We hit on some challenging financial times not long ago and one morning I said to my wife, “it’s time. I’ll go back to teaching full time and pull in the wage again.” To my utter astonishment her response was, “no, absolutely not”. She would rather us find another way to navigate our income than to risk me going back to the person who is ‘not present at the weekends’ or ‘too tired to enjoy life’, when I’m ‘not home in time for dinner at a reasonable time’ (her words, not mine). And she’s right. I was all of those things when I was working full time in school so it got me thinking about why I stopped, what it might be like now if I did go back and about some of the fundamental shifts we could make in the profession to avoid burnout.
How and why I stopped teaching fulltime
The initial reason was because my wife and I had just got married and wanted to go travelling for our honeymoon by taking advantage of the year-long working visa in Australia before we each turned 30. I was incredibly shocked (and honoured) when my headteacher at the time offered me a sabbatical (he’s always been forward-thinking, and I was grateful to work for him and learn what excellent education leadership can look like). So, it took me a couple of days to realise that I couldn’t accept the offer because I didn’t want to spend the entire time thinking and worrying about my job rather than enjoying the experience. As it happened, I spent the entire year doing that anyway, dreaming about school each night, coming up with new ideas for schemes of work and struggling to talk about much else than education. It turns out that the problem wasn’t just my job but my inability to create distance between my personal life and my role in school, because I felt like in order to do my best I couldn’t put it down – there was always something to do, so much potential for development and so many demands that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I had no perspective.
Having taken it for granted for the majority of my 20s, leaving teaching changed my relationship with money. I started to consider what I needed in order to have some financial security, whilst never again sacrificing my wellbeing. The result was a decision to steer clear of working full time in education because despite loving being a teacher, I don’t have the energy and the discipline to do that, to leave it at the front door as I get home, and have a life. Because it does take discipline. There will always be more we can do, new ideas, and changes to make in education, so in order to avoid the mistakes I made and temper this retainment crisis, perhaps we need to start teaching teachers how to set boundaries with work and how to genuinely prioritise what needs to be done, what someone wants to be done, versus what actually energises a teacher when they’re doing their job.
I learned that after a lifetime in school I don’t like the schedule of a bell and the monotony of turning up to the same place every day – my brain needs variety to stay stimulated and whilst no 2 school days are ever the same, I thrive by having lots of different jobs which is probably why I took on so many roles when I was in school (and then drowned underneath them all).
You also won’t find me in school on a Monday, because I don’t like that Sunday night feeling. The one where you’ve had a lovely weekend but then can’t fully enjoy the relaxation on Sunday night because you know you have an early start the next morning. No thanks. Sunday is now my favourite part of the week. And the things that light me up are finding innovative ways to break through a topic. Perhaps you can relate – teaching place value to children so they can multiply and divide by 10, 100, 1000. Some of them find it so difficult! I recently created a lesson using a deck of cards and loads of different pieces of equipment in the school halls and I told teachers to send me any child who didn’t already get it. By the end of the day, they were flying through questions in their maths books. Because I was in my genius zone, I was able to inspire kids to get into theirs. Teachers who are lit up, light up their classroom.
All of this is to say, whilst I don’t have the financial freedom I once enjoyed, I do have something far richer. Choices. I choose to spend time in school each week, working with adults and teenagers to help them figure out what’s most important to them, and what will bring them joy and fulfilment, so that they can understand the difference between wealth (having enough affluence to live and enjoy life) and chasing riches (the pursuit of money for the sake of money, assuming that it will bring fulfilment with it – spoiler alert: it doesn’t).
These are just some of the realisations that came from taking a step back and defining what’s most important to me and then building a plan to pursue it.
A choice or a calling?
Do you know what the hardest part was when I decided to return to education after 5 years?
It wasn’t the early mornings, the pace of the job, the endless marking and crazy assessment models, spending all day with excitable and noisy children. Nope. The worst part was giving up my adulthood.
By ‘adulthood’ I mean having the freedom to decide when I get a day off: knowing that I need a day of holiday, being allowed to go to a wedding scheduled on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of term, or in my case just being available to pick my parents up from the airport on a Tuesday morning or take a loved one to a hospital appointment. Working in schools doesn’t allow adults to take time off when they want it and it’s one simple thing to solve which would encourage many more to take up or return to the profession. In fact, despite knowing that there’s a retention and recruitment crisis in education, very few schools offer flexible working (according to a recent TES Wellbeing Report which said 50% of respondents don’t get flexible working but said they’d like to have it).
But teachers get tons of holidays anyway. Stop complaining.
If Covid-19 has (hopefully) taught us one thing, it’s that teachers damn-well deserve, nay NEED, non-contact time to recover from the pace of 30 children per day, and to catch up with basic admin tasks which get deprioritised during term time. It’s a huge misconception that teachers take school breaks as holiday, but because you don’t see them working at home (marking, planning, and lesson prep) or going into school during holiday hours, you assume that they’re not working the same hours as other adults. I wonder how many teachers would trade the extra ‘holiday’ for the freedom to take time off when they wanted or needed it. Like a normal adult in the workplace.
Being in school is the right thing to do though.
Is it? Which is better… A teacher who is in the classroom every day of term, miserable and resentful that they had to miss their friend’s wedding, couldn’t go to their child’s sports day or is feeling increasingly ill because they’re finding it hard to get a doctor’s appointment… Or, a teacher who misses a few days during term time and gets to share wonderful memories with their class about the beauty of friendship, who has interesting ideas about how other schools host events and actively takes part in them, or someone who takes control of their health and is able to see a doctor on time?
