breathing, control and work/life balance

At Tai Chi this week the teacher talked about the importance of breathing. There are not many things in this life that we can genuinely do without - food and water being the obvious ones - but oxygen. We're not going to last many minutes without that!

He talked about the importance of being able to control the breathe and how what was inside us was a microcosm, with everything else out there being the macrocosm.  When we learn to control ourselves - our breathe - then we may start to have a chance to have control over other things.

It made me think about the choices we make as teachers and the notion of professionalism. So often we feel 'done to', the analogy of FE as the Cinderella sector and the politicians 'play ground'. Like breathing, we take change for granted and this pace of change feels to keep speeding up, uncontrollably so.  With so much change being imposed upon us & with the seemingly never ending increase of work to do, we are just too busy to stop and notice, never mind start to think about taking some control of it. 

Taking a survey on work related stress today, the question that stood out for me was:

How many days a week do you take an uninterrupted break of more than 20 minutes (eg, without seeing students, preparing lessons, checking emails, etc)

the answer is: zero (although on occasional Tuesdays I have been know to have an actual tea break - but only since evening classes finished)

In my quest to recognise my work/life balance, and trying to take some control over my professionalism, I had been feeling quite accepting that I had a good balance. I felt that on the whole I arrived in, and left, work 'on time'. Experience has taught me that, if I need to work additional time in a week that I negotiate time in lieu for this within that week. Left any longer, this flexibility on my part will be 'forgotten' and the time would not be given back to me. 

But this question in the survey has me re-thinking this. If you add up my time in work, minus the break time that we (by law?) are required to take, then I pretty much work my 33.5 contracted hours. However, take that break time out (because in reality it isn't taken), and add the 30 mins early I arrive into work most days, then suddenly I am working 37 hours. 

Now, I don't think there would be a teacher anywhere that wouldn't admit to spending time at home marking. This seems to be an accepted part of the role and certainly something that I regularly do. It certainly isn't something I do every week, but when you have a class of 16 students (and this is a small class for many now) with assignments that average 30 mins to mark (and that's usually just the good ones), there's a full days work in marking per assignment. 

The other 'work' activity I do at home is what would very probably be classed as CPD activity - the reading, the professional discussions on Twitter and Yammer. As with the marking, the amount of this I do varies but it is certainly not something whilst 'at work' but is certainly something that my employer benefits from, even if they don't recognise it. 

Now, I have been told throughout my career that I have pretty good time management skills & I felt that it had been positively noted that I did a good job within my contracted hours. When asked how much work I do at home I usually say very little, which maybe says something about how I identify marking and CPD activity in terms of my job/profession. However, in my recent ponderings of my work/life balance I had been feeling that this had changed. Recently, when mentioned at work, it has felt more of a back handed compliment - a kind of 'how can you go home on time when I can't' and I have felt that there is a view that I don't pull my weight somehow.

My college has a 'Top Employee Award', where anyone in the college can nominate anyone else for being Awesome. Of course, in principle it's a nice idea. The more the college can do to recognise and reward staff the better & if this comes from peers then excellent. But looking at the (fairly long) list of nominees one month, it struck me that the names of the people I recognised were people who were known to put 200% into their job. They are the first in the office and the last out. Talk about the weekend is met with a rye smile as they say 'what weekend? I've so much marking.' Staff who have continued to 'work from home', while officially having called in sick (work-related stress maybe??)

It got me thinking about how there should be an Award for Efficiency. The buzz word of the moment is 'efficiency savings' so lets apply this to a working week. The Award would go to the staff who worked their contracted hours (only), took appropriate breaks (away from a desk, and even possibly away from the building!), didn't work from home - and still managed to do their job. In this kind of efficiency saving which aspects of the job could be cut? 

But back to the breathe. The thing our bodies do, unconsciously. My tai chi teacher talks about the health benefits of the dao yin exercises, but you can't learn to control the breathe unless you first become aware of the breathe. Telling my partner this week about how I was feeling about my work/life balance, and that I thought I didn't do a lot of work at home, he gave a little snort and a sideways glance. I got defensive and said I wasn't unhappy with the amount of work I did at home -  but maybe I am not as conscious of this as I think I am. I still have plenty of work to do to become aware of, and take control of, this & how this links to my view of myself as a professional and the boundaries of my professional practice. 

