During a recent meeting in the world outside teaching, I asked for permission to use the toilet. I was cheerfully informed that, as an adult, I was free to decide when to use the loo all on my own.
So I decided, with the help of the charity Education Support, to ask teachers to identify, acknowledge and celebrate the perks and quirks of working in schools. This can help us to step outside our daily bubble, acknowledge alternatives, and start considering whether there might be another way.
Clock-watching
Teaching staff exist in microminutes. Ask a former teacher years after retirement for the significance of a randomly selected time of the day, and she’ll be able to tell you:
8.43am One minute to the first bell of the day.
10.56am Four minutes left to complete the lesson; five minutes to tidy-up.
1.22pm A choice between a wee and a cup of tea, before it all starts again.
In other jobs, tasks and meetings can be moved around, shifted or extended or delayed. The rigidity of the timetables in teaching is arguably necessary, but means there is little slack.
Effective isolation
The one seems a bit strange, as teachers are essentially surrounded by people all day every day, and involved in thousands of individual interactions.
But, when it comes to speaking to other adults, exchanging critical information and developing ideas, most teaching staff are effectively inaccessible for the vast majority of the time.
Out of office?
If you try to contact professionals outside teaching and they’re not around, you get a clear out-of-office email, which explains who can be contacted in their absence and when they’ll return. Often, the absent person will not check their emails until they return to their place of work. And things keep running smoothly.
Relationships are, of course, central to teaching. Throughout their GCSE years, I was quite simply my class’s French teacher - no less, and most certainly no more (the sheer horror on the face of the one who bumped into me in the supermarket that time said it all).
They might complain about the verb tables, but my students’ indignation when I wasn’t around to teach them was palpable.
With the importance of these relationships, however, there is a danger that teachers come to see themselves as irreplaceable. I remember going on maternity leave for the first time, and genuinely wondering how on earth my department would cope.
Guess what? They were fine. We are not as irreplaceable as we’d like to imagine.
Collective ill health
Unlike most other jobs, in teaching everyone gets a break at the same time. This means, by definition, that everyone is absolutely knackered at the same time, too.
If you’ve ever been involved in a big change in a school in mid-November, you’ll know it’s possibly the worst possible time to introduce upheaval. It’s no coincidence that tensions between staff and weeping sessions in cupboards tend to peak in mid-November.
Teaching as a vocation or teaching as a life choice?
Throughout my career, I’ve felt a deep sense of pride whenever I’ve told people I’m a teacher. But I’d argue that there have to be lines.
“Don’t use your teacher voice with me!” says my husband.
“Mum, PLEASE don’t tell them you’re a teacher,” say my daughters, on our way to parents’ evening at their schools.
At times, it’s OK not to be “Miss”.
The desire to make a difference
As coronavirus becomes impossible to ignore, I’ve admired the way schools have kept going. Enter most schools, and you wouldn’t even know there was an issue.
Staff attendance in each of the schools I’ve visited recently has been high. And the main thing - the learning - is still very much the main thing.
I have little doubt that, were they given the choice, the vast majority of teachers would keep on keeping on far beyond the call of duty. Actually, the vast majority of teachers do exactly this every single day. The wealth of goodwill and the profound desire to make a difference still runs strong in our profession.
But, as we await government advice (like a snow day, but without the fun), let’s take a moment to remember that teachers are not martyrs to their profession, but humans, too.
Let’s be proud of our spirit, but take the pressure off ourselves and one another to be superhuman. We need to accept what we can’t control.
Let’s instead look at what we can control: making time to eat and drink and use the toilet, remembering Maslow and never forgetting that, while we may be heroes, we’re not superhuman.
Emma Kell is a secondary teacher in North East London and author of How to Survive in Teaching. She tweets at @thosethatcan
