I felt like I was finishing a marathon on the last day before the spring half-term. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I have ever needed a holiday as much, than I did on the day before the February half-term.
Maybe it was the cold weather and darkness – I don’t know – but it was a real struggle towards the end.
Everyone was getting ill; I think there were three different types of flu going around at the same time. Stress levels were high among staff and you could tell that it wasn’t just me – everyone really needed the break.
Coming back on Monday after the week off, I felt like a new person. I got to the end of a five-period day without my eyes feeling like they were about to fall out of my banging head. It made me realise just how exhausted I really was at the end of last half-term.
And it wasn’t just the staff. It seems that everyone in the school needed a week off. Even my year 10s were bright-eyed and ready to go on the first Monday back.
The post-half-term bounce has also improved morale among the staff – almost as if a weight has been lifted. To top it off, it was a nice surprise that our first briefing back after the break did not mention Ofsted at all! Last half-term, the big “O” made it into at least one staff meeting or whole-school email per-day.
However, we know that the threat hasn’t gone away, and I’m sure the head will start mentioning it again soon, but this little honeymoon period after the holidays is really great.
But onwards and upwards and we now focus on the weeks ahead. Next week we have a Deep Learning Day – essentially a day where the entire school goes on a series of school trips. Each department is allocated a year group and they take them on a trip.
This is usually a nice day but can often end up being far more tiring than a normal school day. At the moment, our school has one every half-term. However, they are thinking about scrapping them. I suppose it does seem a little crazy that every school trip has to fall exactly on six set dates throughout the year. Those dates are decided upon way in advance which means there is little flexibility.
On the one hand, it does mean that as teachers we do not constantly have students missing from our classes as they head off on school trips.
However, is there a danger that students might end up doing fairly meaningless things on their trips as we try to cater for so many young people at a time?
Each department knows at the beginning of the year which year groups it has to take out, but I worry that it is impossible to take an entire year group on a meaningful trip.
For humanities it is not so bad, as every year group takes at least one of our subjects and there are lots of museums to choose from. But when maths has the entire of the year 9 cohort for a whole day, what are they supposed to do with them? A whole day of “deep maths” for that many students?!
Another potential downside is that it means that the students miss out on great opportunities from other possible trips and conferences because they don’t happen to fall on the days already allocated for school outings.
So I’m not sure how I feel about Deep Learning Days on the whole, but I’m definitely relieved that this one has fallen on a day where I would normally have four hours of year 7 followed by bottom set year 9!
- SecEd’s NQT diarist this year is a teacher of citizenship, RE and humanities at a school in the Midlands.