Pedagogy, politics and p....... (let's not let it be paperwork)

It was at the a NATECLA Y&H regional conference in 2012 that Rob Pertrell and Mel Cooke delivered their keynote speak titled Pedagogy, Politics and Professionalism. The event was a bit of a blurr for me, not only was I feeling the pressure of being on the organising committee, I was also delivering a workshop. I remembered the three P's from the key note - but always struggled to quite remember what they were!! Pedagogy and Politics I remembered but the third P always seemed to elude me.

I'm feeling a rather large slice of irony in not recalling Professionalism as the third P. So much of what I do is tied to this. Attending a Management Council meeting for NATECLA I recall talking to a fellow ESOL tutor about motives for being involved with NATECLA. For me it has always been very much around organising the conferences - I've always shied away from the more explicit political lobbying. Even during the development of the ESOL manifesto and Action for ESOL I wasn't actually teaching an ESOL class & didn't really get involved.

Professionalism for me is about having freedoms to explore new things, to be able to take risks and figure out what works best for my students. But I've never been good at doing this on my own & I've always been so lucky to work with enthusiastic ESOL teachers. Attending conferences is an extension of this, as is being engaging in Twitter, and it's good to be being reminded of this.

Reading Rob's chapter in the Twelve Dancing Princesses made me feel proud. It made me feel proud to be an ESOL teacher, to be an ESOL teacher trainer. It made me proud to be a part of NATECLA - a strong, professional organisation run by such passionate ESOL tutors, researchers and managers. It made me feel proud of the students & what they stood up for.

It's good to be reminded of this. All the more important in these difficult times; hearing one tutor talk about how it took more than half a day to register students for exams due to the complexities of all their needs and the forms needed to be complete. Seeing another tutor spending almost an hour to complete a time sheet - an hourly paid lecturer - matching the time sheet to the registers before the college would pay. Spending time outside of class re-writing ILPs to make them SMART & discussing the irony of how the more involved a student becomes in the process the harder it is to meet the college demands on specific phrasing.

While I ponder on why I wasn't/aren't more actively engaged in the P for Politics I have to remind myself that we mustn't let that final P be for Paperwork.

What am I assuming is stopping me writing

Thank you to the ever fabulous @Teachnorthern for asking this question. Here we go.
I spend quite a lot of time drafting possible blog posts in my head. At some point during my inner musings I get to the point where I think 'am I ever going to actually write this'. Then I start musing about why I'm not writing anymore. I have even had conversations about how many blog posts I've drafted in my head about why I can't write.

Sitting and writing. Of course this is the crunch. So let me set the scene. Today is Thursday. My 'day off'. The sun is shining. I am sitting under a large umbrella at the picnic table in my garden. I have a cup of coffee and a current teacake. Breakfast no. 2. Resting under my laptop is a large piece of paper where I have scribbled some layout ideas on how to create a wall display at work for my iPad project this year. Next to this is a very very new copy of Further Education and the Twelve Dancing Princesses which I received yesterday. On the bus home last night I started with the chapter by the Ever Fabulous @teachnorthern and Jane Weatherby.

In this chapter Jane says "I always used to think you had to grow cynical and then grow out of it in order to survive" (p. 68) This once again got me thinking about why I have become such a reluctant writer. It's not just that I've not written a post on this blog, but I hardly ever use Twitter and I certainly don't engage in dialogue there like I used to. But I know that my Twitter-buddies are still there. I have become a Mini Lurker. I will occasionally retweet something, but predominantly I lurk and read.
So I posted about being excited about the book. I think it is completely amazing that I am reading a publication by people I know and have lived through what they are saying (so far I've read Lou's and Rob Peutrell's chapter on Action for ESOL) This started a conversation with Lou with ended with her asking the above question.

