Last time I wrote a blog post, I was reasonably fresh back to the UK from India. I’d been there for just under 6 months as a volunteer teacher. You can read all about that adventure on my parallel blog page; Maggamouse. I knew even before I came home that I wanted to return to India. There’s so much still to do there, so much help still needed, but this is expensive. To pay for my flights, my visa, my vaccinations, my travel insurance and to cover my costs while I’m there to avoid draining the already humble resources of the organisations I want to work with will probably cost me about £3000 (25000 Rupees at current exchange rate) I knew I had some work to do with getting that cash together and began to plan all sorts of things from epic walks to Buddhist centre talks, from sponsored poetry readings to free henna art (for donations). As it was, however; when I landed, a new responsibility closer to home needed my attention and I went to live as a carer to my elderly great uncle in Essex. This took pretty much all my time and energy so my fund raising went on the back burner. This story came to an end on May 23rd when my family and I said goodbye to him at Southend Crematory. Sad as this was, I remain grateful that I was able to do what I could to make his last weeks as easy and enjoyable as possible, as well as for the merciful fact that he was spared suffering a long drawn out illness.

I read that and I realised how appropriate those words were and how true they remain. I remembered that there are so many people in the world living with far, far less than I, in my privileged status as a Caucasian British national, will ever have. I remembered that you have to give up the mundane to approach the transcendental.

Well hello stranger, It’s been a while… I’ve not blogged for some time, but truth be told I’ve not had much to say. Or at least, I’ve not felt much like saying it. If you’ve been following this blog for a while (or feel inclined to scroll back a bit) you may remember that just over a year ago I made a few big changes, deciding to leave a teaching career and move from Manchester to Leigh on Sea in Essex. I’ve had a quick look through some older posts myself whilst deciding what to write and it occurs to me that when I wrote about “Winds of Change” on the 31st of May 2015 I had no idea how right I was, and goodness but they’ve been blowing ever since. It was on September the 1st of that year that I handed in my notice and set in motion a sequence of events that has brought me on a completely unpredictable and extremely challenging but incredibly worthwhile journey.

While all that was going on, perhaps especially because I was struggling to feel a sense of purpose in my new life where I was now making ends meet with bar work, I was keen to stay creative. Just before I left Manchester, I completed a new series of digital collages, developed from paintings and drawings inspired by Buddhist imagery. Titled The Impermanence Series, these were exhibited at the Manchester Buddhist Centre in November 2015, but had felt like ‘the end of the road’ for that set of work, a development of a development and with no inherent momentum to take forward.

While this was positive, it far from distracted me entirely from the gap that remained in my daily experience where teaching had once flourished. ‘So, what are you doing now!?’ people would frequently enquire with an excited enthusiasm that I felt anticipated the adventures they expected me to relate. And my heart would sink. ‘Not much.’ I’d say through gritted teeth, trying to sound nonchalant and not give away how cutting I found those queries. ‘Just some bar work for a bit… You know, enjoying not having to take my work home with me!’ Which wasn’t untrue. But it still hurt. When I was introduced by Sam Walker on Radio 5 as ‘having left teaching completely’ and ‘now working in a pub’ I could have crawled into a hole there and then. I found hearing someone else speak that truth an incredibly humiliating experience, in the truest sense of the word. I was humbled by it.

Because of these feelings, I knew my time in the pub could only be a temporary solution and that I would have to find a new path. It’s hard though, to determine a new direction on the map of life with eyes still blurred by the fatigue of your last voyage. I made a couple of half-hearted and unsuccessful applications to some arts opportunities. I did a bit of volunteering with a local community group, offering crafts workshops to disadvantaged children. I mulled over some options and found nothing that reignited any spark of genuine motivation in me. But my mind did keep returning to an inspirational talk I’d heard in October, at the Manchester Buddhist Centre. Delivered by a member of the Triratna Order, her description the work of a small charity called Young Indian Futures, at Aryaloka Computer Education Centre, a Buddhist social project in Nagpur that offers subsidised education to some of India’s poorest and most marginalised young people, gave me the fluttering of a memory of what I had once believed teaching was for.

So, it may not have felt like it at the time but it seems quite a bit has occurred in the last few months and I now realise that what has at times appeared to be a ‘wasted’ year has in fact been really very well spent. A field left fallow may appear to be wasted land, the soil untilled and dotted with weeds, but under the surface is intense and critically important activity. Organic matter is busy decomposing, being eaten and excreted by various creatures; at once a process of death and decay and yet at the same time nourishing the earth with the nutrients needed to provide the conditions for new growth, fresh shoots and flourishing, eventually to bring a new season of fruitfulness.

