Who am I and why do I talk about workload?

Hi, I’m Dice (short for Candice, not as in the game cube… my parents weren’t that mean!) I recently started this blog on workload and have been planning presentations on it. But I understand that people are often cautious, perhaps even suspicious, of intentions of others and why they are doing it. Do I have a product to sell you? No, I don’t. Who knows, one day I might come up with something that transforms teachers lives and makes me enough to pay the mortgage, but I think that’s more of a dream than a reality. 

The reason I started this all stems back to my own teaching experience. I have taught at my current school for 15 years. I have always taught both Music and History. I have also taught metacognition, drama, bullet journalling, sketch-noting and of course the PSHE curriculum. I have previously been the Thinking Skills Coordinator for our school (we are and Advanced Thinking School accredited by Exeter University - something I am very proud of). 

When I started teaching there was just myself and my husband at home. We were both teachers and understood the pressures of each others workload and therefore accepted evening and weekends as times to help catch up. We would regularly work 60 hours plus each week. My husband then left the profession for the same reasons as so many others - lack of support, inadequate training once in the classroom and burnout. At the time I felt useless, not being able to help him get through the issues he was facing, as I was too, the difference being I had much better support in my school, I survived. 

Each year I have taught on average just over 400 students a week. I have juggled learning topics for teaching History (I’m a musicologist, so I have the skills but not so much the knowledge!), the marking load that comes with KS3 (and more recently KS4) History teaching and the extra-curricular that comes as part of the territory of being a Music teacher. I also took on the Thinking Skills Coordinator role which meant planning whole school strategy and leading staff training. 

But by this time I had also had a daughter. I was trying to be Mum, full-time teacher, main bread winner, decent wife… so many roles that I could not do any of them well. About 4 years ago I hit the wall running and had to take 3 weeks off work whilst I got my mental health back to a stage that I could function again. This was a wake up call for me. I could not go back to the way things were again. I did not want to give up any of my roles, so I had to decide how I would do them ‘well’ but without burning myself out. I made small steps on the road, but I was working on my own trying to work out strategies, whilst still feeling the pressures of the job and home life. 

Then came the lock-downs. I went into shielding. I felt lonely and had to keep re-writing our music curriculum to try and make it work online. I remember one SOW I rewrote 3 times in the space of 3 weeks as the expectations from the school and reality of what we were facing started to become clearer. As we all know, SOW are not easy to write at the best of times! That was when I found my teaching network. I had no idea there were teacher groups on Facebook - people just supporting each other and helping by sharing resources, guidance and kindness. It started with watching Midnight Music CPD videos on YouTube explaining how you could use technology as a music teacher - if you’ve not discovered Katie’s work please do go and have a look - I learnt loads. In one of them she mentioned facebook groups for using google education suite in music, a KS3 music teachers group and that there even groups of teachers for each exam board. 

All of a sudden I felt less isolated. Here were loads of ideas on how to manage the job and teach concepts. People willing to listen and sympathise with the pressures of the job, and willing to offer help and support. Resources being shared all over the place. No longer was I along in trying to find strategies. Here were hundreds if you had the time and effort to look for them. Being in shielding, having a cover teacher presenting my lessons when they returned to school, I had time that I needed to fill so that I didn’t feel useless and that I was taking money from school under false pretences.

So this blog is about paying back to that network of kindness. From the strategies I have found I have won back my home life most of the time (I’m not saying I never work at home, but it is a lot less than it used to be and I see my daughter a lot more!)  It will take me time to create blogs about all the different strategies I have already found (and will continue to find), so please be patient. This is my ‘Sunday morning me time’ project. But if I manage to help just a small fraction of the community that helped me, I will feel like I have done something back. If it helps some of our ECT colleagues to cope and keeps them in the profession then it will be a major win in my eyes. 

If there is something in particular you are struggling with, please do comment below. And if you’ve not joined the Facebook community of teachers - go do it now. You won’t regret it! 

Want to know more about why burnout matters, read my post on the current situation in teaching