I had no set plans for today other than the usual Take Child To School, Walk Dog, Potter Around House, Have Lunch With Bloke. While walking through the wood I once again found myself drafting a post about why I am not writing & musing about whether I would actual write something today. The dilemma seems to be thus:

This is my day off. How am I going to choose to spend my time. Work or non-work related activity? I don't think this is a straight dichotomy. Some things, such as marking, definitely sits in the 'work' section. But reading - where does this sit? I like reading, and I usually have a variety of books on the go. Currently I am reading a novel, a popular science book on maths and of course The Dancing Princesses. There are also online reading activity to consider - have a lurk around Twitter or read the Guardian? So even in my reading I have work/non-work choices.

This links to writing. I don't really have any non-work writing activity. So when I write I am always a little aware that it's 'work'. But I enjoy writing. I like the clarity I get from 'thinking through my fingers'. I am always aware of being professional online & the digital footprint I leave. I have purposefully kept my maiden name at work but used my married name for social media activity. This was my attempt to separate my professional online identity from my employment.  I make it very clear in my blog that views are my own, there is no link at all to the college I work at & I don't promote my blog to my students.

But of course there is a link to my paid employer. I use the blog to reflect on my teaching. Once I made a wordle of my blog and ESOL came out as the most commonly used word. I predominantly wrote about my ESOL classes rather than my teacher ed classes. But last year I wrote a reflective post about the highs and lows of teaching a teacher ed class. I used no names but a student found the post, recognised themselves and put in a formal complaint to the college.

When the student first mentioned the post my heart sank. They were clearly upset but I couldn't remember writing anything. My initial response was to say that my blogging activity was not related to my college work and it was not something I would discuss. Following the meeting I went straight to the office to find the post they was referring to and showed it to my (then) line manager. I was reassured that there was nothing untoward and told not don't worry.

But I did worry. I never meant to cause offense so when I came home I started to re-draft the post but actually decided it was best to take the whole thing down. I struggled to know how to deal with the complaint. It was hard to know if it was best to say the blog was not related to the college, the college wasn't mentioned, nor was the student named. I had all sorts of arguments in my head about how unfair this was. I never never meant to cause offense, I was reflecting on the course and actually most of the post had been very upbeat and positive. What I did come to realise is that there is an ethics issue with blog writing. When undertaking practitioner research my ethics statement makes it clear that tutors and students involved in the project volunteer to do so and can withdraw at any time. With blog writing, is there an ethics issue if students don't know they are being written about - even if they are anonynised. All the times I reflected on my ESOL teaching, the chances of my ESOL students reading it were very slim. Through the Digital Literacies course I ran I didn't blog about the classes as I was very aware I was delivering to my colleagues and didn't feel comfortable publicly reflecting about it. As the balance of my teaching has shifted more into teacher ed and out of ESOL I have less and less chances to blog.

Following the complaint I felt like my blog didn't belong to me anymore, it had moved from something I did to enhance my professional practice to something that was owned by the college. This pulled my writing activity from a blur between personal and work activity clearly into 'work'. I also think that as there has become a greater and greater workload while 'in' work I have started to feel resentful that I spend my valuable personal time on work related activity - that gets NO acknowledgement at all (but without I couldn't do my job as well as I do)
I tried to take control of this by shifting things around on the blog but I had a strong urge to shut it down. I even asked my husband to do this (his company hosts the site for me) but he (probably rightly) told me I should leave it and think on it. And so continue the circular arguments about whether I want to write or not. Last night I even wondered if I want to start afresh. Shut this down. Start a new blog.

So back to my day off. Before leaving to take the dog out I scribbled some ideas for a wall display onto a large sheet of paper. My rational for this was that if I got the ideas onto paper before I left I wouldn't spend the walk thinking about it. Returning from my dog walk I continued to debate with myself To Write or Not To Write. I busied myself with a bit of gardening, I pottered around my kitchen & had a bit of a sort out. I tried to put to the back of my mind how much marking I had to do & resolved to not do such 'work' work. Definitely not. Reading was an option - and The Dancing Princesses are singing quietly to me - and of course writing. Would I write on my practitioner-research blog (certainly closer to 'work') or write here.

Or create a new blog.

OK, decision made. Lunch time.