This time of year I usually return to my blog, feel guilty about having done nothing with it for yet another academic year, write a post about how things will be different, then promptly neglect it again for another twelve months. I blame motherhood entirely for this; I have spent a large proportion of the last five years either pregnant, on maternity leave, or trying to establish a new work/life balance, one that didn’t allow me to stay up late on school nights blogging.
This September, however, is the first in twelve years that I won’t be standing in front of my new classes, trying to learn names and mentally tweak my seating plan. I won’t be establishing my new homework routines, working out who needs extra support and who requires constant challenge. I won’t be painstakingly transferring data into my markbook and I won’t be getting to know any of the names, faces and personalities that the data belongs to.
My plan this year was to return in September part-time. I was looking forward to getting my teeth properly back into teaching now I have completed my family. Unfortunately the situation with Covid-19 means my children can’t be cared for by grandparents, as had been the plan, and putting both children in nursery would have left me working for about half of minimum wage (I love my job, but not quite that much). So we made the decision in March that I’d take a year out and see where we were in September 2021; I’m officially a stay-at-home mum from next week.
It has surprised me just how much this has been in the back of my mind this week. There are definite advantages; for one, I’m not having my standard back-to-school stress dream (all my teeth falling out – apparently this is a common one?!). Despite my kids being fairly early risers, I’ll still be able to catch more kip than when I returned to work after having my daughter, when getting us both ready for the day involved me getting up a full hour before her in the mornings. I won’t have to spend my lunch breaks in the medical room expressing milk, which was a ridiculous chore for the first term I was back. And beyond the personal challenges, there’s no denying that this academic year is going to be difficult for other reasons, and I have so much respect for everyone who has returned or is returning to the chalkface in these few weeks.
That said, I am very much going to miss the break in my week from being “just mum”. Prior to the Covid lockdown, I thought I was the sort of person who needed that break; I panicked a bit in the first couple of weeks when suddenly my daughter was with me 24/7, rather than spending days with grandparents or at nursery. This year has proved to me that I do fine without it, but I am planning to carry on with a little bit of education stuff on the side. I’ve already reworked the Number/Proportion and Algebra strands of my GCSE Resources by Topic collection, and Shape and Data will be done soon. I’m also going to get around to uploading a few more of my own resources, as well as blog a bit more about general maths-y stuff (warning: it’s likely some might end up preschool focused as that’s the level of maths I’m now working with on a day to day basis!).
Finally, I’m not going to end my back to school post with resolutions, as these tend to get broken! I’m a planner by nature and I’ve struggled with the uncertainties of the last few months, but I am getting better at taking things one day at a time… as Nemo would say, just keep swimming!
