School Holidays

How lucky am I to have a week off?

Think of the poor parents of the children I teach who get no time off from their kids. How awful! 

A parent did say this to me last week and another stopped me in the High Street today to ask if I was enjoying my half term because she was already run ragged. 

I’m getting old and I care less about what parents think of me, so I told them to come back to me when they were dealing with 30 at once then we could talk holidays. 

When my children were younger, I loved school holidays in the same way I do now. The time pressure is off. If they or you want to stay in PJs all day and watch rubbish on a small screen then you can. If you forget lunch and only eat cheese and apples that’s fine too. If you are still reading at 3am, who cares? You can start new projects, go for walks in the rain (because if most of the population are forced to take holiday at the same time then you can guarantee it will rain) or spend an hour tidying your sock drawer without worrying that there is something better you should be doing. 

You could also read the Epstein files and think about blogging, if you have a strong stomach. 

I’m honestly not complaining about my job and trying to convince you that the ‘long’ holidays are not a perk but if you bumped into someone who worked in a coffee shop on a day off would you really sarcastically tell them that you had made your own coffee that morning? Maybe. I have no idea and am constantly confused by the queues outside the drive-through Costa.

“Do you think they have a kettle?” I always ask the Long Suffering Husband. 

A week off is just what the doctor ordered too because I’ve been coughing up a lung for about 4 weeks. 

I do have it easy compared with most teachers. There’s not a huge pressure on music teachers to record data, keep up with the latest research or schemes (although I do because I’m interested) and I only work 3 days in school so my weekends are always my own. 

A teacher I know has just dropped to 4 days, so she can do all the school work on her day off and only has to work weekends at report writing time. 

“That’s crazy. Isn’t it crazy?” I said

She blinked at me.

“I mean in any other job if you said you’d taken a pay cut of one day a week so that you could work for free in that day then people would think it’s crazy.”

She only shrugged, not getting my point. 

“But I don’t have to work at the weekend,” she said. 

Parents: please enjoy spending time with your children. Take it from a woman with adult kids. You don’t get that time back. There are no do-overs, no chances to do things better if you think you could. What you do now lasts forever, so enjoy it as much as you can. 

Teachers: enjoy time with your own children Give them what you can’t in the school week, even if your children are grown ups, dogs, cats, plants or books.