brand new day

Rejection. Whatever the cause, it sits by your bedside waiting for eyes to open, full of a new day's sparkle. And then...blam...oh yeah, here I am ready to remind you that you is a failure, baby.

There I am putting my best foot forward and nope. nope. nope. Doors closing and apologies spilled over into my week like a melancholy waterfall.

So, of course, I went straight into 'sorry for me' mode. Gah, how rubbish can one person be. Here goes... I'd been killing it on the writing submission front by hitting two or three stories a week and of course there was the interview.  But how very quickly my hopeful heart sank when my stories and poems didn't make the grade and the job simply passed me by. Everything I offered was getting to the final hurdle only to be sprawled across the finish line watching the backs of winners.

My inspiration died and dried up all my writing. And it finally seemed like my teaching life was done for good this time.

Then off the back of one of those 'feedback' calls where you get to hear all of your faults, even though you'd realised them the minute you were driving home from the interview, things started to look a little more blue sky-ish.

Fast-forward and not only am I writing again, the sun's out and I am an employed teacher again. Go me, right?

Sometimes those doors need to close in order for you to find an alternative entrance. Challenges lie ahead but my head's up for the first time in a while, so bring it, bring it, bring it. 

It's going to be strange going back to the working grind after so long at home. I've had the privilege of structuring my own days, exploring my own dreams and spending more time with the girls and whilst that's not going to disappear completely, I am going to be a bit weirded out having those Sunday night blues again. Or then again, maybe I won't.

One thing I won't miss is the stink attitude from some people who cut me the side-eye when asking 'are you working yet?' as though I'm a fully paid up member of  The Farage Fan Club.  Unlike the lovely, lovely people who have asked about the progress of my writing - thank you to those people, I am still putting pen to paper and the dream lives on.

I am doing the running man in my garden right now. On my own. In front of my cats. They don't care.

it don't come easy

I'm going to preface all of this by mentioning that in my life before teaching, I worked in HR so I understand the need for thorough, well-written application forms. And after 20 years in education I also acknowledge the necessity for comprehensive personal details allowing for back checks and references.

However...

Completing a teaching application form is akin to walking though treacle... in cement filled boots.

There's all the usual personal stuff, CV manna (or mire), and the dastardly request for hobbies and interests. But in addition to that there is the 'letter of application' - I'm not sure if every profession has these - the (no more than two sides) chance to shine like the diamond you are.  This is the part that every applicant needs to work on; this is where you get to strut your stuff in short sentences, emblazon your personality across the A4 page and show off your USP-X factor.

But the other bit - the legal document bit, which yes is incredibly important, does it really need to be completely handwritten? Every time? In this day and age? With such electronic systems as DBS in our lives?

I know people who have spent the months between January and May applying for over 15 teaching jobs; that's 15 times handwriting your Economics GCSE grade and mentioning how you like to scuba dive with dancing turtles every third Friday.

Is there not a way that there could be a teacher database with our personal info, education history, employment history, referees and all that jazz held centrally which we access via a password in order to amend as and when. Then prospective employees could access your application details when you apply for a job, a bit like the way recruitment agencies work. It should only be accessed when you - the applicant - submits some sort of code giving permission for your information to be seen.

This is the way employees can access my information via the DBS update service.

Yes, there are wrinkles and crinkles that need ironing out - that's the job of super-brainy IT whizzkids.

This would leave precious time available for applicants to get their letter of application groove on because no-one should be completely judged on exams they did in the last century, in a stuffy hall, at a desk scrawled with their name in a love heart next to Barry, the Head Boy's.

do you know where you're going to?

I wrote a couple of weeks ago on the thoughts as the family took tentative steps onto new ground : visiting schools during open evening season. Fired up I was determined to search and destroy through every school in order to ensure our first born was given what she deserved. 

After a trip to the first school  I noticed BigL hanging back behind me; questions posed by highly enthusiastic teachers were bounced to me via her anxious eyes. This wasn't like her at all - the usual defiance and independence had somehow disappeared.  I thought little of it until GeordieLad took her to the next school open evening and was pleased to be regaled with tales aplenty of gruesome science experiments and the like. Completely different he said - couldn't hold her back, asking questions, getting involved. 

It became apparent that I was the difference between the two visits. Without meaning to, my stress levels and teacher-parent angst was spilling over into her experience. Friends may not have agreed with my decision to leave the rest of the school visits to GeordieLad and BigL (after all as a teacher surely I would recognise the signs of a good school vs a bad one?); but I realised that this wasn't about me. Look at my second sentence at the start of this post - there was absolutely no way I could hold back those feelings - that's who I am (no apologies - it comes in so very useful at other times) but I needed to back down and let these evenings be BigL's event. I think being teacher-me, somehow, got in the way of being parent-me; for her and for me. Plus I could check out the schools myself on open mornings. 

Anyhoo six rounds of schools visited and laden down with a forest full of prospectus packs she was done. Decisions discussed and ranked in order. So off she went to France with the school and here we were stuck with the online application.

The primary school process seemed a doddle so I thought I'll knock this out in half an hour ready for a glass of wine in front of the telly before I knew it.

Not so.

What a palaver. I can't even bear to relive it here. Suffice to say here are some nuggets of advice from my experience.

1. Keep your username and password close by - it's not something you'll ever remember and the amount of times the damn thing logs you out, you'll be calling it out in your sleep.

2. Save and save and save. Every time you stop to have a think about anything. Save. After re-reading and retyping our reasons for preferring the chosen school (optional) the system had kicked us out without warning and we lost all our prose.

3. Read each school's admission guidelines prior to starting the application and don't be naive enough to think each school within a borough or city would be as daft enough to have the same guidelines. Ha. We didn't - and hour one online passed slowly.

4. Have any arguments about which school should go at number 3 and 4 (or 5 and 6) before you log in. School admission systems do not wait for parental conflict, they just log you out. Wine was now poured despite being mid-application.

5. Hire a writer to scribe your (optional) reasons for choosing preferred school. That way you won't sound like a crawling licky-bum type arty-farty parent who will bully their way onto the school governors' board, when all you want to say is - "look you have a great school, my kid's great and I think they'll do really well at your school so please, please, please take her". Failing that type it out on a word document, save it, leave it a day, come back to it, pop it on the application form, SAVE it and forget about it until March.

By the way this whole October application, response in March deal. I wonder if I can apply for compensation for the amount of wine and chocolate I will consume in that time in order to 'forget' about said process?