I’ve always been perplexed when, at the end of the blissful summer holidays, while I’ve been feeling the churning in my stomach about the imminent return to school, colleagues have professed that they “can’t wait to get back to it”. Do they not want to win the lottery and turn up to work in a Lamborghini, only to hand in their notice and run off to their newly rented private island in Fiji, like me?

So when, after a week or so in lockdown, some teachers were announcing that they missed the kids, I was suspicious. After a few moments of reflection, I tried to feel guilty that I didn’t feel the same. A glass of wine later and I started to muse whether I was in the right job if I didn’t miss them. Miss what? The 14-year-olds’ banter? Or the struggle with confrontational, apathetic or negative behaviours? Because it’s not just the inquisitive, the engaged and the positive students they miss. Nope, it’s the “naughty ones”. It’s even “that horrendous S3” apparently. Can you blame my incredulity?

It’s not that I don’t enjoy my job - quite the opposite: I love teaching. There are many aspects to it at the moment that I miss because I’m not in school. That mastery you feel balancing the demands of the job, the creativity you can unleash in an expertly executed lesson, the buzz of a class’ engagement in the learning and the satisfaction of being able to solve three problems at once. 

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Undoubtedly, relationships between student and teacher are paramount, but I certainly wouldn’t expect the students to miss me. Teachers should be a positive influence, of course, but I’m not convinced that they should be relied upon to provide anything that isn’t necessarily interchangeable. Teachers move, retire, get sick, get promoted, they leave. I would hope my students wouldn’t be cheering in the corridors to celebrate my departure, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if they carried on loving my subject without me. 

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I soothed my brief moment of guilt by making a comparison with other professions. I’m sure, for example, that nurses become very attached to their patients while they are in their care. They have a professional interest in healing and providing support, just as we have a professional interest in educating and providing support. Would they miss those patients, though? 

Perhaps the lambasting of the profession has taken its toll on teachers in terms of what they feel they need to say. People, I can imagine, will think you’re a worse teacher, a less successful teacher, a heartless teacher even, if you don’t miss the students. Why is it so awful to think that we can care, we can educate, we can work hard and we can shut the door of our classroom, return home and not give work a second thought until we’re back there? 

Teaching is a career, it’s a choice we make to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads, like any other. It’s just a huge bonus that we get to be innovative and make a difference in young people’s lives, by giving them an education that will allow them to flourish, as well as often having a laugh while we’re doing it.

But the experience of teaching is different for everyone, and maybe I’m part of a staggering minority. Let’s not compete to show who “cares” the most. We should allow ourselves to enjoy any extra time gained with our families, enjoy our time away from the classroom (or, at the moment, from the computer). We shouldn’t have to prove our dedication with grand gestures of we-miss-you-videos. We can show our dedication through providing excellent learning experiences for our students, online or otherwise.

The writer is a secondary teacher in Scotland