A timer created

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 ready. Only just over 100 days.

Lifestyle Changes and Packing

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.

If I won't do it today...

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.

That is something that I will have to remedy.