Long as there are stars above you...

Sep 28, 2007 20:13

It's the holidays and I am back to Adelaide for a week.

It's not that I don't like living here. Or living here by myself. But I am so insanely pleased by this. I miss my family, even though we spend a lot of time talking over wires. I really need a break, my God. First year teaching illness decided I was to be just like all the others - and treated me as its bitch.

I think I've grown a lot, but I also know that there's a lot more I need to do. Like, my recycling. Also, I never unpacked my DVDs, and since it's looking increasingly likely I'm not going to be working here next year, what with DECS bureaucracy, I'm not going to bother. I wish I didn't have to worry about that, about my future career, but it's constantly looming. The hoops they make us jump through are aflame.

I said before this started that I was scared to suddenly be living a real life, but to be honest, it doesn't feel like that. School is such an artificial construct. It's incredibly bizarre. The idea of being in a routine that is orchestrated around bells going off and set blocks of time to study a particular area of learning. I've spent my entire memorable existence in schools, but it's really only dawning on me now just how unnatural it is. 50 minutes a day to learn 'mathematics'. Except, of course, it ends up being half an hour at the most, because we have to come in from recess and have a drink and go to the toilet and then make sure everyone's sitting quietly on the carpet. And towards the end of this prescribed time, I realise that we're getting irritable and if we don't go outside for 'fitness' before the next lesson, there's every chance my ears will be gnawed off. It's insane.

I never truly appreciated a teacher's job before I had it, not even when I was student teaching. In fact, especially not when I was student teaching. There are all of these things you just take for granted. Who puts the posters up on the wall? Why are the pencils always sharp? Where did those books come from? How on earth does anyone have the time to do that, plan lessons, teach said lessons and do anything else, ever? I don't know how I'm ever to manage a family, if I'm still teaching. I have no idea how I'll ever start a family, given that all males in my immediate vicinity are 5-12 years old, married, or seem to only know how to converse about their students.

Real life, I have decided, is a myth.

teaching

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