Wishing my life away, I have taken a job and given my word to see it out for two terms, 24 weeks, half gone but I can't help but recognise it for what it is now - a distraction. 

The singsong chant goes round and round inside my head; too little, too late. Don't like getting up at 5:30am and driving for hours in heavy traffic. Don't need the money. Don't need the recognition.  Don't need to develop my skills anymore. I'm unlikely to do it again. What was I thinking?   Can't really remember why I chose to do it in the first place except that I was a little flattered at being wanted, proud that I could rather than pleased that I would.  It wasn't about me, I thought.  It was  about making a difference, passing on the baton, helping with skill and experience with deskilled, inexperienced and confused younger professionals who will inevitably leave teaching and do something else more rewarding unless something is done.  I think I thought I was doing something important.  That fixing a school was even possible.

 

But stuck in my lane, witnessing  organisational carnage and confusion around me, watching young people be damaged by a system that does not serve their needs but with a discourse  and belief about giving children their life chance so deep that it is hard to challenge. What are we doing in school, beyond trying to reproduce the status quo when it is crumbling around us?  If this is their life chance then shoot me now - this is an evil chance to cement young people into a future that seems both irrelevant and hopeless. They are told to believe that if you get some grades, your life is set up for success rather than an uncertain life in uncertain times where human skill and learning are increasingly less important than profit.  Technology changes so fast that no teacher could possibly know what to do never mind what to teach.  We rely on an archaic system of handwritten timed examinations of facts and apparently important ranked results based on an utterly irrelevant system of testing that claims to be the best in the world.  The best at what?  The question is never asked. 

 

The most important thing I  attempt is to enable students to be questioning humans. Help them to question the world around them, to not just blindly accept what they are told is true. Help them regulate and manage their emotions, their reactions, their confusion at the unexplained and unquestioned assumptions that work in the favour of those already in power.  I want them to question and validate what the world presents to them as true, develop their humanity and a way to see the world that doesn't disempower and blind them. It is much harder than it sounds. It is the only thing that matters to me.  Certainly not the thing that my superiors want - It is not measurable, not examinable, not OFSTED qualified, not codified or written in an action plan.  But I am sure, the only thing I do at this job that is of lasting value.  

 

It has been a big mistake - 24 weeks of misery.  I cannot wait for it to be over and return my time, attention and energy to real work that really matters.  I can't wait to stop wasting my time.