What I've been learning and unlearning this last year as a Skills, ESOL & French teacher (in adult education): Growth, Joy, Despair, and Everything-In-Between

The classroom is so much more than a place to learn how to count and write the alphabet

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my office, looking out through the balcony window which overlooks the garden of the house we finally managed to buy last year, thanks to years of saving up and me finally managing to get to the place financially I've strived to get to in my career (and believe me, I've never asked for a lot.... just more than minimum wage and somewhat of a financial recognition for the difficult job I do!!)

I am incredibly grateful to be in the situation I find myself. We're in a village location, in the area of England which feels like our forever home. There are plenty of country walks around, quaint little pubs, and we find ourselves happily nestled between several of our favourite towns and places to explore. Our commute to work never exceeds more than twenty minutes. So many blessings.

My husband has always landed on his feet in terms of his career.... which is the main reason why we have finally succeeded to achieve this dream of ours. I am very, very grateful to him and proud, especially because of the (sometimes difficult) paths he's had to go down to get to where he is now, working in a field he's dreamed about being in from his early twenties upwards.

All that aside, this year hasn't been easy for me, in terms of my work. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do. I couldn't see myself in any other field (unless I could find a way to make writing novels and doing music financially viable enough to pay the bills and help us maintain a basic standard of living.. but these are thoughts for another time, and for another blog post!!)

Despite being told at an impressionable young age by a figure in religious authority that, 'God had never intended for me to be a teacher (anyway)', I always found my heart drawn to this career path, and the tapestry of my life being sewn together in such a way that I couldn't have done anything else, had I tried. From teaching English in France from the age of nineteen, to having my CV discovered by a manager at the adult education company I now work for almost ten years later and being invited to interview for the position of French teacher; it was inevitable that this was the career I'd untimately find myself in. I get to use my own unique skillset to its advantage, and I constantly endeavour to learn and grow into the job which demands so much of me, but makes me happy as well.

To my friends and family, it hasn't been surprising at all that I've been learning over time just how many people from my dad's side of the family are teachers. When I say 'just how many', what I really mean is literally all of them. The majority of my dad's cousins on my granny's side are retired teachers. I discovered this year, after finally getting to meet cousins from Grandpa's side that we'd lost touch with (which has definitely been one of the best things to come out of this year!), that Grandpa's niece had also gone into teaching. Her son, who is the same age as me, is also a Skills teacher. So funny. Just goes to show that certain career choices are literally in your blood.

I hold onto this idea - that teaching is one of the things I'm meant to be doing with my life - when the job gets difficult. And believe you me; it does get difficult.

It's been especially hard this year, with our company's funding getting cut by the government. Lots of tutors lost their jobs. Those of us in the Skills department - even if we had only been teaching a few ESOL or Skills courses - were safe. The government still needs Skills tutors, as the country needs people with qualifications for the workforce. But apparently, the government doesn't need happy, well-balanced people who are learning certain subjects for pure enjoyment's sake, or to improve their well-being.

Finance for the whole creative sector has been cut. This includes modern languages. As a company, we can just about justify letting people learn languages at a beginner level, as certain jobs may require this of their employees, but heaven forbid people should want to take these languages - or art, or creative writing, or meditation - further, simply because they're enjoying it and it's good for them!

So, from having started out in my adult education job as a French teacher, I now found myself in the position of having to switch my focus to the ESOL and Skills courses I'd already been teaching, and make these the main source of my income. I was invited to reapply to become a French teacher with the company, however. It felt very strange. Lots of tutors around me were losing their jobs, being forced into early retirement or to seek employment elsewhere, while I learned that a couple of French courses could still be mine, if I wanted. I wanted to keep teaching French, but I wanted to keep teaching the students I'd grown attached to. So I took them privately, which has been another great source of joy for me this year. It feels more relaxed, I don't have any paperwork to do when it comes to this particular class, and I'm actually earning more. It's a win-win, for me. Sadly, the same can't be said for dozens of tutors who, after decades of being faithful to the company, have found themselves being made redundant.

But I digress. As I said when I began this post, I'm writing this whilst looking out over our garden. It's actually raining. It's been a very dry and warm spring and summer so far, so it's quite a pleasure to see. Somehow, it feels symbolic, like a reflection of what's started to go on internally. I'm literally two days away from the end-of-term, and from the start of my summer holidays. I can hardly believe it. Part of me is still holding my breath, expecting a deluge of work (from where, I don't quite know!) to fall into my lap any second and be forced to deal with it, despite having no resources left, and to be in such desperate need of a break. But the rain feels like the part of me that's finally beginning to let go, to shed layers of other people's energy and problems which have built up around me, but were never mine to carry in the first place; to turn inward, and to ask myself, 'After this crazy year, what do you need now?'

It feels like such a selfish question. A first-world problem. I have a job; a job I love, even. As a teacher, I get weeks and weeks of paid holidays. I don't even have kids I'll have to deal with over the summer break. So why should I be so in need of a break? So in need of self-care?

As a society, and dare I say, especially for women, I strongly believe that taking care of others to the point of burnout is still considered to be normal. I live inside a paradox of doing the job I do because I feel drawn to it and it makes me happy to teach and care for others in this way, but also feeling like it takes so much of my precious energy and resources, leaving me too depleted during term-time to do the things which ultimately fuel and ground me.

