6000 for this. As I became more capable and confident I began to enjoy it more and feel some control over my life again, but the pressure I felt was still immense. Still, I finished the year and began applying for jobs.
In August, I moved to London to start teaching in a one form entry primary school in Paddington. This year has subsequently overtaken the last one as the most stressful of my life – by far. I moved from a school with three class teachers per year, plus one set teacher. One of the classes was led by two teachers who worked part time. This meant that including me, there were six people planning lessons. We took a subject each and shared what we had done. Working in a one entry school, you do not have this luxury – everything has to be done by the class teacher. There are old plans to base yours off but if your teaching style is very different to the last teacher’s, you are still in for a lot of time planning.
At the start of the year I was working at least six days a week, and often staying until 7pm trying to get all of my marking and planning done for the week. There’s also displays to worry about, pupil progress, parents evening targets, logging safeguarding or behaviour issues, and of course 20 -30 children all wanting some of your attention much of the time. It can simultaneously be a job that is quite lonely and quite claustrophobic (see me regularly shouting “Everybody take one step back!” when they’re all trying to show me something at the same time.)
All of this came to a head a month ago when I woke up on a Monday morning unable to catch my breath. For three weeks before that I’d been coming home and crying every night, and a friend had suggested that I see a therapist. When I emailed the one she’d recommended and she told me that she didn’t have any availability, it was the end of the world. During the morning briefing I could hardly focus on what anyone was saying to me, and as soon as everyone had left I burst into tears while asking the head teacher if I could leave for half an hour to go to a pharmacy. It’s amazing how quickly people can rally around you when you ask for help. I think of myself as very lucky to be in such a supportive environment – within two minutes she’d covered my class (and another teacher had come in and given me the hug I seriously needed) and when I returned from the pharmacy she was waiting in her office to tell me to take the next day off and order me to register with a doctor.
Since then, I have started seeing a therapist and working on dealing with this stress, as well as unresolved issues which have come to the surface with everything else. Things are still hard – I’m only two weeks in – but they are definitely better.
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