As a key worker, I have decided that I need to protect my family more than anything. I am lucky enough to have a fairly large garden with an outdoor office, with electricity, double glazing and heating. I have, therefore, been living in the "shed" so that I can limit exposure to family. There are a number of reasons for making this decision - mainly that my wife is pregnant and has asthma, and my little boy has been hospitalised three times with breathing difficulties and has steroid inhalers in the morning and evening. Therefore, by living in the shed, I can still do my duty and protect my family. I have been exceptionally lucky that the weather has been beautiful so that we have spent a lot of time playing in the garden and I have been able to see them for the majority of the day; it would have been horrific if we were separated because of the weather.
Living in the shed has given me a lot of time with my own thoughts - which often is a dangerous place for me to live as I have an anxiety disorder. However, strangely enough, this has not been the case this time around. I have had productive and mainly positive thoughts, with the caveat of these thoughts being limited in their positive nature due to the ongoing situation. This time has allowed me to identify things that have worked well in this period, what can be improved and begin to formulate ideas for coming back into some form of normality in the future.
Lesson 1 - Schools are amazing
Whilst I knew this anyway, the response of schools up and down this country has been exceptional. We have managed to change everything we do at the drop of the hat, teams have come together with people going over and above to support their communities, providing off-site learning opportunities for children, support for families and responding to changes with the minimum of fuss for the best of the children. We are such an underappreciated resource within this country. We have, in my opinion, limited the impact of ten years of austerity on some of our families by providing services over and above our remit. I could not be prouder of our sector than I am at this moment in time.
Lesson 2 - Leadership from the DfE needs improvement
I have no doubt that the DfE are working around the clock to help us and they are, on the whole, coming up with very useful resources and helpful guides. However, this said, they have often been behind what schools have already put in place and sometimes have hindered what schools have done. A clear example of this is the Free School Meal Voucher Scheme. The intentions of the government was outstanding, and the actual idea in principle was sound. However, the implementation was poor with an unsatisfactory impact (see what I did there?). It was mismanaged, caused a large number of problems for schools and vulnerable families and still is not 100% working now. The travesty of this is that schools stopped systems that were working with the expectation that the DfE knew what they were doing. The biggest issue with the DfE at the moment is that communication with schools has not been great, we often find things out through the press and we do not have enough notice of changes or announcements.
Lesson 3 - Reflecting on our education system
We have the perfect opportunity now to reconfigure our education system, focusing on what is important for children. For too long, we have been driven by data, targets, league tables and Ofsted. We all know that is wrong, but actually have not made a concerted effort to stand up for what is right. We often make the right noises in personal conversations or on social media, but then still jump through the pointless hoops. This is a whole blog topic in itself, and I will not go into great detail today, but we really need to do the right things for our children and that comes from us. We need to work together, with union support, to make the DfE listen.
It has also put some of the "Twitter Spats" into perspective. Does it matter if you are Trad or Prog? For booths or against booths? Like World Book Day or detest World Book Day? Love displays or hate displays? Like a light cup of tea or darker cup of tea? We, as a profession are our own worst enemies at times. We in fight like there is only one way of doing things. Surely, with the experience we have, we know that children learn in different ways, teachers teach in different ways and everybody is different. We need to be kind to each other, listen to each other's points of view without dragging ourselves down into pointless arguments and being derogatory towards each other.
Lesson 4 - Remembering what is important in life
We all know how all consuming this job is - even if we are not physically working, it lives in your head. There are always another twenty things to do on your to-do list, everything is important and must be done, and then there is the guilt of not doing enough. Somebody at work said to me the other day "lock down suits you". I asked what she meant and she said I look less tired, less stressed and healthier. Reflecting on that comment made me realise that I was overworking, putting too much pressure on myself and probably not giving me enough me time. I have loved spending more time with my little boy and I am seeing so many more milestones and changes than I would have done if I was working normally. I've gone from seeing him for about 1 to 2 hours a day to around 5 or 6. That is massive and I am going to really struggle to give this up. I have to make sure I focus on what is important. Yes, the job is important; we play a massive role in developing and supporting children. However, do we create pointless work for ourselves that does not have much of an impact on what we do the job for - the children? Again, probably another blog post in itself.
We need to be better to ourselves and to sum this up, I saw a wonderful piece of writing on @HannayJeremy Twitter feed the other day and I really resonated with me.
I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the night sky touches your soul. I hope you fall in love with being alive again.
What a wonderful sentiment - let us all fall in love with being alive again.
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