Friday

I'm sitting here, early in the morning, with a tidy kitchen and the back door open letting the cool air flood in and freshen the house, feeling ridiculously happy.  Ridiculous because today I have a meeting for which I don't feel totally prepared and therefore ought to be mighty stressed, but I'm not!  This is unusual because most of the time I stress over very small things (don't I, Cider Girl).

Yesterday I was called out of class, another teacher installed for 'at least an hour' ("nothing bad, Joy, don't worry!") and was taken to the head's office.  You can imagine my feelings (what HAD I done????) until I was asked would I chair a meeting for someone who had been caught up elsewhere and wouldn't be able to make it.  Phew, what a relief that was.  It was a pleasant meeting too so, given that I got out of doing playground duty, apart from the first short feeling of dread, I did rather well.  I even got a mug of coffee made for me!

I suppose I am surprised it doesn't happen more often.  As a 'national teaching school' with an 'outstanding' head and deputy who are often called out to help, support, train, lead, etc, elsewhere, the wonder is that things usually work so very smoothly back at the home school.  Sigh of great management, I guess.

Teaching in such a school carries its own pressures and responsibilities.  The expectation is that we are never less that 'good' and frequently 'outstanding' in all areas.  The children are expected to make 'better than average' (whatever that means) progress which means that our teaching has to match that expectation (no, it doesn't, not always!).  To balance that sort of stuff I often feel a huge sense of . . . I'm not sure what the word is,  maybe pride, privilege, something like that . . . that I work in such a lovely place.  It is lovely.  We may be overworked, under sized and over crowded but the setting is delightful, surrounded by trees and in a quiet and pleasant area very close to the countryside, the staff is all very committed and extremely hard working, the leadership is strong but also very empathic, understanding and supportive . .  I could go on but you get the idea.

Small wonder, then, that despite all the irrelevant nonsense that surrounds teaching nowadays, I really don't want to retire, not yet.  Definitely not yet!

As for yesterday - all in all it was a super day!