However much teaching holds your heart, Sunday evening is a real downer, isn’t it?

And Monday morning isn’t much better.

When in a classroom with the students, door closed and lesson started, I’m in my element but, at home where the pace is slower, there’s a part of me that can’t face finding the time and energy to kick start another week.

One of the miracles of every teaching career is that we do just that though.

Every week.

Our days at school are sometimes delightfully full and sometimes overwhelmingly busy – the line between these states being remarkably thin!

We dash into school, often with unexpected morning chores along the way like cleaning up the vomit the cat decided to place on the only rug in the house rather than the miles of laminate. We travel to school, gather our thousand and one bags from the back seat or boot and haul them, ladening ourselves like donkeys, to the appropriate office or classroom. (If you’re like me it will be class sets of books and only one of the many will have actually been marked, optimist that I am in taking them all home!) We arrive at our desks to be greeted by a barrage of emails, some more welcome than others. Soon the onslaught begins with colleagues and students alike finding us for a quick word here or there. Lessons come and go throughout the day as we grab just one more purple book for that year seven who’s lost theirs or find lunch for that student in our form who managed to forget theirs and money to buy it. I could go on!

There are a million tiny jobs that fill up our days.

 

Is it any surprise that, after a long weekend of enjoying the sun and the relaxation a good book brings, we aren’t sure how we’re going to do it all again?

Yet, by nine am, we’re happy, doing what we love.

The clamor of the classroom energises us as much as Sunday evening depresses!

I’ve not thought of a remedy yet – perhaps you can enlighten me…