Approximate reading time: 12 minutes
Well, I wish I could say that the possession was over and that I had annexed all my sad, lonely perplexed parts to the back of the cupboard
(Where frankly sometimes I think they should stay!)
But that would be a lie.
And for the sake of authenticity,
I’m trying my best to love the little critters and still turn up …
(Even if it means they are in tow.)
I find it a little ironic that for the last 5 plus weeks I have been posting all those positive, happy poems from a blissfully hopeful and centred period in my life while inside, most of the time, I have been feeling anything but. While my holiday in South Africa was in so many ways great, I have had a quote by the spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, swimming around in my head.
While I certainly don’t think I am enlightened…
(Just mildly more regulated and aware than I have been for the last 40-odd years of my life)
why is it..
when you go home to family it feels like every inner child that you thought you had managed to successfully soothe and regulate to a place of semi-quiet decides that they are packing their bags and coming with you!!!
I mean don’t get me wrong, I love my inner children. I have worked long and hard to get to the place where I am more compassionate and understanding of all my inner parts.
(Please ignore my earlier comment about banishing them to the back of a cupboard!)
But why for the love of GOD do they insist on packing all the old baggage from way back when? Why won’t they just drop it and let it go? They sure as hell don’t pull all this stuff out when I am with complete strangers…..or friends.
Frankly, at times they can be a little relentless, draining and so incredibly needy.
Before my holiday my therapist’s rather sage advice to me was
“Just watch!”
I mistakenly assumed he meant ‘other people’
Hell, I can do that!
I have been judging watching people my whole life!
But alas,
yet again
I was wrong
Instead
I watched myself getting irritated
I watched myself getting angry
I watched myself being overly critical of others
(Even if it was just in my head)
I watched myself shut down and say nothing about my life
or my experiences these last couple of years
I watched all my angst and grief of not having my own family bubble to the surface
I watched myself squash it down and put on my ‘happy-it-doesn’t-exist’ face
I watched myself berate my inner children and deny their feelings
I watched myself criticise them continuously
I watched a lot.
(Sometimes I just wish I could turn the thinking off)
But I also learnt a lot.
I was reminded of how important all my self-care routines are, which so easily get lost and forgotten while I’m on holiday.
Like journaling, meditating, having a bath!
(I love my baths)
I wrote a couple of poems which I haven’t done in months
(Dam, they do make me feel better)
I made peace with the fact (again) that I am quite a critical person.
It was a bitter pill to swallow.
(But it’s down.)
I also realised (again) that the person I criticize the most is myself.
(I will work on that)
Ultimately, I concluded that I still have a way to go when it comes to loving myself unconditionally.
I shall work on that too!
So this week I accepted a job that involved me being a music teacher in the morning and an SEN (Special Educational Needs) teacher in the afternoon.
In all honesty, I know sweet fucking nothing about teaching music…..
but I do love singing and I really and truly wanted to do the SEN part of the job so I thought I could ‘fake-it-till-I-make-it’! Besides most schools follow a music programme which is already planned for you
-So how hard could it really be?
I arrived on time at the school only to have the headteacher take me up to the morning briefing meeting. I will be honest as a supply teacher it’s my absolute pet hate when schools expect you to go to those. There is nothing worse than sitting through a 20-minute meeting that has very little to do with you while you know that you have a class full of students arriving and you still don’t have the foggiest idea as to what you are going to be teaching. Luckily most schools are considerate of this and allow us to spend that half an hour before school…actually preparing for the day and going through the lesson plans.
I was proud of myself though, for speaking up, because I did say to the head teacher on the way to the meeting that I would need some time to go through the plans before the kids arrived. He reassured me that they wouldn’t send the kids in until I was ready for them.
(It sounded mildly too magnanimous to be true-
but I took him at his word ’cause I am a trusting soul)
So I sat through 20 minutes of waffle-
(Yawn)
Ps have I mentioned one of the reasons I don’t teach full time anymore is because I can’t bear meetings?
(I find them insufferable)
I realise they are a necessary part of school life but I have been unable to reconcile that simple fact with a single cell in my body.
When we eventually got down to the hall it was 5 minutes to 9 and I was then informed that I would be doing the whole school singing assemble at 9 am.
Say what?
The whole fucking school?
I nearly had heart failure.
The deputy head, who was very sweet, reassured me that all I was going to be doing with them was teaching them two songs off youtube.
(Um ok, I could do that.)
I asked how long the assembly was and I was told 15 minutes.
(I could definitely survive 15 minutes.)
The new song that I had to teach them was Diamonds by Rihanna
(Piece of cake, I love that song!)
Lesson learnt: It’s one thing to sing along to a song in your head on iTunes….it’s a completely different thing trying to teach a whole school how to sing it….
There were so many different harmonies in the song,
all singing over each other and I was completely and utterly lost.
(Listen from 1 minute on…. it’s insane!!!!)
I felt mildly shamed…. by all these eyes staring at me with this:
“Do-you-even-know-what-you-are-doing” look on their faces.
Luckily my lesson was saved by the year 6 class whose voices carried the rest of the school and I managed to finish the assembly just on time.
Phew!
Thank God, the longest 15 minutes of my life was over.
I glanced nervously around the hall wondering why none of the teachers had returned to fetch their class. I decided to go over the songs again while we waited for them.
We sang the songs again….
