At around about 3pm today I found myself, as I often do on a Friday afternoon, staring at something uncomprehendingly. In this case it was my keys.
***Backstory alert***
The process of uprooting a department like mine and moving years of accumulated tools, resources, materials, projects, folders and assorted piles of shite is complicated, chaotic, stressful and confusing. Add in the fact that the new facilities we have moved into are half finished and some of the stuff works, but you have to just get on with teaching anyway as they build around you, then you can get an idea of what January has been like. To make things extra confusing I have been handed an obscene amount of keys. The handover of the new building from the construction company in charge and the negotiations for alterations has been tense and bad tempered and clearly fitting a single key barrel for a department is beyond the abilities of those concerned. For my classroom alone I have eight separate keys. Eight. Then you include my office, the dt and art team base, the two technicians room keys, the construction workshop, the catering kitchen x 2, the textiles rooms, the cad room, the graphics room, not to mention machine keys, coshh cupboards and so on and so on and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
***end of backstory***
So generally at the end of the week I am frazzled mentally. School has a particular way of making your brain dull and fuzzy that I have rarely experienced sober. I've asked and other teachers feel the same. It's as if the interaction with the constant white noise of teenage student activity and behaviour, eventually polishes your synapses as smooth as a pebble in the Mediterranean sea.
At 3pm I'm looking at this in my hand:
I'm staring at it for a good while...
Then I realise that I'm not actually trying to figure out which one I need. I am instead actually trying to figure out what they are.
The weekend my friends has come in the nick of time.
***Backstory alert***
The process of uprooting a department like mine and moving years of accumulated tools, resources, materials, projects, folders and assorted piles of shite is complicated, chaotic, stressful and confusing. Add in the fact that the new facilities we have moved into are half finished and some of the stuff works, but you have to just get on with teaching anyway as they build around you, then you can get an idea of what January has been like. To make things extra confusing I have been handed an obscene amount of keys. The handover of the new building from the construction company in charge and the negotiations for alterations has been tense and bad tempered and clearly fitting a single key barrel for a department is beyond the abilities of those concerned. For my classroom alone I have eight separate keys. Eight. Then you include my office, the dt and art team base, the two technicians room keys, the construction workshop, the catering kitchen x 2, the textiles rooms, the cad room, the graphics room, not to mention machine keys, coshh cupboards and so on and so on and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
***end of backstory***
So generally at the end of the week I am frazzled mentally. School has a particular way of making your brain dull and fuzzy that I have rarely experienced sober. I've asked and other teachers feel the same. It's as if the interaction with the constant white noise of teenage student activity and behaviour, eventually polishes your synapses as smooth as a pebble in the Mediterranean sea.
At 3pm I'm looking at this in my hand:
Then I realise that I'm not actually trying to figure out which one I need. I am instead actually trying to figure out what they are.
The weekend my friends has come in the nick of time.
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