Feeling the Fear

Nine days in and I'm pausing for breath.  A nice, deep one.

In so many ways the job has started really well.  Everybody is more than friendly, the kids are so pleased to have a permanent drama teacher and the cleaning out of someone's years of crap collecting works well for a serial binner like me.

Why then am I finding it so hard?  I'm not such a tough cookie as I thought.  In many ways a department of one suits me very well.  Everybody in my department accepts my decisions on the first vote.  Everyone in my department gets their shit done when its meant to and everyone in my department seems to agree on the best way of things being run.  It is however, the tiniest bit lonely.  It is horrendously tempting to stay shut in away in cupboard at all times as there is so much work to do.  Why bother eating my sandwich whilst trying not to make conversation with my mouth full in the staff room when I could be happily writing drama grading criteria on my own in a cupboard with crumbs all over my face.  Oh...

I haven't found my deviant mates yet.  I know they must be out there (surely, surely?!)  It is good that the colleagues that you meet in a school seem friendly, yet professional and sensible.  That means they are good teachers.  Even I can pull that one off with advanced acting skills.  However, there seems to be no element of naughtiness I can sniff out so far. Everybody is extraordinarily good at their jobs and very keen.  4pm on a Friday I am in the pub with my Beaumont colleagues lying face down on a table emptying a bottle of rose in five minutes.  What worries me is that this is also the nearest pub to my new school and yet the other guys are not there.

I'm getting all sorts of advice from every area of my life:

'Take cans of gin and tonics to the staff rounders match.' (Shelley)

'Screw the lot of them and do your own thing.'  (Dad - note why he never entered the world of teaching).

'Liven up T&L briefing by arriving with a bottle of fizz.'  (The Greek.  8.15am I may add)

A gorgeous friend from Beaumont yesterday told me that it is good to shake things up and try somewhere different.  Beaumont is like family, said she, and lots of people never end up leaving for the wrong reasons.  She is so right.  However, I love that family, they took me, warts and all, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.  I will cut the umbilical cord, soon; get me to September and I'm sure I will have found the new school Friday boozing haunt and won't even remember the family names.

Maybe...  Just maybe...

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