Sitting here on a Saturday early morning wake up I realise that these people around me have lives as vivid and as complex as mine.
My mission to be here has been tempered by familiar mantles. I have limited myself somewhat, and have survived. And this lonely knowingness is perhaps ready to move into something else. Some actual travelling, perhaps?
The expertise of those around me is sound. But there was more to my work before. I feel I want to do more than immediately greets me here. And I feel that I am capable of doing that by simply being awake for a little longer than usual.
Today I felt the first pangs of uncertainty. They were not overwhelming because I have behind me many years of that angst.
I should not forget about the kindness of those behind me. I am an ambassador for then to those I meet. My life is not mine entirely. Such a feeling has left me desperately lonely, or rather tediously bored.
That is not to say I am not a conversationalist. It is to say that I am glad to be finally putting some adventure into what I am doing.
I have some trepidation of how I might be perceived in my new school. I know that all that I have relied upon the past five years will somewhat dissipate. But then again, that is the purpose of this move - to realise that I am food for worms soon and that to be seen in ways I'd rather not receive is no small price for at least trying.
The most important principle as ever is to be loved, and to love. Find your courage over a greater period of time than that which sees you excited to work again.
Today I have felt the pangs of leaving my town. For many months I have felt only a fantastic welling at the head of my chest, a rush of new adrenaline and momentum that might have once be called anxiety. The only anxiety I feel now is the finiteness and urgency of my time.
What has characterised my time is how I am one day going to be food for worms. This day that I write, and these moments that you read, will not be soon to return. Even then, I hedge my writing, unwilling to let the day go. I like to think that my hesitancy is not simple intellectual cowardice, but is perhaps rather the feeling that this day will extend out in consequences beyond that I might envisage.
Over the past four weeks of do I have been carrying a vicious injury suffered while trying too hard. It has in some ways dampened my spirit, causing me to eat poorly and rely upon others. In response I have refused pain killers. I have also enjoyed the presence of my friends with greater appreciation.
My material possessions have dripped away.
I have prepared myself in terms of scanning my books, and in terms of affirming my purpose. I am no longer blandly sufficient, but rather influenced and empowered to strive for more.
And this is done by reading and resting better than I have done so far.
It is another warm day in England. At this time I am socialising every day, which is distinctly unbritish and even to some extent me. I ate and drank and spoke with some great people who had themselves travelled when they were younger. They told me of how they found the networking with others to be most important in their career. Earlier that day, my tailor had said the same.
My ambitions to prepare for school rely upon me planning fairly heftily beforehand. In the past this might have meant actually getting lesson content entirely prepared and the rest. Those days are somewhat over. I instead I need only secure the content of what I need.
Getting rid of stuff has proved interesting. I have given almost everything away. For me, while I am decent enough with money, knowing that it is to be used well by others sees it simply pass through my fingers. Good friends have been instrumental in helping me rid myself of clutter. For those items more valuable, I have found myself giving to friends or family. Knowing that they will be used well makes me satisfied.
This is how I see my job. I give society a useful and worthwhile benefit in bringing up and educating its children. In return I am given stuff of my choice. In this new tide of living I am allowed to now begin to make a new life for myself, and in doing so can pass some of my trappings onto others. The desire to receive money in return does not rise strong in me.
People ask me if I am anxious. I say I am not. My angst at living in Scarborough overrides everything. One day I am going to die. That is certain. That colours all I do in that that the debilitating routine and grind might somewhat relent. Of course the benefits of routine still stay with me.
And now my physical life begins to shrink into a 23kg case.
I normally struggle with getting rid of stuff. For many years I have simply carted materials from one house to another. I think being more decisive about what I want, and what I want to get rid of, will be useful.
As it is, I find myself able to wake up reasonably early today. From this I want to stir towards the day. And from that, I want to mix my day with all it requires.
I feel strangely horizontal about my impending upheaval. Two things have characterised how I feel:
a) My sinuses have cleared. b) The top of my chest, above my heart, feels light and potent. Fluttery, almost.
Every 3-4 days I stop looking at my to-do list. I have, though, 4 weeks left, and my to-do list is happily expanding. Some examples of my timing:
a) I have yet to sell anything.
b) I have begun my injections, managing to book them in on almost the last day possible. c) I have just received my visa.
Before I continue my witless list, I should tell you some advice about the visa. I was advised to head in person to the centre. However, I did not need to. Instead I sent all my materials (having checked my form via my school) in recorded delivery packets, and it returned in a week. Superb!