I remember once, during a heated ‘debate’ with a (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend, being told with an air of distaste ‘You’ve changed!’ Well, yes I probably had and what’s more is that I’ve kept changing. A damn good thing it is too. ‘Stasis’ is not a word in the Glittermouse lexicon. I don’t know exactly what the next six months contain but I know I shall step back onto the shores of the UK as a very different person to the one that left, grateful too for this fact.

In September 2015, shortly after making the sad decision to leave teaching, I undertook some rather last minute fundraising for Teacher Support Network. Following this, I was invited to speak at their first event since reforming as Education Support Partnership; a discussion held at the Houses of Parliament on the current crisis in recruiting and retaining teachers. On World Mental Health Day in October last year, I wrote an article on my reasons for leaving the profession for ESP to publish on their blog and expected that I would simply be delivering a spoken version of this. When I found I was in fact to be one of a panel responding to questions concerning potential solutions to the problem, I felt a little overwhelmed. It’s one thing to read from a prepared text with boundaries you set yourself and entirely another to be openly debating such an intensely complex issue amongst well respected and expert professionals.

I immediately began to regret this decision when I saw the other panellists arranging their printed notes, yet still I tried to hit the salient points in response to the chairman’s introduction and found myself starting by summarising my main reason for leaving teaching. I have spent the last four months honing an uncharacteristically succinct response to questions on this from various individuals; mostly those on the other side of the bar I now pull pints at:
“I left teaching because I felt I was no longer a teacher, complicit instead in a complex form of educational fraud where I was unequipped to deliver the quality of provision I believe my students deserve.”
When I saw several heads nodding enthusiastically in response to these words I felt far more confident in elaborating on this and continued with the thoughts I have recently cultivated around the problems and solutions. Schools and colleges are required to pull out all the stops in publicly demonstrating a commitment to deliver quality provision but it is my perception that this evidencing is now valued above the quality of provision it seeks to achieve. Ticking boxes to prove that good teaching is taking place across the board in a ‘one size fits all’ approach despite the rhetoric around differentiation does not cater for individual needs and is not then the best way of empowering individual learners to be successful. It’s like tripping over your own untied shoelaces; the systems that are in place to assist delivery have become so cumbersome that they in fact undermine it. The solution begins not in funding but in liberating teachers from impotent bureaucracy and well-meaning but ultimately counter productive polices.

Staff need to know they are trusted, empowered and supported to build meaningful relationships with learners and to utilise their professional judgement to negotiate the right educational solutions on an individual level, not forced to jump through hoops to meet someone else’s misconceived ideals. We need to be permitted to really differentiate, not just fill in a ‘differentiation’ box on a pro-forma lesson plan so we can prove to the looming spectre of OFSTED that we know the difference between cognitive, psychomotor and affective learning styles.

When I say it’s not about funding, I mean I’m not asking for millions of pounds to be spent on swanky new state of the art buildings or equipment. Some of my most effective teaching has been delivered in pre fab huts or the middle of the street on study visits. I don’t need industry standard, highly expensive kit; I can teach the basics of painting with white emulsion on ripped cardboard and can explain what a pixel is using free packages that come with most standard operating systems. An interactive whiteboard can be handy but I’ve seen more spontaneous creativity spilled on to sheets of flip board paper with slightly-too-dry marker pens. The most valuable resource I need to teach well is time. I need 5 days a week to deliver a full time course, not two and a half including tutorial and Functional Skills. I need a class size that allows me to really get to know and respond to the students in front of me and I need to be part of a team with current, diverse practices who are engaged in their subject because they are being invested in and valued as the dynamic, creative individuals that they are. To back that up, I need an institution that will really listen to what I, my colleagues and my students say we need to function happily and effectively, a management system that is itself equipped to flexibly respond to the needs of each person, both staff and students. I need to be trusted to have the drive to do my job well, not mismanaged and undermined under a cloud of assumed apathy, with the wrong things constantly checked, hollowly monitored, and obsessively measured.

Let me do it my way and I’ll do it better than you ever imagined. That way, will be completely and delightfully different to my colleagues’ way of doing it. This is a good thing and this is why it’s critical that structures exist with enough flexibility to accommodate various approaches, which will also result in a far richer and more meaningful learning experience for students as they encounter and develop a full range of alternative transferable skills alongside academic or main vocational subjects.

Having been the first to speak on such issues, I was prepared for the fact that I would be stating my position before anyone else had declared theirs and was expecting a certain amount of disagreement. It was then a very affirmative experience to hear the next two speakers continue to not only agree with but expand upon my views, supporting them with considerably more experience and research!

Christine Parker, Head of Gladstone Primary School went on to discuss how she and her colleagues had achieved success through cultivating responsible freedom, collaboration, trust and mutual respect between staff and pupils. She spoke movingly about supporting teachers and including them in decision making processes, an approach which paved the way for Candy Whittome to discuss her current doctoral research using ESP data. These investigations support the working hypothesis that creative freedom for head teachers to respond locally within nationally imposed constraints was key to success. Interestingly, she also asked what cost we were prepared to commit in terms of staff wellbeing in order to achieve success for our young people.

