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Talking to old colleagues at my last school, they finally had their inspection, twenty months after going on high alert. They did well, so it will be a great relief for them all, but was the sustained stress worth it? Much of the work 'preparing' for a no-notice inspection is wasted, as even a cursory look at the inspectors' handbook will tell you. There is no need to keep updating department handbooks, homework records, spreadsheets of different categories of students for inspector guidance. The constant 'improvements' demanded by managers to make their own jobs seem worthwhile puts them firmly into the category of 'bullshit jobs' that cause more harm to the school than good. They don't seem to realise that teacher time is a finite resource, and taking time for unnecessary tasks takes effort away from more productive tasks, like supporting children.
A year ago I came to the conclusion that I was never going to reform the standards of education in a school that was lead by a team that emphasised long hours and presenteeism over work-life balance, grades over quality of education and compliance over evidence based practice. I had many wonderful colleagues, but the culture of the school was damaging my health. I had to decide whether to stick it out for the remainder of my career or to jump and try something outside school education. So I jumped, and I started a new role as a trainer for a high tech international company. It was a leap into the dark, after several decades in one role over several employers, but after five months I can recommend the benefits of change. No more evening marking, stressed out and under-skilled managers and oppressive workloads. I deeply miss the children, but I have taken with me a great deal of wonderful memories and the knowledge that I have made a difference. Time to look after me.
As we move towards the summer break my school is still, even after four months, operating as if we will be visited by the schools' inspectorate any time. That would be fine if everyone thought we will breeze through it as we did several years ago. This year, the bar has been raised and similar schools are being failed and their management criticised. Of course, this has meant that senior managers are spending their entire time inventing make-work tasks for the rest of us to do, which is stopping us from doing our real jobs of planning and delivering a quality education to the students. This itself may cause problems during the inspections but then, naturally, the blame will be laid on the shoulders of the teachers, not the managers. Thanks, guys.
The price of diesel has reached £1.90 per litre (about $9 per US gallon), food prices are way up, the economy seems to be heading for a period of stagflation, the UK government is destroying the constitutional checks and balances on its actions, Russia is making gains in eastern Ukraine. And little England is putting up the bunting to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of an elderly monarch who inherited her position and wealth and seemingly has no influence on the governance of the nation. What is an anti-monarchist to do?
So, a surprising result has occurred through my efforts to cut hours at work. I have been using a phone app to track my time, with categories for all the main tasks I undertake, to collect evidence of my long hours. And it seems that when I have to select 'break', I take more care to have shorter breaks and avoid those accidental breaks that can happen when colleagues come by for a chat. I hadn't realise the time I can waste in this way. I still need to find some more time savers, but this is a promising start.
I'm on Easter Break. I was hanging on last term and getting grouchy, browsing for alternative jobs in my breaks and arguing with managers about workload, so I needed the rest. I've been looking into ways to cut five hours a week from work to have more family time - I'm back in the classroom Tuesday, so I'll see how well that goes. Karl Von Clausewitz said no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, but you have to have a plan.
Does anyone really believe the message you hear when holding to talk 'to the next available advisor', that these two stated facts are both true? 1. Your call is important to them. 2. They are experiencing 'more than the usual number of calls'. Again.
I've been reading a lot about the Tinylog standard, from @drewdevault and @bacardi55. It seems like a nice idea, but I don't intend to use a separate tool to aggregate Tinylog posts. I thought about changing this log into that format, but decided to stay with a simple gemlog system, but looking more like Tinylog. Is that enough, or should I go the full Monty?
I'm travelling to a location with no mobile phone coverage, but I have to be contactable, so I installed Linphone so I can pick up calls to my SIP home phone number using WiFi. I spent a while fiddling with the config settings before I discovered that the VOIP connection doesn't like running over my Wireguard VPN. If anyone knows why this is an issue, please let me know.
I've finished watching The Expanse and now The Witcher. Looking for a third series of Mandalorian I found The Book of Boba Fett. It is less a space western than Mando, so I'm looking forward to episode two.
Setting up WireGuard on my work laptop, to tunnel through to my home network - easy config, or would have been without a mistyped IP address in one file. If I understood the protocol better I might have not faffed about with barely understood settings for ages.
Still no short thoughts. Back to work in two days after a festive break, brain all fuzzy from gin.
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