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Secondary

They’re Great – But Occasionally, I’d like It Not To Be ALL About The Children…

"At certain points, I want nothing more than a break from the wee little tie-wearing cyclones…"

Tom Starkey
by Tom Starkey
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SecondaryEnglish

It’s all about the kids, isn’t it?

Those bright-eyed vessels of potential whom it’s such an honour to be around every working day. Such wonderful lights in this dull world, with their hopes and dreams, their questions and demands, their incessant chatter and hormones, their phones and drama. Every… single… working…day….

It might seem odd, given my chosen profession, that at certain points I want nothing more than a break from the wee little tie-wearing cyclones. But I do. And I don’t just mean evenings, weekends or holidays (blessed be the holidays, amen) – I mean during the day. When I’m at work.

Gasp away, comrades

Is this the long-searched-for proof that actually, deep down, I hate children? Well, only a little bit. And only sometimes.

As much as I understand that they are the reason for the job and should be the main focus, the truth is that children are also highly adept at doing my nut on a fairly frequent basis. Yes, they make me feel a whole range of other emotions, like joy and surprise and love – but make no mistake about it, nut-doing is way up there near the top of the list. So no, I don’t want to spend every single second I have after I step through the school gates in their company.

This attitude has often been considered strange by many of my colleagues, and has clearly been something of a worry to a number of managers that I’ve had (who I’m pretty certain all had the ‘doing my nut’ feeling themselves whenever I’d come barging into their office).

‘Relationship building’

For instance, at one of my former schools, staff were encouraged to eat lunch with the students to promote a feeling of community, build relationships and some other stuff that meant I’d have to be in front of kids for an extra hour out of my day, instead of hoovering up my lunchtime cream of chicken soup like some faulty Dyson in a dark, secluded spot somewhere, as was my preference.

I refused, on the grounds that there would not be much ‘community feeling’ or ‘relationship building’ when I made the kids I sat with eat in silence and avoid all eye contact with me – because that would be the only way that I’d do it, unless they could sort out one of those partitions you get if you’re a witness who can’t be identified in court…

Many of my colleagues in the briefing where the scheme was suggested thought that this was a rather curmudgeonly attitude to take – and they were absolutely, 100% correct. But, I argued, better a little surliness now, than the full-blown, eye-popping rage that would have been witnessed if I didn’t have a very small piece of time to myself, or exclusively with other adults at some point in the day.

Kids all up in my grill

For although we work with kids, and for kids, it doesn’t mean I want kids all up in my grill 24/7. There’s an energy that crackles off people of a certain age – it’s one of the things that makes working in a school so wonderfully unique – but it can also be exhausting.

I watch the students sometimes, and to me it’s like their lives are amplified. The good, the bad – all of it’s is cranked up to the Nth degree. I find this appealing, but simultaneously sapping. The immediacy, the ever-present action, the depth of feeling over minor details; it’s affirming, but also very tiring. You need a break from it to recharge, and not be swept away by the glorious madness of it all.

Whether it be a silent minute alone staring out of the window as you wait for the Y10s to come in; a laugh at break time with your colleagues; even a lunchtime of solitude sat noisily slurping soup – you’re allowed to have a little something away from them. A little time off the shop floor to gather your wits before once again rushing headlong into those hopes, dreams, questions, demands and all the rest.

And to be fair, the poor kids might need a break from us, too…

Thanks for reading.

Tom Starkey is a teacher in an FE college in the north of England; he blogs at stackofmarking.wordpress.com and tweets as @tstarkey1212

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