I have my transcripts, but could do with some originals of my GCSEs, perhaps.
I want to write letters to all the staff in my school. I may well do that now. I should also write letters to all my form that they might be able to give to their parents. These two tasks with take many, many hours. That's almost 100 letters, perhaps. But they are worth such endeavour.
Part of what makes me succeed as a teacher is my planning. I must admit that there was a time away from a Sunday that I rarely planned and taught from content. The day to day lessons were adequate and my students were gainfully occupied. However, there wasn't the focus on progression that I now enjoy.
Instead there was a constant sense of planning each lesson on the morning it was due.
This brought some great results. It also had some obvious failings. It was the only real option open to me at that time, though.
With a series of pressing matters of administration and the like eating my time, I am brought into the memory of what some other, younger teachers once said to me : that they worked all weekend. Today I have worked for for to five hours. I could leave what I have now and wing tomorrow.
I will, instead, plan an answer to the year eleven comparison question, make these year books and then tidy my house. In the evening I may read some more.
The sea ahead of me breaks with relentless and calm indifference on the sodden sand. It will continue to do so even as I am food for worms. I do not feel a sense of belonging but instead a begrudging acceptance, if not appreciation, of its beauty.
I am a rather cautious man. I will not easily be parted from goods once purchased. I will rarely travel any distance substantial from home. And each Sunday I mark and plan. Yet I feel myself to have a streak of adventure.
That streak runs under my shirt, both too crumpled to wear with pride as I should.
This blog has not been as I might have liked it to be. I have not listed the logistics of what I do. The truth is I have other mediums to express that, and they are somewhat more inclined to temperate practicalities.
Instead this blog has served so far to express the dissolution of my angst. I still feel righteous pangs of uncertainty. That is accepted. I wouldn't call such rises of passion something like panic attacks because I can respond to them with wry control, a smiling acceptance that these things that face me that are most worthy of endeavour have a price.
When I was young and living in a terraced house in Hull, I remember opening my door. The weather in this memory is sometimes biting cold or even embraceful warmth. It could be early evening covered in a cosy orange, or a crisp night with unseen stars looking down on an indifferent world through mucky clouds. The memory shifts. However, my sense of choice remains the same - all I had done until that point needed to have happened in order for this time and for my achievements to occur.
This is, of course not necessarily true. That is a thought that hopes to connect. It hopes to combine all that which went before. But all that might remain true is the performance of the moment, whether that is a masked kiss to an unseen lover of a lesson inspirited with the changing of lives.
The truth is this. I, like you my private reader, have made somewhat deliberate choices to become the man I am. From these choices I can pick a path that is available. But I cannot return to this point. And these experiences will not die, but will be invigorated instead by love and will and all the testing tedium of a kind that grows tired.
Two days sees the end of my year elevens. However, I have not had to wait to finish to socialise and to dedicate myself to other pursuits.
This week has seen me compelled to reveal my resignation. My affection for my school could be read as love, as something that is more important to me than many other distractions (profound and otherwise). I feel part of the community. I have a persona, and I make a difference.
But even this week, I feel an angst that comes with seeking a greater purpose. I feel there is more that I can do with my teaching, and more I can do with the way I teach.
There is something that I tell my students frequently, and that is that some people want to seek that which is immediately available to them. Perhaps from conceit, and perhaps to prove themselves in some way. But they do.
Things are moving in earnest now with my new school. I'm making frequent contact with the key people, and getting my head around the considerations of accommodation. The personable nature of the emails is appreciated, too.
One sign of a great place is one that sorts accommodation for you. I lived in a dilapidated terraced house for about eight years from my late teens. From that, I moved every year for five years before residing in my current apartment for two years. In that time I have survived some pretty crummy places. The thing is, I think, having little space. I simply cannot have the place that I study the same place as I sleep. Sleep comes difficult enough.
I thought about writing an extensive post on what to think about accommodation, my thoughts are this: without being able to see the place, decide upon what is most important to you. For me, separating my study and my sleeping quarters is pretty damn important.
Of course, the promise of something else flavours everything that I am doing now. Today I was observed with appreciated feedback. Moreso than that, I felt no pressure beyond that which I placed on myself.
Of perhaps most important note, I spoke at length today with teacher who taught in inner-city school. The circumstances were fortuitous, and I deeply appreciated sharing with him what I thought, and heard some practical suggestions on what I can tweak. When I mentioned where I had taught, he invited me into his school.
