For 50, 60, sometimes 70 hours a week, I am a teacher. On good weeks, most of this time is spent actually teaching or planning for teaching. On not-as-good weeks, it's spent replying to emails, ticking boxes and staring at various calendars, trying to figure out which deadlines I've yet to meet. I'll let you guess what the balance is between good and not-as-good.
Given that teaching occupies my hands, my head, my body and even my subconscious (I dream of parents and planning docs) for so much of my time, I guess it's a little strange that you wouldn't know it from reading this blog. References to teaching, I've discovered while scrolling through the archives, are scant.
Part of it is that I view writing as a reprieve from my work. For these thirty minutes every morning, I do not assume the identity that I inhabit for most of the day. I am simply myself, sitting bleary-eyed at my desk, trying to convey something of what I'm dreaming, planning, thinking about. Although I am always dreaming, planning and thinking about things related to school, for thirty minutes, I try to set those particular concerns aside.
Part of it is that I don't want my whole life to revolve around teaching. I see some teachers at my school whose lives have been consumed by their work. "I can't not look at my phone when a new email comes through," one tells me, a slightly manic look in her eye. Actually, I've discovered, you can. Turning off email notifications on my phone was one of the best choices I made last year. No-one has died or even been greatly offended because I haven't responded immediately to an email received after 8:00PM.
Teaching, particularly in the primary context, is a profession dominated by women. Many of these women are either mothers or older single women, a phenomenon of which I was aware even before officially entering the teaching workforce. "It's a good career for mothers and spinsters," I said to my friend, M, when I decided to retrain. "So I'm covered either way." Most of the administrative work in my school is shouldered by women who are either single or whose children have left home. However, the single women bear, quite literally, twice the burden of those with families, overseeing two teams instead of one.
I balk against this. As a single woman who could see herself being single for quite some time, I resist the idea that I have to sacrifice every aspect of my life on the altar of teaching. Just because I am single doesn't mean that I don't have other legitimate things to occupy my time. I get to rest. I get to enjoy hobbies. I get to invest in other relationships.
And yet... there is a part of me that recognises the significance of teaching as a vocation. The time, love, expertise and attention invested into your students and your potential disproportionate effect (for better or worse) on the rest of their lives is no small thing. They are part of what makes teaching, as Rachel Cusk once said of motherhood, 'a life's work'.
***
There is nothing like being in a classroom full of kids hungry for your care and attention. To sit in front of them on Day One, with their shoes not-yet-scuffed and their eyes wary and anxious, is to be confronted with something holy. Will you love me? They ask with their eyes. Are you safe? Are you on my side? The answers they receive and perceive to these questions will shape the course of their year, maybe even their lives.
I do my best to shoulder the weight of my job without crumbling beneath it. On a daily basis I greet, smile at, instruct, laugh, correct (both gently and firmly), train, encourage, discourage, joke with, read to, invite, coach, look in the eye, hug and explain things to my students. I seek to shape them into better versions of themselves, while never giving them the impression that my love for them is contingent on their performance.
***
We have started off the year with descriptive writing and spoken a lot about the role of the five senses in describing well. "What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Sound like? Taste like?" I have asked a thousand times in the last few weeks.
So much of teaching is seeing. Yes, I see you, quiet girl who struggles with English, but whose Maths is spectacular and demonstrates a deep knowledge of how numbers work. I see you, boy who has been labelled "naughty" almost from birth, and who is desperate to claim almost any other label. I see you, girl who receives no discipline at home, and who needs a firm adult to provide structure and consequences.
I see, too, the panoply of events that unfolds in my class on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Just this week, we had several lost teeth and an actual foot to the mouth in the swimming pool! A squad of bodyguards was formed to protect our class mascot, Avan, the stuffed avocado. Descriptions and acrostic poems were written, maths strategies consolidated. A new student's baby-ish tones and requests were giggled at by the rest of his classmates. "Can't" was misspelled, with offensive consequences.
One of the great privileges of teaching is that, if I let them, my students see me, too. A Deputy Principal, whose daughter is in my class, came in to see me on release on Wednesday. We talked through an issue related to an upcoming field trip and as she was leaving, she paused by the door. "Stacey* came in the other day and she was like, do you know what the best thing is about Miss Manickam? It's that she reads. She reads every day!" My DP was mock-offended by the fact that her own daughter hadn't seen the fact that she read, but was clearly impressed by the reading of her teacher. In me, Stacey had found a kindred spirit.
***
I am going on a field trip today. It's my first one in charge, my name and signature on all the procedure forms. 28 students today are dependent on my love and care and corralling to stay safe. One is in a moonboot. A few have a tendency to wander off. I am running a list of things to do at school in my mind, over and over to make sure that we have everything covered.
The kids have no sense of burden about today. They have been breathless when they approach me on the playground, sleepless with excitement. This is good and right.
Lord-willing, we will learn something, get our hands dirty and stand in the sunshine. We will experience joy as we do all of these things.
At some point in the day, I will stand with my hands on my hips and survey the 28 small humans in front of me. I will smile and give thanks. I will get back to work.
*Not her real name.
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