I feel however, that we desperately need a wider social shift that allows us to value the needs of the individual learner above the needs of the college, or indeed the economy. I don’t want to teach people to be effective earners. I want to teach them to be self-confident, happy people; I can guarantee you that a majority of them will then turn out to be economically robust anyway.  I feel very fortunate that following questions from the floor, I was able to put that perspective forward as a final word for the night. I sensed that though applause at the close was inevitable, there were at least one or two more vigorous bursts of clapping in agreement with that sentiment.

Whatever your political leaning, from the discussions I enjoyed after the event and the heart warmingly supportive messages I have received since, I appear to have spoken in a way that resonated with many teachers. It’s wonderful to feel that I am far from alone but this is tinged with a deep sense of sadness that so many feel as isolated, frustrated and desperate as I did. I set off on an unplanned bike ride in September feeling that maybe I could channel these feelings in a positive direction to help others by raising funds. I hope I have been able to continue this aim by speaking out on behalf of those who have encountered and continue to work with the same challenges.

A couple of blogs ago, I related the fact that I was soon to be moving on from Manchester and that coincidentally, the final show of work I was exhibiting before doing so contained sketches and drawings from my new area. This was the Impermanence Series, shown as part of the Manchester Buddhist Centre's Arts and Imagination Festival show 'Touched by the Dharma'  throughout November 2015.
I use the word ‘coincidentally’ in a fairly loose way really as anyone who has followed my work particularly will be well aware that despite various tangents, application of different disciplines and materials and a fairly widely ranging visual language,

I recently had to make a rather sad but very big decision. I've never run a 'teaching' blog, but since I have always felt that my teaching and arts practices have strongly informed one another (I do, sorry, did teach art after all) this seems like the most appropriate place to explain why. It's not directly arts related but it shares a flavour...

 Put simply, I'm leaving teaching because I love teaching. The following explanation of that apparent dichotomy is a personal perspective that aims to accept as much responsibility as it delegates.

Recently I’ve no longer felt that I am a teacher. Though in college my official title is 'lecturer', my goal is the same. We could debate semantics until Geoff Petty comes home and argue that you can't 'teach' anything, just facilitate opportunities in a 'learner centred environment' but that's beside the point and the chance to do either of those would be a fine thing. A chronic misalignment between my perception of the role and what I feel equipped to deliver has caused a great deal of personal stress which ultimately resulted in illness. Trying to do a job without the necessary tools is never easy but if you’re driven enough to achieve the outcome, you’ll get by. I can’t imagine anyone goes seriously into teaching without passion, determination and a genuine interest in the development and wellbeing of others, values that fuel us to persevere, find ways around difficult situations and dig deep into reserves of energy and goodwill long beyond the expiry date of our own mental health. This is neither noble, nor in the best interests of those we support so it was with no pride that a week after finally resigning, I realised I had left it too late. I was sleeping poorly, experiencing recurring headaches, stomach cramps and an elevated resting heartrate at over twice what is normal. With chest pains, shortness of breath and tearful episodes I realised I was not well enough to professionally take a class and felt no choice but to call in sick. My GP agreed this was work related stress and when I sought treatment through CBT I was advised by the counsellor that these techniques may not work as ‘they are designed to address irrational feelings’. Not a pleasant way to feel vindicated.

Now I’ve had space, I see this has been a long time coming. In the last few Septembers, I've thought 'it's got worse than last year' before berating myself for catastrophizing and determining to buckle down, get on with it and do my best for the young people I have the privilege to meet. Facing their challenges with them, communicating my love of art and supporting them to find creativity in their own unique ways. Helping them make their own tools to write their own stories, I never expected it to be easy or gratifying. Like many teachers, I found myself sharing more mistakes than successes and representing an institution to rebel against as adolescence was battled before me. I watched potential bloom in unlikely places, relished being proven wrong and occasionally enjoyed being proven right. I expected to be constantly pushed, questioned and tested. Those challenges are all part of the deal and worth every second of tight-for-time coffee-scented staff room complaining when you harvest those glimpses of personal discovery and success.