It made me think of what I have done over the past ten years or so. There is much that has changed, and my desire to find something more than that which is immediately available to me might be eventually sated.
I have also ready a good many blogs on teachers teaching in the kind of ineffectual innercity schools. That is a rather harsh statement, as what causes these schools to be ineffectual is that which is beyond their control (apathy, angst and aggression). I have taught there. I couldn't change things, and I realised that the teachers who had 'been there a long time' were not all 'lazy'. They couldn't change things. Charisma helped: routines abated. However, progress was glacial, and the effort expended was tremendous.
Instead, I find a school where I could be more effective, with children who were equally troubled in parts, but also with a cohort of students who weren't.
I remember these years for them, as they have changed me:
I am a boy of a man. By that I mean that I am inclined to leave my clothes on the floor and to do my dishes three times a week.
To teach abroad as I want to requires some judicious lifestyle changes. Firstly, I want to be able to maintain things easier. My cleaning and my eating and my tidying all want to completed on a regular basis. This is not what I do, but it is something that I do when I want to impress.
Much of my tidying involves throwing stuff away. I know I am a hoarder. Too easily I find myself simply shuffling piles around. I know that, instead, I should throw away piles when I can. In fact, that is something that I have been doing this weekend.
I threw out many clothes today. I didn't like it. However, I didn't like this because I was making a choice about throwing them out. I hadn't worn them in years. Yet I was happy for them to sit there. Like that conundrum of 'do you pull a lever to cause a runaway train to kill three but save five?' I have not taken responsibility for my clothes or my possessions for many years.
And that is not a bad thing.
I intend to ask something of my new school about packing. I already have my mind on such things. I need to prepare a more comprehensive post about how to pack, as others will have surely done so. However, aside from my suits, my computer(s) and my documents, everything else will be purchasable.
A final note to make is this: I am rather round at the moment in my old age and with my sedentary lifestyle. However, even just the organisation of this week has been better than it has ever been before. Rather than the usual faff of watching coursework sit on the table, I have tackled it fruitfully already. I have 'planned' my lessons up to half-term for KS3 (although I have left myself with the capability of fleshing the content and adding entrance and plenary activities each Sunday). And I have managed to do some good things all round.
I drank heavily last night with friends. It was enjoyable. One of the reasons that I have selected the place I have is so I can imbibe. Celebrations will be in order, I think. After all, I am a boy of a man.
Today a friend told me that I was brave to be moving abroad to work, especially in a place where I do not speak the language.
I told them that I would be braver to stay.
I have an angst that has determined how I sleep for many years. It is the angst that the playful nothingness of my rat race cannot be lived for much longer. The stress of expectation from others, or of conflict, or of uncertainty: those vibes pale compared to the angst of meaningless. Or however else you want to determine my angst.
I do not think for more than a few moments that my travels elsewhere will lead me to escape the nausea I express now. What I do expect is to be so busy and occupied that the feeling of 'otherness' that I seem attracted to now will be verified. I am a foreigner in my own country.
Of course, I have a selection of excellent friends. And I admire my country for what it is, and its varied history and culture. But a man is not made by his country. It is instead made by his family, and mine has judiciously dwindled.
Sleep has not come easily onto me. Perhaps because:
a) I rarely feel that my days have even worth to place my name on, spiritually at least. This isn't really down to feeling that I haven't worked hard enough. It is more down to the feeling that my life is due to serve something more than the money and the flesh.
b) I do not trust that I am going to wake up with motivation tomorrow.
I know that I am institutionalised. That is because any man, or woman, becomes more like the people around him (or her). I have changed parts of myself to survive working in a school. That isn't a bad thing. It is a true thing.
Part of my institutionalisation is that I do not wake easily under my own steam. I struggle to. I admire those who can wake early. But perhaps they make sacrifices that I am not willing to make myself. Sacrifices like nourishing my imagination in the evening, and taking time to put flying thoughts into the bleeping morass of some heated server from which you are reading this now.
Speaking of this, why are you reading? I have no intention of talking about the politics of schooling. Well, I might do. I also have no intention of 'doing the dirty' on international teaching. That isn't what it is about. Instead, I hope for it to be about my perceptions of whatever it is that I am doing.
My perception at the moment is that I am good at what I do. I am also aware that there are limitations to the people that I know here. I rarely wish to gather them around me. And I also am rarely want to meet new people in the place I am in now. It will take instead the upheaval of what I know now to do so otherwise.
