In recovery

I’m irritated by the fact that I am still grappling with my transition out of teaching. I still feel a sense of loss and I still really, really miss being with children.

Since leaving the classroom at the end of the 2022 summer term, I have been working part-time for a local charity as their Community Connector. Until April 2023, I also worked in a temporary, part-time admin job.

Since April, I have been working with my husband for 2 days a week. We have been preparing to launch a number of online courses he has created to support teacher wellbeing and professional growth. Recently, an academic paper from O’Brien and Ginney (2021) brought us both encouragement in our endeavours:

Wellbeing has relational qualities… [it] has to be at the soul of organisational culture… keeping balance and agency under constant scrutiny... Our research illuminates that the closer teachers get in their daily work to the meaning and purpose behind why they became a teacher, their wellbeing becomes more positive and their job satisfaction increases.

Professor Tim O’Brien and Dr Dennis Guiney (2021)

I could relate to the following sentiments, shared by the teachers who took part in O’Brien and Guiney’s research:

Teachers talk of knowing that their wellbeing and mental health are at risk when they feel they are not balanced: ‘out of kilter’, ‘imbalanced’, ‘shaky’, ‘sliding’, ‘overloaded’, ‘wobbly’, ‘knotted’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘on edge’ and ‘jittery’ were some of the descriptors they used. Feeling ‘flat’ is also associated with not feeling a sense of balance. Time plays a role too, as prolonged imbalance is seen to create ‘the type of toxic stress that can tip you into becoming ill’.

Professor Tim O’Brien and Dr Dennis Guiney (2021, p.351)

Reading O’Brien and Guiney’s paper led me to look up an entry in my journal, written after I’d driven myself into the ground trying to meet the relentless demands of the job. I’d been dragging myself into school, while my body pleaded with me to STOP. Eventually, with no voice left, I saw the doctor and agreed to take time off work – as well as a course of antibiotics and steroids. Here are some of my thoughts, which I recorded at the end of that autumn term:

…My days are frantic, but futile, and I have become increasingly demoralised, disillusioned and despairing.

I feel as if I am straightjacketed – my professional judgment stifled and my creativity suffocated. In phonics, I’ve been told to stick to the script. My many years of experience in literacy intervention are surplus to requirements and so is responsive teaching.

There is little, if any, opportunity for professional discussion in all the rush, rush, rush. It is just ‘play the game’, do as you’re told and keep your head down. The hamster wheel simply turns faster and faster.

I’m not growing as a teacher. I’m not even stagnating. I’m shrivelling up like a brittle autumn leaf. But still I continue to pour all my efforts and energies into the job. Still I continue to be one of the first to arrive at school every morning and one of the last to leave. Still my thoughts continue to be swamped day and night with school and what I need to do next.

I have lost perspective and all sense of purpose and vision is gone…

Notes from my journal

Melodramatic? It felt real at the time. And the memories of what I experienced are still raw. Was leaving teaching the solution? It was definitely an appropriate act of self-care.

In a recent fit of decluttering, I found this little scrap of paper where I’d scribbled some wise words of truth (I can’t remember when I wrote the note or where the words came from):

I’m conscious of the temptation for an introvert like me to fall into the downward spiral of navel-gazing and plummet into self-absorption. I’m hoping that the time spent working with Sean (my husband), turning my attention to help teachers avoid making the same mistakes I did, will be worthwhile – as well as a constructive road to full recovery.

There is a better way.

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There was a scar on yonder mountain-side,

Gashed out where once the cruel storm had trod;

A barren, desolate chasm, reaching wide

Across the soft green sod.

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But years crept by beneath the purple pines,

And veiled the scar with grass and moss once more,

And left it fairer now with flowers and vines

Than it had been before.

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There was a wound once in a gentle heart,

Whence all life’s sweetness seemed to ebb and die;

And love’s confiding changed to bitter smart,

While slow, sad years went by.

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Yet as they passed, unseen an angel stole*

And laid a balm of healing on the pain,

Till love grew purer in the heart made whole,

And peace came back again.

‘Streams in the Desert’ Mrs C. E. Cowman (June 22nd)

*past tense of steal – ‘to move somewhere quietly or surreptitiously’

(I’m certain the angel wasn’t a thief.)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 1/6)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 2/6)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 3/6)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 4/6)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 5/6)

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‘It is what it is.’ (Part 6/6)

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