But still not a teacher in sight.
…I quickly slipped into the head teacher’s office, which was right next to the hall, while they were finishing off the last song. The deputy head teacher had reassured me she would be in there the
entire time
if I needed help.
She wasn’t there.
The head teacher was though.
He was having a meeting with a parent and seemed mildly annoyed at me for disturbing it.
I tried to splutter out that I didn’t know where the teachers were but I gathered from the look on his face that he didn’t seem to think this was his problem…
So I returned to the hall.
The kids are still singing.
But I am an anxious wreck.
It has now been 35 minutes and there is still not a teacher in sight….
Where are the fucking teachers!
By now I feel completely dysregulated.
When I get dysregulated I just can’t think straight….
my brain freezes and goes into shutdown mode.
In hindsight, I could have quite easily put up another song on youtube for them to sing….
but it felt like nothing was computing.
In desperation, I put diamonds on one more time and there was an audible moan throughout the hall.
Neurotic Angel: OH MY GOD! They HATE you!
Galen: Get a grip!! They are just bored of singing the same songs over and over again.
Roxy: Stop freaking out and be cool!!!
Lila and Lola: Ground please swallow me up!!!
Finally, the headteacher appears.
Exasperated I ask
I thought this singing assembly was only 15 minutes long.
Headteacher: 50 minutes!!
OH Fuck!
(Of course, I don’t say that to him, I am a professional you know!)
By now someone has sent an SOS out to the teachers and they are filing back into the hall to fetch their kids.
Except the year 6’s.
(Who for the record I very really teach, because they induce ANXIETY of the highest degree. They smell my fear and RUN with it!)
Nope,
the year 6’s are asked to move forward ready for their music lesson.
What?
Now?
A sea of faces are staring up at me.
But I haven’t a clue as to what I am supposed to be teaching them.
I haven’t even been given a lesson plan yet!
My chest feels like a tank has landed on it …and I am about 2 seconds away from bursting into tears.
The headteacher notices that I am breathing slightly heavily.
Headteacher: Are you ok?
Me: No not really,
I can’t teach without even having a chance to look at the plan yet.
…rather sheepishly I add…
I am a good teacher but I need to be prepared!
He concedes my point and the year 6’s are taken outside for a 5-minute run while I am given time to go over the lesson plan.
I am proud that I spoke up.
I am very grateful he heard me.
But still feel ever so slightly pissed.
It is really not acceptable or kind to expect ANY teacher to teach a lesson that they haven’t even had time to look at.
The lesson plan had a video that I just had to play with the kids so it was pretty straightforward…..EXCEPT for the African song with Xhosa/Zulu words that I couldn’t seem to remember and the body percussion that went with it …..
that I fucked up six love.
( I am not rhythmically co-ordinated. To give you a visual of me – I would be the one in the middle!)
The year 6’s are looking
dazed and confused
and somewhat amused
at this random person who has shown up with apparently 0% music ability.
I wanted to shout:
“It’s NOT true…I’m just a bit of an emotional wreck at the moment!”
But alas I can’t.
(Because apparently, I am an adult.)
By the time I got to the second class’s music lesson….
I was cool and calm like a cucumber.
I know how to teach the babies!!
Plus they thought my mistakes were hilarious
(My ability to laugh at myself had returned)
In the afternoon I got to do the SEN work with 3 very sweet kids which was lovely.
All in all, it was a pretty good day,
but I have decided that I will definitely not be accepting any music teaching jobs in the future.
Alas the school also, very sadly, got a big black ‘NO’ written next to its name in my
‘Schools-I-have-been-to-list!’
I prefer to go to schools that have an iota of empathy and consideration for us lowly supply teachers.
(FYI: That’s not being critical…..its called SELF-CARE!;-)
*******
While regaling my eventful day to Teresa my lovely flatmate…
(We always have a good laugh)
it got me thinking about a question that I get asked so often.
How do you cope being a supply teacher, continually being thrown in the deep end and never knowing what is going to come up at each new school?
I used to ask myself that same question except it was more along the lines of
“Why do you do this to yourself when you know you struggle with anxiety?
But I think I have finally figured out my answer.
It’s simple really.
I know I get dysregulated quite easily.
I realise that this dysregulation is a symptom of my childhood.
When you don’t have emotionally healthy parents that can deal with their own emotions and regulate themselves then you don’t learn how to regulate yourself.
You don’t learn the simple skills of
staying calm under pressure
handling embarrassment, shame and anger
(Those basic human emotions that life throws at all of us)
A bad day is never just a bad day…
it somehow always comes back to you being a bad person
Small embarrassments feel like a huge mountain of shame
Criticisms feel like the shame mountain has imploded in on you
Your ability to make mistakes and laugh at yourself is pretty non-existent
I honestly don’t think I will ever get to a point where I will stop getting dysregulated completely. I have come to accept that I am an anxious neurotic mess (at times) and I’m ok with that! But what I have got so much better at is…training myself to stay calm despite what is going on inside of me.
Of reminding myself that no matter what I am feeling
…it really doesn’t matter.
They are just emotions, and emotions, like waves come and go.
No matter how anxious or how embarrassed I am I now know it’s just a tough day.
It is a short-term stress that definitely won’t kill me.
Being a supply teacher means getting daily lessons on resilience training.
For a recovering people pleaser who always has to get things right….
it is the absolute best job for me.