But, instead, I think that I have been making a choice. My choice is to sacrifices aspects of my life, and what I can do, for 3 years or so of comfort and stability. Let me be clear, I have managed to get to the point where, if I didn't want to, I wouldn't need to plan any lessons. I have about 100,000 teaching resources, or which I would say about 1,000 are of high quality, and a potential 10,000 are usable. I was able to turn up to my classroom and plan my lessons at 7:00am.
My life, for one year I was able to plan all my lesson in the free periods I had first thing (and out of 10 days, 8 had free periods first thing).
Doing so gave me something of a 1970s style of teaching.
This experience, however, wasn't enjoyable in the long-run. I was able to teach to a standard that pleased others (and with enough free time to do other things). But I wasn't able to invest myself into my teaching in a way that pleased me sufficiently.
Things have changed now. Starting a new school means that the good practice that I have established will need to be tested. I am confident it will adapt. And, moreso than this, I am confident that I will become the teacher (and the man) that I am meant to be. By that, I meant that I will be able to put extraordinary efforts into support and inspiring those around me, and will sacrifice all I can to do so.
But why not do so at 'home'? Why abroad?
Because I will not stop. I will gain the momentum that I have been lacking for so long. I worked hard, and I am able. There is a strange mediocrity here acknowledged by many. It is self-satisfied, and it is something to which I subscribe. Or, rather, something to which I did subscribe, for reasons not unsocial.
It is that knowledge of what to compromise, and what to be flexible and suggestible on, that makes me a man of my age now. As Covey says, the enemy of the best is the good. I am willing to be led on what might be the best.
When you exercise, it is easy to work with intensity when that session is intense. Without the intensity, though, that exercise is difficult. And that is the moment, I think, when a man needs to find other ways to keep going. More intensity isn't the way. Instead, it is a way to find the other day a day like today.
And so I can sleep knowing that tomorrow is today. And something changes with that. If each day dies, but it becomes part of another day, then my life does not become something limited to what I can do each day.
And I think what has worried me more than anything is how limited each day is for me (and for all others, inherently, too). The value in my actions isn't determined by the glamour (and grit) of working abroad. Instead it should be determined by the authenticity of my day, and by what value I wish to ascribe to things.
And to think that I did not want to write anything. Again, today, I do not wish this day to end. I do not really believe that the next day will be the same as this. I fear the death of sleep. Not in a pathological way. Just in a way that I do not seem to want to sleep. I seem to want to suck the last drops out of this day rather than lay in my bed and seize opportunity in the morning where I can.
This time of year is when the pressure truly mounts up on a teacher. Students are rarely taught time management skills, as the teachers who taught them rarely are too.
Time management is not a natural way of being. Essentially, time-management involves subverting your instincts to do that which is immediately in front of you in order to achieve something else. Pretty much all of what I am doing at the moment is subverting various aspects of myself in order to achieve something else.
I am subverting the furniture I have accumulated and the car I have purchased in order to achieve something else.
I have stepped back from relationships somewhat in order to achieve something else.
I have chosen to sacrifice more of my time in the evenings in order to achieve something else.
In all of these things and more, I am benefitted by the smallness of my life to date. I believe I would to epic things when I was younger. This was down to my imagination and my reading and my small travels rather than anything given to me. One quality that I am reminded of by these ideas is that lack of ambition given to me by my mother and my father. I see myself driving the quietly winding hedges that shadow the road near my childhood home as I write those words.
That smallness has meant that I, aside from what unchurched faith I have nurtured, I have felt sovereign over that which defines me. I feel aware of myself.
I remember in my rough-and-tumble experience of inner-city teaching (which I no longer do) that I passed a senior leader on some stairs. Having organised a fairly ambitious public event, she praised me for my endeavour. I politely accepted this, but felt little of the glow of her definition. Instead, her appreciation was a shadowy gloss over the reasons why I had given so much of myself to that task I had done.
And so this leads me to the real reason why I want to teach abroad. When I started teaching in this 'Good with outstanding features' secondary school, I would put most of myself into the experience. I loved my lessons, and they excited me. I remember my profound exhilaration each lesson as what I had conceived was lived into being. Of course, various reasons knocked the shine from the surface of my ambition, and that wasn't an entirely bad thing.
I detest the complaints of my school right now. Cynicism and sarcasm are essential teaching tools in order to manage, with due humour, the tension of working closely with others. Yet negativity is, for me, the inability to create purpose in what you do. It is the angsty ennui of the puppet, of the teacher who chooses to not define that which they want to do.
You can understand why, with the pressures of 'New' Ofsted and the like why that might be.
