During the long Summer holidays, as August threatened to turn into September, I would frequently wake with the tail end of my dreams still on my mind. They were always on a similar theme - school. I would dream that it was the first day back and Nursery wasn't set up, or I turned up in my pyjamas, or even that I was pushed into secondary school without warning, and had to blag my way through teaching an ICT lesson with Year 10.
I started out as a secondary teacher of Business Education, encompassing Business Studies, ICT and Economics. In my first teaching job, I had to teach A Level Economics and was literally one page ahead of them in a book. The trick was to make sure that as a teacher, I worked from a different book than the one the students had, so that they didn't just hear me regurgitating words they could have read for themselves. I was quite honest with that group of students, it was the least I could do for them. They had been badly let down, with several teachers who had left halfway through the term, or were on long term sick leave, and so they were used to working from the book. I was pushed into taking the class, and told that I with my limited knowledge of economics, was the best available to them. And I only took them for half of the lessons, with my friend Karen who had studied it at Uni taking them for the rest. In spite of my ineptitude, they all worked hard and got the marks they deserved. A more knowledgeable and experienced teacher could have undoubtedly helped them to achieve higher grades, but I was all they had. If they asked me a question and I didn't know the answer, I would write it down and find it out for the next lesson. Usually from my friend Karen.
It was my first year of teaching, and one I would never want to repeat. I constantly felt as if I had turned up in my pyjamas. It was the year when I did my first parents' evenings, and told the parents just good news, not wanting to upset them with the bad. That was a hard lesson for me - but it wasn't long before I realised that honesty was the best policy, and that parents knew their children much better than I did, and were rarely surprised by bad news.
It was also the year when my form room was the ICT room, full of computers that constantly crashed, printers that never worked, and mouses (mice?) that either disappeared or didn't work. I spent most of the year switching it all off and turning it all on again, and trying to persuade classes of Year 7 & 8 students who had spent a whole double lesson making beautiful posters to promote Woburn Wildlife Park, only for the network to crash, their disk to malfunction, or the printers not to work, that they could do it all again next lesson.
The one shining light was my Year 10 Business class, who were fabulous. They were smart and motivated students, with lots of humour and great attitudes. I have no doubt that they have all grown up to be marvellous people, successful and happy. I loved them and they made teaching a pleasure. The Year 11 Business Studies class were less of a joy, and were cross that their teacher from the previous year was on maternity leave and that they were stuck with me. And I had a Year 8 form, who were a tricky bunch. By the time I got to my second year, I had learnt a lot, and was a much better teacher for the experience. But I had to be on top form every day, and once I had children of my own, I found it difficult to adjust from the soft me at home, to the tougher hardened version at school.
After 5 years of teaching, I had a bad year. In 2000, I had T in the June, got married in the August, and then my Mum died in October. I was working at an FE college, and returned from maternity leave in September, leaving H aged 3 and T 3 months with a new childminder. Just after lunch on my first day at work, I had a call from the childminder to say that T wouldn't drink the milk I had left for her, and H had been throwing stones at the pet rabbits, and could I collect my children now and not take them back again. So my first day back turned into my last, and I handed in my notice and started to look for alternative employment.
And in the meantime, my world fell apart with my Mum becoming very ill and then dying within a short space of time. My only sanctuary was the calm and peaceful oasis of H's nursery. Every day I would take him there, and sit with him and his friends, setting up train tracks and dinosaur worlds, with T on my lap. The teachers were lovely, and let me stay without comment, long after the other parents had left. And that Nursery was truly my salvation during very dark days. One day I spoke to the head teacher and asked her how I could get a teaching job in a nursery, and she pointed me in the right direction. I did a part time course at college and then a friend of a friend who was a headteacher in a local primary school took a chance on me, and gave me a part time job teaching reception. I'm not sure whether these women realise what a massive impact they had on my life, and how they opened doors to me, and enabled me to find the right path. I loved teaching early years. It was exactly where I wanted to be, the job I had dreamt of since being a little girl, lining all my toys up for registration and writing sums for them in little notebooks.
And even though I am no longer teaching, I still dream about it. Last night I dreamt that I was talking all of the nursery children swimming, and by the time they were all ready in their costumes and trunks, it was time to get dressed again because it was home time.
My mum said she used to dream that it was Christmas Eve and she hadn't bought any presents or food and the shops were about to shut. For me it's about school. I wonder how long it will be until those dreams leave me. It's now 6 months since I was last at school and I don't feel like a teacher anymore, I think I am a writer. But maybe my subconscious thinks otherwise.
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