Tag: school holidays

For many years as a teacher, I lived my life in ten-week blocks. The first few weeks of term were always crazy busy as I wrote programs, prepared for extra-curricular activities and of course faced the day-to-day challenges of teaching up to 30 children. During the term, very little was done on the home front except for cooking, shopping, washing, and keeping a basic level of hygiene around the house.  Everything else was put on the backburner until ‘the holidays.’ Inevitably, when those two weeks arrived, the first week was spent in a stupor on the lounge. The best I could do was to finally read a novel or two. The second week, I madly spent tidying up and trying to get ready for the term. At the end of the year, during those blissful five weeks off, I would finally relax and wonder how I would ever ramp up again to face a new year, but I somehow, I did.

For the past four years I have been in the privileged position of mainly working from an office and going into schools assisting teachers with improving their students’ literacy. I have set lunch breaks, can make a cup of tea whenever I want, I have weekends off, and rarely bring work home. It is the closest I have come to a ‘work-life-balance.’ My heart goes out to the teachers in front of classes who must cope with the pressures of teaching, the increasing burden of admin and the expectation to constantly improve their practice. Whenever I am in schools, I do my utmost to help teachers in ways that don’t increase their already unsustainable workload. I have not forgotten what it is like at the chalkface.