Teachers shouldn’t be missing valuable contact time with their class(es) because they stayed out too late the night before or feel too hungover to go in to work – those teachers seem to have no problem calling in sick anyway – and there should be limits on how often staff can be knowingly absent during term time. But the current solution is that teachers feel the need to lie, take unpaid leave, or hope that they have an understanding head teacher in order to have a life. How is that supposed to encourage more educators into the workplace?
Whereas offering Wellbeing Days – paid leave during term time – staff may well feel more valued, respected, and acknowledged for their contributions. Their professional integrity would prevent them from taking the days during exam season and it’s a small price to pay for the fact that many work unpaid overtime around this point in the year anyway.
The problem runs deeper than hiked airline prices
Offering applications for longer sabbaticals means that teachers feel able to be honest about needing a break, can let the leadership team know that they’re struggling without fear of a stigma, and can take comfort in knowing that they’re taking some control over their life rather than just coasting and taking their class on the ride with them. It is one small gesture that the education collective could make towards struggling teachers which might prevent them from leaving altogether.
But this idea isn’t all bells and whistles for teachers. The flip side is a belief that educators would benefit from more time in school without the children being present so that they can be creative together and come up with new ideas, take an interest in what’s happening in the profession and can embed new practices into their routine rather than learning about interesting research at a Twilight event then straight back into the classroom the next day with no time to reflect. Five mandatory days per year for training and development, most of which is hosted at the end of a school day when they’re tired, isn’t enough to drive focussed and sustainable change. Faculties need to start valuing that non-contact time as an opportunity to update their practice, learn new ideas and plan innovative curricula. That would mean a trade-off for one of their summer weeks to be directed time in school (which is what some teachers are doing anyway, they’d just do it at the same time).
Part of the problem?
The most fulfilled teachers I’ve met since I started back in school are the long-standing, part time teachers. They’ve established their routines, they enjoy the days they get to be with their pupils and they’ve chosen to stick with it, but most importantly (their words, not mine), they get some time for themselves. Even if it’s just one day a week, they’ve set a healthy boundary between school and their life, meaning they can pursue other pastimes from fitness, to writing, making music, or just maintaining their own home with energy and perspective.
In the 2023 Wellbeing Report from TES , they acknowledge that “burnout is a very real challenge,” so why aren’t we encouraging more teachers to work part time? Why is it incredibly difficult to get a part time role? And why does a teacher so often have to establish themselves as indispensable before a head teacher will consider their application? As is so often the way, the answer appears to be financial. Eight part time teachers are more expensive than 4 full time staff.
A vote for part time teaching positions
I find it amusing how much of an advocate I’ve become for part time teaching because when I took on my first Head of Department position every member of my team was part time or had a pastoral role which took priority over their subject position. Frankly, I was full of energy to transform the subject and had no playmates to implement it with. So, I understand the pitfalls associated with it.
Timetabling was difficult to get the right teacher with the right class, although software solves a lot of this for us now. We never had everyone at department meetings and staff briefings, however I now work with people all over the world and we find it easy enough to film meetings and require everyone to stay up to date with recordings at their own convenience. Accountability could be challenging when teachers shared classes, but it calls for tight monitoring and processes so that everyone has clarity over their role. Pupils had to adapt to multiple routines but they also had different influences if they found one teacher’s style preferable to another, and no doubt it’s more expensive to have more people part-time.
For the individual deciding to go part time, it starts with deciding how much income is required to live, and very few people ever take the time to consider it or work it out, but it’s fundamental when considering a successful work-life balance. Then, defining what you’d do with the extra time, what career success looks like to you, and what brings you the most fulfilment, all of which are really difficult things to give shape and language to. It’s why the Ultimate Contribution Uncovered journey is such a powerful one because it offers clarity to these deep, undefined beliefs that we all hold, but rarely get the opportunity to explore.
Ultimately, having more fulfilled and satisfied people leading in the classroom is an immediate win for all involved. When your boss is content, in flow and has the space and objectivity to lead, everyone in the business feels better taken care of, and the classroom is no different.
And why stop at teaching. There has been a lot of discussion since lockdown about the benefits of a 4-day week, which asks the question, ‘what’s the point of advances in technology if not to make the lives of human beings easier?’ At the risk of grossly over-simplifying economics, surely the profits being made from automation can be spent on improving wages so that people can afford to work part time in both the public and private sector. I’m certainly not the only person saying this and a couple of search terms if you’re interested in diving a little deeper are ‘4-day work week’ and ‘universal basic income’. There’s some fascinating research coming out for both.
Knowledge is power
Morphise understands that to be the best version of ourselves in the classroom we need to understand our individual desires and have opportunities to work towards them. The Ultimate Contribution Uncovered program starts with the leadership team in a school defining what’s most important for them, as individuals and then as a collective, so that they can effectively communicate those priorities and steer the ship.
The days of leadership teams setting improvement plans without consulting their faculty should be behind us, but how can teachers contribute to a school community fully, without knowing exactly what they want from their career?
We invite teachers and support staff to also define what’s most important to them, so that plans can be made to unify the faculty and get the best out of everyone (both personally and professionally). Highly effective professional development is achieved for truly sustainable outcomes because teachers who know why they’re teaching, and people who know what they want from their life, show up to work with more energy and motivation. People also work out quite quickly if they want to stick around and what they’re sticking around for. Namely, a leadership team who know who they are, what they stand for and where they’re going, who support a team of professionals to live into their talents and skills, and pursue a purposeful life, in and out of education.
If you’d like to find out more about how Morphise and The Ultimate Contribution Uncovered journey can help your school, get in touch.