When I began teaching 18 years ago, I poured everything I had into it. I started at a tough inner-city Manchester school. I ran after-school football and film clubs, and produced Shakespeare plays with 8- to 11-year-olds. I was glad to be observed 10 times in a gruelling five-day Ofsted visit (it was 1998). I put so much in and got so much out – I was young, single and I didn’t care about late nights and early mornings.
A few years later I moved to another challenging school down the road, as deputy headteacher. The budget was incredibly tight which meant I had zero management time and taught all week; this was before the luxury of PPA (the time that’s set aside for teachers to do planning, preparation and assessment work). I always had a foot out of the door and an ear cocked for trouble in the corridor – even more so when I spent a term as acting headteacher when the excellent head was in hospital.
I think that’s when my downward spiral started. I’d taken on a class where I had to field chairs being thrown at me, coerce one pupil from the roof and fend off physically abusive parents. I would become frustrated and angry when things went badly (being punched by a parent, the local authority demanding that results improve) and completely elated when things went well (transforming 30% of pupils achieving level 4 into 70%, seeing special educational needs and disaffected year 6 students performing Richard III).
Within three years, I hit a wall. I went back to my hometown, to teach in a successful primary in a leafy, middle-class area. I thought it would give me a chance to work in a less stressful environment. I was wrong. The pressure – in school, from the government and families – was different, but equally debilitating.
It was an outstanding school and the local education authority (LEA) had expectations. “Yours is one of the better schools,” we were told. “For us to reach our target, we need you to up your Sats results, because the other schools in the area are rubbish.” I’m paraphrasing, but the message was clear. I made an initial impact and was expected to carry the year 6 can. It wasn’t the school or the staff’s fault, it’s just the way things were and still are.
Each morning I would wake up feeling sick to my stomach. I spent my lunchtimes alone, sitting outside in the street, struggling to eat the lunch I’d prepared. There was just so much to do.
After a spell in hospital, I was diagnosed with severe depression. School wasn’t the only factor, but it tipped the balance. I was given months off work, saw psychiatrists and other mental-health professionals and had to fight to get back into the classroom nine months later. I managed it (in large part thanks to my now-wife, who I met through this illness) but it was a pyrrhic victory.
The next eight years had some highs – days when I really thought I was “winning” and that I’d taught well – but there were also more lows. There were times when I felt I was sinking; my to-do list was never-ending and parents irrationally expected their children to be level-pegging with their peers without understanding that people children learn at different rates.
When my son was born two years ago, I realised that family is more important to me than the increasingly demanding job that teaching has become. It’s more important than juggling targets and trying to keep up with the latest short-sighted initiative from Whitehall.
Now I’m a supply teacher, and am lucky that I can survive on the money. Half the wages, 10 times the happiness. I don’t plan, I’m home by 4pm and the job just pays the bills. And my mental state is so, so much improved.
I loved teaching and I miss it profoundly. But my mental health means I just cannot juggle all the balls necessary to be good at it. I demand a lot of myself as a teacher and the demands placed on the teaching profession – by local authorities, Whitehall, governing bodies, heads, parents – mean that I feel a failure far more often than I feel that I am of worth.
Secret Teaching: I love teaching, but I"m tired of feeling like a failure
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