Tag: management

I work 48 hours a week!

I’ve spent the last couple of days feeling like a bit of a prat.

On Friday, I saw a hashtag that piqued my interest.

I blithely tweeted back with my honest answer.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a tweet blow up like that one did.

Look, it’s not that I was previously unaware of how hard I was working. I even wrote about it here. I just didn’t realise that it was unusual to work that kind of schedule in ELT; I honestly, genuinely thought everyone did it.

I quickly found out that wasn’t true when the replies started popping up on my Twitter feed. f you’ve got a couple of hours spare, I do encourage you to check out the original hot mess on Twitter via the link above, but if not, here are some particularly tasty morsels for your viewing pleasure: “Bloody hell, go easy on yourself!” “That’s an insane amount of work.” “It *really* isn’t worth it. Your health and sanity are worth a lot more.” “With hours like that you have to question your quality of teaching.” There was even one guy who just tweeted back at me with the words “Burnout alert!”

… and so on, and so forth, pretty much continuously for the next two days, until my original Tweet had spawned a kind of monster comment thread, riddled with shocked reactions and well-meant suggestions and when-I-was-younger anecdotes from my fellow teachers. I have to tell you, I spent my Sunday afternoon perched at my living room table, with one panicked eye on my Delta Module 3 assignment and the other eye, mildly horrified, on my Twitter notifications.

I felt, and continue to feel, incredibly stupid. And if ‘stupid’ isn’t quite the right word with quite the right nuance, then ‘naive’ certainly is. How could I have thought that this was the done thing for so long? Why did I just blindly accept it all, despite acknowledging to myself on my own blog that work was completely exhausting? How had I managed to get through the madness-inducing workload of Delta Module 2, promising myself that it was only a temporary arrangement, only to let myself promptly drown in a sea of work upon starting back at my regular job? How was I supposed to know?

The scariest thing, I suppose, is the thought that if Marc had never tweeted the original hashtag, I might never have realised there was anything wrong with my status quo. It really does make me wonder how many other young ELT teachers are out there dealing with the same sort of demands and expectations at work, without the support of more seasoned teachers – or even colleagues with experience in other industries – to support them. I certainly would never have got to this point without the help and advice of all the lovely Twitterfolk who took a moment to stop and leave me their words of wisdom and support. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this is an issue worth adding to initial teacher training courses.

As it stands, I went straight to my DoS on Monday afternoon to hash things out. Despite being utterly convinced that I was doing the right thing, and with all the validation of written comments from several other ELT professionals, I was still absolutely terrified going in to that meeting. It’s made me realise that I have yet to fully confront my (unfounded) feelings of doubt and low self-worth at work.

We discussed the problems as I saw them, as well as a couple of solutions to help make things more manageable for me, and while I have no guarantee that any of those ideas are going to be taken on board, I do feel much better for having faced things head on. As one of my colleagues reminded me, you can only change the things that are directly under your control. Whatever happens now, at least I can say I tried.

I gave my managers some feedback!

Our school has problems.

No surprises there; all schools have them. But our school also has an all-too-rare culture of regular developmental feedback, and that makes all the difference.

Today I chaired an open meeting for teaching staff only. Management was away at the AMT conference in Greenwich, and we all know how the old adage goes: while the cats are away, the mice will get together at a mutually convenient time and identify what they feel are the school’s critical weaknesses, before compiling a document of constructive suggestions in order to effectively address the situation.

A full ninety minutes had been set aside, but it wasn’t enough time. I’m proud to say that despite only managing to cover six of the nine points on the agenda, my colleagues and I managed to fill every one of those ninety minutes, as well as six whole A4 pages of 10-point Calibri. I’m proud to say I work at a place where teachers are invested enough in the school’s heart and soul to actually want to make long-term changes, despite the inherent hard work and uncertainty involved. I’m proud to say that not one of my colleagues seemed uncomfortable voicing their (at times, unpopular) opinions for fear of repercussions down the line, despite the fact that everything we said was written down for posterity.

And as if that wasn’t already enough catharsis for one day, our school director came into the staffroom straight after the meeting and asked if we could sit down together at the end of the very same school day, so that she could personally read and try to understand each of the suggestions we’d included in the document.

What more could you ask for?