2. Realising Its Not About The Teaching But The Spreadsheets
The realisation that your first day isnt the first day of teaching but about a week before that is a bit of a shock. Its even more of a shock that you dont get to sit and make resources, edit videos, print out superb handouts. Its about the spreadsheets. Quality data. Comparisons between national success rates and school ones. Retentions rates. Trying to discern the difference between success and achievement because no-one has ever told you. Looking at UMS points and trying to work out who needs what and why. Then realising that its all changing next year so just when you get used to four modules of UMS it will all be thrown up in the air. You colour-code the spreadsheets, you print off pie-charts, you make your work look great. Then you have your first management meeting and get told youre all rubbish. OFSTED are due in and you will be bullied to within an inch of your life by people who havent been in a classroom for years apart from to give poor lesson observation grades. This is your life. Trevor and Laura drive past in their company cars as you look out of the window, wishing you were a student again. Wishing for those heady days of freedom and laughter. You grip your spreadsheets and fight the tears back. Ive always got the absinthe. Ive always got the absinthe.