'An Adventure'

My BFF recently suggested writing a blog about teaching, and about leaving my job at a free school, and my experiences finding a new job. I definitely want to write more, and thought this might be good practice and good for discipline. Worried that it would be self-indulgent, I was warned that I just have to be self-deprecating and not take myself too seriously. The first is easy, the latter more difficult;  it's a key component of the anxiety that I've been feeling on and off since I started my PGCE in 2010!

It is time to deal with my 'issues' to do with confidence and lack of behaviour management skills, and for some soul-searching about whether I want or am cut out to be a teacher in the first place.

Do I want to stay in teaching?

Over Christmas, I had a semi-big argument with my mum where she said it was really good  that  I was admitting to myself that I'm just not cut out for it. When considering quitting my job before the Christmas holidays, my boss said that I had to decide if I wanted it enough to persevere. Both of these observations annoyed me. My lovely mum was putting words in my mouth, my boss seemed to be working on the assumption that it's okay to feel horribly stressed and to have no work-life balance to speak of. But what if they're right? What on earth will I do that's not teaching? (Those home-made cards for etsy won't sell themselves.)

Watch this space...

Cold

Sitting in a square, 
after an allergy attack,
head clouded. 

Your voice, cat-like, 
Scraping out from under my pores.

My eyes stinging,
Breathing shallow,
Water dripping from the fountain like TV static.

The wind has made me blind.
Your hands are too small.
My voice is extinguished.
I can never go back.

Thin phlegm,
wet on my nose.

Pigeons and small children,
curious,
march towards me.
The girl kicks the pigeon.
It wants to kick back.

A man in a suit
points his long ruler
at me,
measuring the ground
for a woman.


She now lets go of the tape,
and it scrapes round in a long curve

Come out and save them,
symbolic red dress lady.
The wind 
accentuates
her bum.

I might be going mad.



7.6.2012

This is just to say...

By William Carlos Williams


Plus a link to Trembling Blue Stars' 'Sometimes I still feel the bruise' of which there's a lovely Mountain Goats cover

The best conversation I had all day

...but not like that

nothing at all like

black cars

against

a body covered in white muslin

and scattered flowers.

Mourning families

respectfully distant

while

the vulture gnaws at the dead person’s flesh

on a ragged hillside.

While coloured flags

and symbols wave

and a soft clanging of bells.

On the way to Schoenefeld

The flock of birds rise and fall with my breaths,

Then swoop away in the thrill of it-

I'm a vase full of dirty plant water

Tangled in the many leads of black dogs.

Also...

What am I doing,

Talking on skype chat,

To you?

(This poem

is not

‘to you’)

Just a little sonnet I wrote before I went to bed (!) I quite like it, but then it's late.

23rd December

Over the past few weeks, there are lots of

Events I’ve wanted to write poems about but

Haven’t and probably it’s better, cos

Even I don’t want to hear about

Trying to catch his rancid breath in my

Mouth. Staff room panics and feedback sessions-

‘I was surprised that you kept going out’.

Stupid dreams in dirty beds. Goodbye-less.

Bugs. Voices: Negative ones. Changing pace

And now, Christmas holiday, not working as hard

As I should, though outside the sky darkens.

The sea creeps over the rocks and black sand

And I look out as I work, constantly

Wishing, yes, that I’ll be able to teach this.