Ultimately, though, you need an excited leader with a profound and confident vision of what they do, and why they do it, in order to live through such times.
And that is a statement for all times.
My time at the moment is spent thinking more pertinently about my purpose. That, and putting things into piles...
One of the things I have wanted to do for a time is to reflect on the music that will be the soundtrack to my travelling and teaching (and learning, and writing.)
Here we are:
Gladiator OST - Now we are Free
The first is the theme at the end of the swords and sandals hit 'Gladiator'. The protagonist has died, and the film focusses upon his African companion who is free from his previous life. He tells his friend that he will meet him in their after life.
"But not yet. Not yet."
The music evokes a feeling of possibility, and of having fought for the choices that you can now make.
Gattaca - The Departure
An incredible film about aspiration and sacrifice, and of class and entitlement, this theme expresses with slow-burning potency the profundity of ambition. There is an embraceable loneliness in its slow strings, and a quiet dignity within its winding melody.
The theme could be placed at any point in the film. It is, for me, the leaving on a plane, and the quiet moments when a decision is to be made. And the silence ensures.
The Piano OST - To the Ends of the Earth
There is fear in travelling. I have chosen to give up the comfort of my home, of my car, of my circle of friends and acquaintances, for something that I cannot know.
The film itself sees a Victorian woman, voluntary mute from her belligerent will, sent to New Zealand from England to marry a man for land. Her passionate affair with an ex-patriot who has immersed himself in Maori culture changes her.
The theme itself sustains the melancholic dislike and distrust
Florence and The Machine - Dog Days are Over
A sociable, upbeat number, this was my running song for several years. It demands the effort and momentum needed to travel and teach with any success.
The first bridge is effective. "And I never wanted anything from you, except everything you had and all that's left after that, too."
I travel and teach because I want to give everything I have, including all that just before my limits. To go over my limits is, of course, not what I want to do.
Love is a Mystery - Dr Zhivago OST (BBC)
Welling the flow of expectation of new lands, new people and new life, this song begins with a beautiful melody that rises without pause.
It is honest aspiration, and yet soft with it. It feels flawless - a honeymoon song for certain.
Time - Inception OST
I watched Inception in Glasgow after completing a running tour. Like all great stories, it enhanced the control of my perception.
Time flows too quickly and seemingly without consequence on years like the past few. As I near the day of my death, I struggle to accept the comfort that I have already secured.
Instead I want to see how my perception can be something more indescribable. I want to defamiliarise myself, and my regular routine of cradle to grave.
A Design for Life - Manic Street Preachers
I am not poor, but I lived for more than a few years on £10,000 a year. I will be earning five times that in my new position.
I drive a ten year old car. I will not drive a new one. I refuse to travel extensively to expensive destinations (although that might clearly change).
This theme (appropriated by Sainsbury's) decries the notion of Working Class Pride: that people without education do not need to reflect on their future. Instead they have an unspoken nobility. Quite how far I agree with that, or how that fits into this selection of music, I do not know. But it does.
Good Enough - Dodgy
A quintessential British tune from the mid 1990s, this is cheerfully mindless banter. The band themselves folded after a surprisingly successful first album.
This song is reminiscent of ambition, "if you don't ask question, you won't know why" and "there is a bridge to the other side". Its light humming balances the intensity of other selections here. It loses itself in the meandering bridges, and becomes sentimental. But it is perhaps pleasing quaint for it.
Blur - The Universal
A underrated band (and they are hugely influential), this theme calls upon the listener to accept what will happen. It calls upon the days that do not build upon something: "when the days seem to fall through you, just let them go."
Like with the Manics song, this has been appropriated by entirely the wrong corporate entity (in this case, an energy company). I know some people who played the theme to an energy company at their wedding. It sounded great; it was the theme to an energy company.
This is more of a case of accepting the situation than striving for change.
Fix You - Coldplay
I am writing the song and artist names for each of these songs without consistency. That matters not - I am writing this on coffee after an immensely busy day where the whims of people wore away my will to even write anything.
This theme reminds of Japan, a place I have never visited. After graduating and working in a desperate school, I applied to work in another place (on a payrise to £11k a year). Most days after work I would cycle to the university and write and plan a teaching-adventure abroad.
This song evokes the distinct tinge of wanting to escape from England, with its failed relationship and its lack of prosperity, to somewhere where possibility did exist.
Braveheart - Main Theme
This was one of my favourite movies when I was younger. It is still dear to me now. When I was younger, I ran often, and far too much. This theme evokes stepping out onto an open road ready to run, misty breath and frosted tarmac underneath fit feet.
