The end of another day – the end of another school.

Have you ever left one job after a period of time to start somewhere else? Have you felt that strange sensation of mixed relief, excitement, melancholy and trepidation? Have you experienced that sense that you are leaving something unfinished, or that you haven’t quite cleared your desk completely, that you’ve left something important behind?
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to go through that two or three times annually?

This always feels like a new sensation even though it really isn’t – REALLY isn’t. A lot of you will have experienced something similar when you switched careers, or maybe left school or university. Maybe I’m being a bit parochial but I think that it’s different for teachers. Every pupil feels that their class is special to you, that they stand out in your conscious (for good reason or bad) beyond all the rest. For that reason a teacher leaving is a big deal for them (for a day or two anyway); and for THAT reason it’s a big deal for the teacher.

Maybe I’m being parochial but I think it’s different for substitute teachers. We nearly always have a feeling of a job unfinished. I am leaving pupils mid season – in the middle of their secondary education. I don’t get to see what happens next. In some cases all I got to see was the very start of the secondary education journey. There are biblical allusions involving the different roles of the planter and the reaper – but Friday afternoon is not the time for me to use my brain on too many levels so I’ll leave the reference open and let you finish it off.

When the weekend finishes I will be starting all over again with a whole new set of kids in a school by the ocean. A whole new set of kids with a whole new set of values, loves, loathes, and methods of substitute teacher abuse. At this point I know nothing about them but within a short time they will become convinced that their class is my most memorable class and that they, individually, have had the biggest impact on my life of all the pupils I have ever taught – and I will let them think it. Maybe in 9 weeks time I will be writing something very similar to this when I leave them to move on to a different school, this time in a small North Antrim town.
Or maybe I’ll imagine that each new set of pupils is simply the old set with new hair styles. Maybe I’ll convince myself that I got to see them move from childhood to adulthood and a life beyond secondary school.

But until I can do that I’ll continue to be the littlest hobo of the teaching profession. I’ll just keep moving on.