My blogging equation ...

... the one I try to adhere, at least, is No run = No post. Otherwise my posts will degenerate into retelling the more mundane details of my life, which I think, for most blogs, is the step before blog deletion. I'm not ready to give up my blog yet, nor let some Viagra guy swoop in and steal it. (Rob, your previous student blog has been hijacked.)

So, I didn't run for a few days. I've been stuck thinking about the direction I want my work to take, and I think I have more of an idea now. I did really want to work with younger kids, but I think the reality of things is that no school would consider me for interviews, because - despite the fact I do teach younger kids - I wasn't officially trained to teach younger children. To go through the motions of a(nother) nine-month teacher-training course just to be officially qualified in Poundland, is - to me - to take three steps back. I have to give up whatever I'm doing, be a student and run up debts, so that I can start at the bottom rung of the ladder as a newly-qualified teacher. And by that time I would be in the queer situation of being "newly-qualified", but having several years of teaching experience. Schools would go for a younger person because they can pay them less, and I wouldn't be able to apply for senior management roles because while I have management experience, and would be "qualified", all that experience would not count because it wasn't achieved in a British school.

Another option would have been to teach teenagers in an upper school, where I would have had a better chance to be accepted for interviews (since secondary education was what my training was in). But having seen what goes on in state schools, I'm not sure I want to be a part of it any more. The bad student behaviour, the meaningless tasks that teachers have to set to keep students occupied and out of trouble, the lowering of standards ... I mean, the money is good, but I've come to see teaching in state schools really as a dead-end job, and I don't think I want to go through the rest of my life until retirement having to deal with people yelling "fuck" in my face on a daily basis. I do think there are good teachers around, but they either have to compromise on their standards, or numb themselves to the reality of a continually downhill spiral of ill-behaved students and a lousy education system.

This is my take on it, but I think state school education in Britain is going down the toilet bowl. I don't think it's "a small minority" but the problem is more significant - in fact, it's the better schools that are in the minority now. In the past year, Britain has had three different people as "Education Secretary", each one making knee-jerk changes and putting their own different spin to things. Frankly, I don't know how each of them can look himself/herself in the mirror and accept the situation in many schools as the norm. At one of the schools I work with, the students run riot, teaching is bad, and the mantra of teachers is to "get them in, get them at it, keep them at it, get them out". But because the staff managed to hoodwink the school inspectors when they came for a week by employing more substitute staff to help out in classes, this school is recognised as "satisfactory", and will be such for the next 4-5 years until the next inspection.

I know in any job there are certain aspects that one will not like. But to spend the rest of my working life in a job where I hope no trouble happens during my classes, behaviour is bad, and I look forward to the last bell in school - that is not meaningful to me, and good salary or otherwise, I don't want to be a babysitter/policeman. It sounds sentimentally sucky, but I do believe in doing work that is at least meaningful, and I don't want in later years to be hanging on to a meaningless job just for the money.

I'll stick with what I'm doing and be patient.

Yes, I've posted, and yes, I've run. 4 miles in 31 minutes today. Now that life is less hazy, I promise all you long-suffering readers better running posts from now on.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, folks!