Those days might one day return!
The Last Samurai OST - Main Theme
Following on from my Fix You thoughts, this theme reminds me of repressed tradition gradually unwinding into majestic endeavour. I played it when I walked the cold fields of the fields near my frosted terrace in the aftermath of a time when I felt like my future did not seem as prosperous as my careers advisor made out.
This theme is the embracing of the exotic.
Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins
A beautifully geeky song by the band of the 1990s. Angsty possibility, and totally empty.
The Cave - Mumford and Sons
An incredible band, this song talks of aspiring to live an authentic life surrounded by dynamic and inspirational individuals.
It is a great running song, and literary, theological and philosophical allusions abound! One that can be played at any point in this journey with appropriate aplomb.
It has been a three weeks since I have last posted, and in that time I have secured a job. That understated opening does not give inkling to the life-changing consequences of that fact.
Or maybe it does. Perhaps I knew that this is something that I have wanted to do for a fair time. I have worked hard, and smart, for many years (six) and feel that it is time for something else.
Part of the reason behind this blog was to track the experience of attending the generic job fair. It wanted to express the hopes and fears, the dreams and desires of each interview I attended. It doesn't need to do that now.
My interview went well, it seems. Speaking as I would do to you, my reader, or (more importantly) to myself in the absence of other vindication, I said a few of the principles by which I live and teach. And this seemed to work. I found out a few days later that I secured the job.
The school itself was one of my first choices. I wanted an established school in a country that had a culture beyond malls and cinemas. I wanted high academic expectations. And I wanted it to be distinctly focussed on the NC (something that the job fair didn't offer so much).
Negotiating the package wasn't too arduous. It was appreciably substantial. More importantly, the settling-in package was clearly caring (and that, for me, is the most important thing as a new teacher). Once completed, I signed the contract and I await my visas.
In the meantime, I was offered to interview at two other schools, and I was offered a job (!) at a school in the Middle East. The good fortune of these alleviated the possible pressure of nerves elsewhere. So, my apologies if you wanted (as I somewhat did) the tracking of the interview process.
Thoughts for the future include:
1) Getting fit, physically, mentally and emotionally. 2) Planning my curriculum based on materials sent from the school. 3) Relocating: what to do about my car and furniture and the like. 4) Last meetings with friends: embracing this isle to which I may never return. 5) Telling colleagues and friends: especially with the threat of redundancies and creating insecurity in my students.
For the time being, though, I am happy to focus on the simple acts of the day: of chores, cleaning and working. These routines are ones that I want to experience elsewhere, to see if this body and being can function according to the principles I have chosen to follow.
Oh, and I have made a funny video I intend to show friends when I leave :-D
I have returned from the first of perhaps many interviews. It is late in the evening, and I wish to perhaps complete some yoga. But at the very least, I thought you deserved some notes on my experience.
And so, I received an email to interview early last week calling me to interview. Rather than be called towards a distant town, the invite was nearer to home. This was distinctly appreciated.
There is something called visualisation in the performance of top athletes. This is where they imagine what they control, and they imagine controlling it as well as they can. This is something I enjoyed in the days before. On the day itself, and during the interview, I couldn't help but smile.
The interview itself, needless to say, went extremely well.
Other interviews called me, too. And a plethora of jobs have been listed on the TES, too.
Amongst all this, I see that I have had to plan for next week, too. Fortunately, I managed to mark some on Saturday, and in a PPA last week. As a result, I am left with less preparation than normal. This means that my levels of stress haven't risen. That, and I have slept extraordinarily this weekend. And rightly so.
Something that needs to be realised about such interviews is that my purpose was not to impress the interviewer in order to secure the job. My purpose was to talk articulately about what I do, and why I do it, in order to see how rigorously I know my purpose. The cross-purpose (the job) was a fortuitous mix. Through this thought, though, my stress became excitement; I was the judge of the success (or not) of what it was I was saying. And while I was not wholly articulate, and certainly less so when speaking at length to others recently, I was articulate enough to talk far beyond the platitudes of careerists and travel-hoppers.
We'll see next week whether that proposition is vindicated.
A Skype interview has been arranged for later this week, also. That is a different experience, and one in which I am inexperienced.
If you are reading this, I would urge you to see your interview with a different purpose than just securing a job. In fact, I would want you to consider your teaching as having a different purpose than just that you perceive as given to you by someone else. You're reading this; you're more important than that.