Sometimes you’re thanked for it but that's a bonus, not a right. Parents sob when progenies 'fly the nest' but teachers experience thankless abandonment annually, watching successes launch into promising sunsets and those who have yet to find their feet sadly coast for another year. All that emotional investment poured into a future you'll never share in. That's expected too and well worth absorbing any stress to buckle down and get on with. Bit less time this year? We'll manage. Few less staff in the department? We'll cope. The planning you did to respond to that new policy now needs completely re writing in order to meet requirements of the one that's just come in and strangely mirrors the one we had before the last new one got scrapped? Sure, let's do it. Not because it noticeably benefits the students (though we’ll make it if we can) but because we can then get it out of the way and focus our energies on the stuff that does. Because that's who matters right? The students?
It was no surprise to return after the summer to an email from senior management (although I think they now call themselves the ‘Strategic Development Team’) stressing that this year “high attendance and outstanding retention is critical.” When have teachers ever not wanted classes to be so enjoyable they’re rarely missed or courses so inspiring they result in achievement? That’s the human perspective though and humans are becoming milled into statistics because for each ‘planned number’ comes a fixed sum for the college, which leaves if they do.

I’ve stopped counting the ‘motivational’ talks I’ve witnessed aiming to demonstrate the sincere concern of the institution for individual lives. Pictures of happy faces achieving, stories of triumph over adversity, celebrations of our positive impact. It’s never long though, before these give way to pie charts, bar graphs and data tables, to statistics, targets, benchmarks and suddenly all the ‘real life’ smiles dissolve into a mire of political rhetoric and institutional dogma.
I’m not naïve enough to think stretched national funding doesn’t need criteria for local distribution but equally, I’m not cynical enough to ignore the counterbalance to each aforementioned success. These are the lives we can’t help because they fall the wrong side of this cut off or fail to meet that requirement. Recently this balance is tipping and for each achievement, I’ve encountered a different young life who’s had another handful of tacks scattered under the wheels of their ambition because they simply didn’t tick the right boxes.

Those who find themselves fortunate enough to meet entry criteria that are increasingly geared to funding targets instead of individual needs aren’t unaffected by the politics either. For all the talk of ‘quality’, they get what they’re given as staff attempt to squeeze into a 15 hour week everything needed to coach them through ticking yet more boxes. Demonstrate you can tick this box and jump through these hoops then you pass. Where learning was about experimenting and evaluating mistakes, without the staff, time or physical resources this genuine process increasingly takes a back seat to its own documentation. These are the futures further compromised by classes cancelled due to lack of cover or inadequate assistance in class for learning difficulties when staff have been ‘redeployed’.

I’m not framing senior management or national government as shadowy, malevolent figures secretly conspiring to undermine future generations. I know it’s impossible to help everyone and things can never be perfect but as long as teachers, support staff, managers, governors, MPs, parents and society generally are complicit in maintaining this system then it’s never going to be better than it is. I’ve no interest in apportioning blame, nor do I seek somewhere to point my finger. I’m willing to shoulder my share of stress as long as it achieves something but I no longer know what we are achieving. The longer my colleagues and I try to function effectively in an environment that erodes our ability to teach, the more susceptible we become to symptoms of stress which impact further upon our students.

These problems are complex, but I believe a key issue is in the requirement of colleges to operate as businesses in order to minimise reliance on public finances. Priorities shift from people to targets that generate statistics to justify business plans. We use limited resources to form partnerships that invariably benefit employers more than students. As a result, we’re losing sight of our purpose. Since when was passing skills to the next generation a business opportunity that can be qualified in a spreadsheet? When was the human mind commodified? I don’t pretend to have answers that will drive out through the classroom into the wider socio-economic and political worlds to solve public sector financing and indiscriminately rescue every troubled teen or anguished adult learner but I do believe we must be the change we want for the world, which is why I’ve stuck with teaching for as long as I have. This year though, I no longer believe I can change the system from inside; I don’t have the resources to be a good teacher and the only way I know to address this is to get out.

Feelings of professional inadequacy have now given way to a whole host of others around my poor mental health. Shame and humiliation before colleagues and students that I apparently ‘can’t cope’. Resentment that we’re silently expected to operate in unacceptable conditions. Relief that I made the decision to leave before I became ill, but anxiety that I might now appear to have 'gone sick' for reasons of laziness. Frustration that I’ve had to take responsibility; it’s me that’s sick, me that’s not managing. Scared of what it will mean for my future. Beyond these emotions however, one stands out; sadness. I felt grief in reaching the point where I decided to leave teaching but now I’m additionally bereft of what I’d planned as a positive last term.

Having taken a laid back and flexible approach to producing work for The Serenity Series, (as would only be appropriate for the subject matter!) I didn’t set out with a goal in terms of how many pieces I expected to produce. 

I’m not yet certain where these new sketches will take me though I’ve titled the book ‘Everything is Changing’ and I’ve enjoyed their creation so far, which can only be a good sign! I’ve now added some them to the Sketchbook pages of this site and have recently published two new poems, (linked below and also on the More Words of Mouse page) which instead engage with the concept of impermanence from a literary perspective. 
In writing this update, I have also just noticed the title of my last posting; how right I was!