As an extraverted-introvert, or introverted-extravert?, I need equal parts of down-time in my own company, and time around healthy people whose company I enjoy, to feel optimally happy and at peace. During term-time, something always suffers. Either I'm too tired to make the effort to meet up with my friends as often as I would like, as teaching and being forced to be around (all kinds of) people all day long - as a somewhat masked version of myself (we're like actors, we have to put any exhaustion/personal issues/ desire to scream to the side and focus on the needs of our students) - or too much socialising takes what's left of the little energy I have and leaves me feeling like I have nothing to give in class.

The creative part of me has felt ever so slightly resentful this year in particular. Yes, I get to use my creativity in my lesson plans and classes, which definitely brings me a lot of joy (and makes my students happy, too!), but then I find there's very little left in my 'creativity well' to bring energy and focus to my novel-writing, let alone my songwriting and music. For those of you who know me, I am so deeply passionate about my music. It is one of the greatest loves of my life. It gives me purpose and joy like almost nothing else in life. So when I feel like my music is suffering because of my work; of course I feel resentful.

I think it's a cononundrum which far too many of us have to face in this world. If we want to be able to pay all the bills - let alone have a decent standard of living - we have to sacrifice time and energy to our work. It's part of being an adult. Something you come to accept, like the fact that we're all getting older, and there's no way to reverse time.

I, for one, don't resent having to work hard. I've always been a grafter. My friends and family would agree. But what I resent is that our jobs seem to be getting harder and harder, especially as teachers, since funding is being cut, and more and more senseless tasks are falling on to the shoulders of those of us at the bottom of the ladder. Things like paperwork, Offsted visits and reports, compulsary online training on subjects which, let's face it, have little to do with our everyday work... all of it mounts up and steals the time and energy we could be pouring into our classes, our students, and ourselves.

I don't know one teacher who doesn't complain about this. We're not a bunch of lazy, entitled millenials; we're people who care about our jobs, who feel like the quality of our service is being compromised by the expectations, requirements and 'tick-box exercises' from people who have likely never set foot in the classroom. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and I completely understand why. I've not been above being tempted to look elsewhere for work, after a long day of completing yet another student 'individual learning plan', absorbing students' negative energies, trying to be a source of stability and care for them, and facing a bad case of imposter syndrome because I'm worried I didn't teach well enough that day. Well-meaning people who love me suggest, "Why don't you get another job? You're clever, you could do something else." The thing is, I don't want to do anything else. Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment. But at this moment in time, I feel like I'm where I'm meant to be.

When I'm not feeling tired or bogged down by my work, I can feel quite elated. I have many - definitely more - good days. It can feel like the most rewarding thing on earth, when you see your students finally understand something they haven't been able to get their head around before, or when you see them light up with pure joy during a game or activity, or they tell you they enjoy coming to class because they feel cared for and part of a community. I believe the job of a teacher is to inspire someone along their own learning/growth journey; not to simply ram information down their throat! And when you feel like you've managed that, the sense of achievement is incredibly gratifying.

We're all dealing with sh*t. Life can be tough. I feel this most acutely when I'm teaching my ESOL (English as a Second Language) students. Many of them come from war-torn countries, or have fled because their government or country can't accept their lifestyle, or because of many other heartbreaking reasons. While our government is busy working out what to do with the problem of immigrants coming into our country in droves, we as teachers are busy learning and unlearning constantly what we've been told about them. Face-to-face with a woman your own age who has lost brothers, parents, children, spouses in the most brutal of ways; you find yourself noticing your similarities, not your differences. We've all lost people. We all just want to be loved and accepted. We all have something to teach each other. We're all important. No-one is better or worse than anyone else.

Classes become hubs of community. People from different backgrounds, of diverse religions, creeds, skin colours, sexual orientation... everyone comes together for the common purpose of improving their lives through education. Whether I'm standing in front of the class trying to stir up enthusiasm for algebra (because let's face it, it is a lot of fun!!), drilling the alphabet, or teaching the French conditional tense, the students in front of me are taking a moment out of their lives to spend with each other and me, for the purpose of learning, growing, accessing new and better opportunities, and hopefully making friends and having fun along the way.

Who knows what the future holds, but for now I fully embrace the wonderful opportunity I've been given, to be in a job which brings me a whole lot of joy. I thrive in an environment where every day is different, and that's certainly true about my line of work. It's also testing me and helping me to grow. I'm trying to be better at setting boundaries, at understanding that it's not my job to try and fix everyone, and that a job done at 80% is more than good enough. I don't think we're meant to push past our limits, or exude all our resources, for the sake of our job; even a fulfilling job. In the end of the day, we have to put ourselves first.

The day might come where I realise I'm giving far too much, and I need to change direction, for my personal sanity. But, for now, I'll focus on the glimmers (and more often than not, big chunks!) of joy I get out of teaching, learn to set better boundaries, say "no" more often, maybe turn down classes where I need to (I'm luckily enough to have that option) and prioritise my music more, when I can. I'm excited to get some proper time off now, and I'll definitely be using a lot of it for my music.

It's been quite a year. It's been joy, despair, but most of all, Everything-In-Between. And if the Everything-In-Between is 80% positive, then it's more than worth it.

To finish, I present to you some photos which I feel sum up this year in a happy way. They are of a trip my T.A and I did with our students to a local museum a couple of weeks ago. They had to complete a scavenger hunt, and absolutely loved it.