stress

I'm stressed.

How do I know I'm stressed? Let me count the ways:

1. I'm wearing mis-matched two piece suit. Now, not everyone matches their suits I know. Some go for a different colour jacket/trouser combo - but both parts of my suit are designed solely to be worn with their natural partner. Trust me. Charcoal jacket + Navy trousers = social ostracisation. I may have got dressed in the dark this morning but there is no excuse for this kind of faux-pas.

2. I walked into Cafe Nero and forgot what I wanted to order. I've ordered the same thing for going on three years and I forget what it is today. I just stood there wondering why I was in a coffee shop.

3. When I do order the barrista asks if I want it in a paper or china cup. This leads to a flurry of "paper.. china.. paper.. to go.. for here.. paper.. no.. china" until she eventually gave up listening to me and put it in a china cup regardless.

4. I have just mixed my tenses - switching from past to present to past. This is something for which I would berate a student and yet I here I am making basic grammatical error after grammatical error.

5. My school is holding a de-stress workshop soon and I am actually considering attending.

Why am I stressed? As is often the case it is a combination of factors. This is always the busiest time of the year for me. I don't know about the rest of the world - but teachers in Northern Ireland find themselves stretched in five different directions this time of year. On top of that there school inspectors assessing the school at the moment. I won't say much about my opinions of ETI inspectors; there isn't time and I'm not in the right frame of mind to be objective - suffice to say that I recognise it has to be done; I just don't like the way they do it.

I think I could safely say that teaching today is not what most people think it to be. It is certainly not what I thought it to be when I started out (so idealistically) all those years ago. It saddens me but I can't help thinking that society more and more adjusts itself to take account of the lowest common denominator often at the expense of everyone else. Take the analogy of car tax. Because there are people out there who are willing to commit fraud the rest of us end up paying higher premiums. In teaching because there are teachers out there who don't care about the pupils they work with the rest of us have to jump through hoop after hoop to make sure we are doing our best for our pupils. A worthy goal - but the irony is that often we are so busy working towards producing the paperwork, results and figures to prove we are doing our very best, that we don't have time to really get to know the people we are meant to be doing our best for.

So much of my job has become tracking and assessing and filling in spreadsheets and carrying out follow up checks and ... ... aghhh!

The thing is I know assessment is important. I know that we need to be aware of the progress achieved by what we do to inform the way we do things. I know that our teaching should take account of the individual pupils' needs and that assesment should there to drive the learning, not the other way around... just sometimes I wonder...

I realise all of this is a truism but right now it is affecting my state of mind. I'm doing my very best to avoid it adversely affecting the way I teach - perhaps at the expense of the rest of my sanity. If that's the case wearing the wrong jacket with my trousers in a coffee shop - drinking... actually I'm not sure what it is I actually ordered - is a scarifice worth making.

my momma told me there'll be days like this

When it's not always raining
there'll be days like this
When there's noone complaining
there'll be days like this

Well today it was raining - and today I did a lot of complaining. In fact you (as in the internet and all who sail in her) are collectively the 23rd person to whom I have complained today about today. I hate today. I wish there was no today. I'd be more than happy for yesterday and tomorrow to cosy up on the sofa and watch movies forgetting today exists.

This morning I was woken at some unearthly hour by the phone ringing. I ignored it. I've a bad dose of a cold and I hadn't slept very well - I needed my rest.

Twenty minutes later it started up again and I raised myself and plodded slowly to the phone - which stopped ringing as I reached to answer it - of course.

A couple of minutes and it was ringing again. I was beside it. The third different number to phone. I answered it.

Apparently, according to the neighbour, my father had sheep in a field beside his house. My father is on a wee trip to visit my brother and his family in Scotland. My father's sheep, the neighbour informed me, were no longer in the field and had just gone running past his house. Of course they were - they never break out when Dad is actually in the country; they save all their troubles to take out on me when he's not around.

No time to have any breakfast, shower or shave, I threw on my school clothes and jumped in my car. By the time I arrived there was no sign of any sheep. I checked in the verges, in peoples' gardens, below parked vehicles... nothing... anywhere. Assuming they had run up a local dirt track I blocked the end of it with my car and set off - in my suit - in the rain - through the mud - up the lane.

The rain was in torrents. What had been puddles once became mighty rivers and lakes. The wind beat the rain drops into my face like leather whips - my eyes stinging and my lips cracked and raw. As I checked in holes and gaps in hedges the briars wrapped themselves round my legs and ripped at my skin through my drenched suit.

A little under a mile up the lane I stopped, ankle deep in mud, in my tracks. In the distance I saw the lost sheep come running back in my direction - another neighbour behind them pushing them along. I don't know if there were tears of joy, tears of pain - or just more rain in my eyes but my relief was palpable. Between us we got them into a vacant field and I thanked James as I counted the sheep in through the gate.

My relief was short lived. We were one short.

I set off again checking fields, crossing streams, climbing gates... I was just about to give up when eventually I found her and was able to herd her into the field with her friends. I now had less than ten minutes before the start of my first class and I was a ten minute drive away from school. Driving faster than I should have down a tiny, bumpy lane led to some worrying sounds coming from various parts of my car. I also cursed the fact that I had washed it the day before as thick mud sprayed up all around me. But I got there. I arrived at school and heard the bell go for first lesson.

Have you ever had one of those days that started so badly you knew it could only get better? Well this wasn't one of them. As the mud dried on my suit and my hair took on shapes I've never seen before, and as I tried to ignore the agricultural smell that seemed to be fermenting as time passed, I had nightmare class after nightmare class. Each seemed more unsettled than the last and more mischievous. I didn't have a break at break because I do break duty on Thursdays and even my lunch time had been recommissioned as an English Department Meeting.

By the end of the day I could feel a blood vessel pulsing behind my eye - I took that as a bad sign.

As I walked out the door and made my way over to my mud coloured car I pondered on the events of the day. A curious thing struck me.

I was so unable to cope with it all. The fact that it was a one off is the redemption in the tale. If I thought that tomorrow held more of the same I don't know what I would do (It won't - not after the job I did on the hole the sheep got out of this morning -- NOTHING is getting out of that field until their rightful owner returns.)

I thought about teachers who do have to put up with that kind of stress more regularly. The ones with young families - sleepless nights, ill children, the constraints of parental responsibility. There are people out there who have that level of stress and teach full time - on a daily basis. They're insane! I both admire and pity them to extremes. Hundreds of them. Probably thousands.

And it's not just teachers. Every job that requires commitment, stress, dedication - to do that and bring up a family. I shake my head.

So when, as Van Morrison sang, my mama told me there'd be days like this - it's probably cause she'd been through plenty of them herself. And plenty much better.

When noone steps on my dreams
there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean
there'll be days like this
When you bring out the changes
of how everything is
Well my momma told me
there'll be days like this