Whatever you think about schools I can tell you that I have never met one headteacher (and I’ve met a lot) who didn’t have the best interests of the children in their school as their number one priority. Even headteachers who I’ve disagreed with or those who seem completely out of their depth did everything because they thought it was best for the children.
The teaching profession is about to take a big hit in the publicity stakes. We are about to portrayed as lazy and difficult by people who want us back at school and uncaring, unfeeling monsters by those that think it’s too soon. We are, in fact, a large group of individuals, with unique ideas but because we are many, we also have some power. Teaching unions will be able to argue with government on behalf of individuals with concerns. This will make us a target for anyone who disagrees with anything that any teacher says. Obviously, we can be our own worst enemies, sharing and commenting on articles in the Daily Mail, designed to denigrate us, that are about as true as saying bananas are round. Commenting on it might make people wonder if bananas are secretly round. Sharing it ensures more rubbish is written.
Anyway back to headteachers.
Imagine that you have spent your whole career teaching children. You have learnt how they learn best and you were a good teacher. You didn’t go home and cry every night, children made you laugh, they liked you, you liked them and they remembered some of the things you said. You gradually took on more responsibility. You ran clubs to help some of the children who were struggling, fed some toast for breakfast, engaged others with their favourite hobby. You attended meetings once the clubs had finished and finally got home at about 9pm to mark some books. If you had got to this point in your career and you weren’t already going home and crying every night or had lost the ability to sleep then you might consider training for a headship. Suddenly, instead of being responsible for the 30 children in your class, you are in charge the hundreds in your school. Not only that but you are the boss of scores of staff: teachers, teaching assistants, office staff, cleaners, cooks, dinner ladies and the caretaker. You are also accountable to all the parents. This all has to be done on a limited budget set by a government that puts in higher and higher hoops for you to jump through. The buck for thousands of people’s expectations stops with you.
Are you feeling stressed yet?
Well that’s nothing. Add in the current situation.
For the last six or seven weeks (yes, I’ve lost count) you have been running a school that is scattered. Children are not coming in every day between 8.30 and 3.30 unless their parents are key workers, out in the community in daily contact the the virus. You have been managing staff working from home, pupils work, parents expectations. You have still been talking to social workers about how to protect the most vulnerable. You’ve been delivering vouchers or school meals to the children you know will go hungry if they don’t get lunch at school. You have had hourly communications from government, via the local education authority. You haven’t had a break at Easter, or half term because the virus doesn’t know about holidays. Luckily, no one told the government that the virus doesn’t understand weekends either but you have to be grateful for small mercies. You are desperate to keep your school community together as best you can. You might have resorted to making videos where a wild-eyed optimism covers your worst fears, or writing overly long Twitter messages that don’t even make sense to you. Time no longer has any meaning, your own children have gone feral and you haven’t been able to hug your parents, either.
Stressed yet?
That’s nothing. It’s time to get back to normal.
There’s nothing you want more than to get back to normal. You loved your job. Yes, it was pretty stressful and often thankless but there’s nothing you wouldn’t give to get your school community back to normal. Except, you aren’t being asked for normal. Now, you have to make your staff stretch.
42% of your children are due to come back into school. These children will need to be taught in classes that are half the size of normal, which means double the teachers. There will be more key worker children, as teachers go back to teaching but no one has any idea how many that will be. The rest of the children, working at home will still need to be supported: lessons planned, feedback given etc, so some staff will have to be working from home doing that. Some of your staff will be in the vulnerable, or extremely vulnerable category and won’t be able to come in. Some of your staff will be frightened. Some of your staff will get sick. The government has confirmed that parents won’t be chased if they don’t send their children in, so you can’t know how many children you will be expected to provide for. The children that come back into school will have to follow social distancing rules. Remember, that all you want is the best for the children. Every fibre of your being worries how this will affect them. You know that you have tried to instil resilience and a growth mindset (they were buzzwords a few years ago) but this is hard. Your whole career has involved studying how children learn best and you know that they don’t learn well if they are scared and that many children can’t sit still at a desk for five minutes let alone a whole day. You have been asked to stop the children socialising and you think of the number of nit letters you normally have to ask the office to send out. You think of the two children who normally are put at opposite ends of the line in assembly by their teacher, who, when you look up are suddenly sitting together in the middle, as if they ate opposite end of a magnet. You think about the children that chew pencils or spit when they get frustrated. You know colleagues, maybe in other schools, who caught the virus from pupils before lockdown and still try to believe the government’s insistence that children can’t transmit the virus. Some parents will want more reassurance than you can give them. However, you know you have to try.
If I was having a bad day, I would often console myself with the fact that I wasn’t the person who was responsible for testing these thermometers.
Now, I’m just glad I’m not a headteacher.
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