Questioning

Our school’s form tutor system sees each teacher taking the same group of pupils all the way up from their arrival in Year 7 to their GCSEs in Year 11. We get watch them grow, from squeaky childhood through grunting adolescence all the way up to the nearly-grown-ups they are by the time they head off to sixth form, then we wave them off, head back down to the babies and start the entire process again. Having seen a few sets through the system now, I’m aware that the road isn’t without its bumps and potholes, but by the end of it I do feel very fond of the kids and am sad to see them go. I like to think that the fondness and sadness isn’t just on my side.

With my first form, the process was particularly intense.  I picked them up as an NQT, and they were difficult: at least two of them have since been in prison, and even among the less criminal elements in the group, the lack of self-control was a real test of my patience.  At that stage in my career, I simply wasn’t ready for them: it threw me right in at the deep end, but by the time they got to about Year 9 or 10, I was starting to, if not swim, then at least tread water in a way that didn’t make me look like a half-drowning, spluttering fool.

Then, during their final year, things started to fall apart. This wasn’t so much due to the form itself as issues in my personal life: a close relative of mine died, there were changes in the senior leadership at my school which were far from positive, and I had just taken out a mortgage for the first time which, in my declining mental state, started to feel like I’d walked into a trap.  I was diagnosed with depression and, although it wasn’t a severe case and I managed to turn things around over the course of the following year or so, the point where my group sat their exams, had their prom and said their goodbyes hit me unexpectedly hard.  After five years with them, I didn’t want to let them go.

There’s a bit in The Wire – which I’m about to describe in a pretty vague way as I’ve not watched it for a long time – but it’s the bit where the cop-turned-teacher gets worried about the welfare of the kids in his class and one of his colleagues advises him to have his own children so that he doesn’t get too attached to his students.  It might well be excellent advice, although given my lack of kids and the unlikelihood of me having any at this point in my life, it’s not particularly useful.

I’ve been not only childless but single for a long time, and although that’s not always been out of choice, I’ve come to realise that it’s something that suits me.  If I did suddenly meet the man of my dreams, it would take a substantial amount of adjustment on my part to fit him into my life, much of which revolves around school.  When I’m not working, I’m engaged in hobbies that are, the whole, solitary and antisocial; I’ve been that way since I was a kid, always beavering away at some project in my room while my parents were trying to get me out into the fresh air.  It’s not like I don’t have friends or lack social skills or anything like that, but I like and sometimes need space and time to myself.

There are benefits to the single life too, as far as teaching goes. It means I can dedicate a lot of my time to it, without the guilt that a lot of my colleagues feel when they’re not spending enough time with their families. I still feel incredibly lucky that reading books can be classed as part of my professional development, and again I have a lot more time to do that living alone. I’m also free to take part in all sorts of school trips and extracurricular activities, for me the buttercream and jam of the big teaching spongecake.

I wonder about that sense of attachment I get to the kids, though. I’m not claiming to be more invested in the kids I teach than anyone else is – people with families obviously still care about their students, and I know a lot of my married colleagues feel that the emotional demands of the job are sucking up the time and energy they feel they should be giving to their own spouses and children – but I worry that with the job taking up so much of my life, it’s acting as a replacement for the relationships I don’t have, and I don’t know how healthy that is.  It’s one thing having a job that feels rewarding, it’s another to treat that job as an emotional crutch and to depend on it for my social and emotional needs.

I’m not sure if this is getting better or worse as time passes.  Certainly I’ve seen more students go through the system now, and I’ve got a lot better at saying goodbye and letting go, but on the other hand, I’m probably more invested in my job than I’ve ever been; in the past I’ve wondered how long I could go on doing this job, while now I wonder what I’ll do and how I’ll cope when I stop.  Retirement is a way off yet, and who knows what will happen in the meantime, but being single, childless and career-less – or, to put it another way, pupil-less – feels like a potentially very lonely condition.

I’ve struggled with the ending to this blog.  I felt like I wanted to end this on a positive note, and there are positives: I might not have been lucky in love, but through working in schools I’ve had wonderful experiences and been fulfilled in ways that I doubt I ever would have been if I’d gone into another profession; and, as I say, I probably wouldn’t have been able to throw myself into it to quite the same extent with a family in tow.  I’m not sure that the positive conclusion is the truthful one, though, so it’s not the one you’re going to get.  You might think it’s self-pitying or whatever, but this is my blog, so this is what I’ll say:

I’m a bit sad about it all.

*And I don’t even actually have a cat.