I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a blog post for a while, but I wasn’t quite certain about how I was going to start it. However, I’ve been thinking for a while now about my first year back in teaching after my maternity leave, because ultimately, when I returned to work I felt like an NQT all over again at a new school and the whole experience unsettled me at first, but I did learn a lot of valuable lessons. (I did join a new school in the middle of my first year back too!)
I returned to work in September 2019 as a part time teacher on 0.6. I’d never been part time before and the conversations I’d had with colleagues were centered around how difficult it was going to be, that I would have to choose between being a parent and a teacher, how I wouldn’t be able to experience the elusive ‘having it all’ and that one or more parts of my life and/or career would suffer.
I’d been told this BEFORE asking to go part time, as well as during the first 6 weeks of returning to work, so this did little to boost my confidence about returning to teaching. I don’t know why people kept insisting on telling me this constantly as soon as the topic of part time came up. I was looking for positive stories, empowered stories; that said, I wasn’t living in an alternate universe. I was aware that the nature of the profession, adding to it a TLR and a part time timetable, had real challenges. I wasn’t shying away from those challenges, but I wanted to know what people who had gone before me had done when faced with those challenges, stories of what they would do differently so I could learn from them and use their helpful strategies. I also remember asking a colleague what her positive takeaways were from going part time. It saddens me now as I remember that she couldn’t think of any.
So I started my journey into being a part time teacher: a life ahead of me with no hope,no solutions, and no voice telling me: ‘You’ve got this!’
Now, that isn’t to condemn those colleagues who chose to focus on the negative impact of working part time, but I think it did teach me my first lesson after returning from maternity leave:
Lesson 1: Be unashamedly vulnerable with the challenges you face when returning part time, BUT be clear to balance ALL experiences and assert that these are personal and NOT necessarily the rule for everyone.
My return to work in the first term was bumpy to say the least, and if I’m being brutally honest, left me feeling untethered and isolated, as well as dealing with all of the complex emotions of leaving my child with strangers for the first time. I just felt like I was going to be another person who in the future would only have negative things to say about being part time: ‘You’ll feel more isolated than ever’ and ‘You’ll learn quickly that you’re on your own’. That was going to be my story too at the beginning. But it changed…
Why is this important when I’ve just said I don’t want to focus on the negative? Well, context is always important, but the difference is that now I’ll always stress that these were my feelings and my experience. I had, and still have, a daily choice to make. I can become the negative voice that breeds self doubt among already vulnerable parents returning to work, or I can be honest about my experiences but be helpful with strategies I have used to combat these, or things I would do differently. I think it’s helpful for people to know that they wouldn’t be alone in feeling either a sense of loss, lack of direction, confusion, pain of being overlooked or ignored professionally and sometimes personally. But THAT is where the balance is necessary.
Firstly, I learnt to reach out to communities and actively ask colleagues about their positive experiences of going part time. If they didn’t have any, I would ask them what they would like to see happen and work out a way we could tackle these issues together as a team. Community and relationships are important. Colleagues at work were helpful, as well as networks such as The MTPT Project.
Secondly, I reflected on these negative experiences and thought about how it built my character. I would say that now I’m firmer, more assertive and much clearer about my capacity as a person to complete tasks, as well as my emotional wellbeing. Although I would also say that my organisation and time management has reached new heights of efficiency working part time! I personally work to the deadlines of a working day. If it’s urgent, I’ll use before and after school until 4.30 to get it done. If it isn’t urgent and I don’t have a deadline, I’ll complete it for the next working day. But more on that later. (I’d also like to stress that this is just my working rhythm- lots of people like to work on their days off, evenings, and weekends, which works for them and I fully support that!)
Finally, I also want to make sure that I am there as a support and advocate for any future colleagues who choose to go part time; I want to be ready with useful strategies rather than negative anecdotes. I want to be the positive advocate championing someone on as they start back at work and adjust to a new working rhythm, saying: ‘You’ll smash it’.
Wonderfully, the new school I joined in the same year that I returned after maternity leave has been amazing at supporting me as a part time teacher with a TLR, ensuring that my workload doesn’t exceed my part time hours at the school, whilst still giving me capacity to grow, develop and explore new avenues of my leadership responsibility, as well as anything else I’m interested in. If I want to take on more things to do, I am encouraged to do so. But if I’m drowning, I’m listened to, not silenced or ridiculed behind my back. I feel supported. So not all part time teaching roles with responsibilities need to be considered as a negative experience. It can be done. You can still grow and explore your pedagogy and practice, and be fully supported as a part time teacher. I would argue that being a part time teacher has given me insight into how to manage workload in a way I never fully appreciated whilst I was full time.
Lesson 2: Don’t drown in workload or suffer in silence- reach out, ask for help and don’t feel embarrassed.
I am a perfectionist. I always have been and I probably always will be, and returning to work after having my baby as well as going part time meant that I had to readjust the expectations of myself. I still work hard but in the same way that I’ve been hammering into my students the importance of working SMART, I have also had to learn this lesson too. I realise how cheesy that sounds, but for me, I’ve found that if I don’t want to drown then I need to think carefully about my achievable workload. I use lists. I’m a huge fan of a list, both written and digital. I use Google Keep for my jobs to complete over the course of a week and written lists for daily jobs.
I think about things critically when I look at my workload:
- What needs to be done immediately/end of the day?
- What needs to be done by the end of the week?
- What needs to be done by the end of the month/term?
I find this helps me understand what is achievable. Don’t be afraid to share this with your line manager or other colleagues as well, if you feel like workload is consuming you. This is the other part of being a perfectionist. I view myself through the lens of success and I think that if I tell people, or even hint to people, that I’m struggling, then I’m somehow less of a professional and no longer good at my job. That’s a lie. I’m just honest. It’s also helpful so that if you are doing too much your line manager can decide for you what should stay and what should go from your list. Recently this happened to me and although I felt really emotionally exposed (I want to make sure that people have a positive impression of my professional capabilities), I was given an immediate sense of liberation. Some things were taken away. Some things were reassigned. Some things stayed the same. There was absolutely no judgement. It was amazing.
Another part of being a perfectionist was in my lesson planning and giving of feedback to students. I had always convinced myself that I needed to reinvent the wheel for lessons and had never felt comfortable adapting what was there. It was a point of pride. I almost viewed it as a weakness. Now I’m beginning to use and adapt other resources, and I still make my own because I love planning, but I feel more liberated because I just don’t have the time I used to have to plan. I’m now more trusting in my years and experience of teaching, and that is a far better asset for the students I teach. Going part time has made me flexible in this sense, and more confident in my own practice, but it has also made me more reflective, because now more than ever, I want to have a greater subject knowledge behind me to be able to teach my students more effectively.
I’ve also found that I’m using smarter ways of giving diagnostic feedback such as whole class feedback, and since the pandemic, I’ve been experimenting with giving personalised digital feedback through things like voice recorder feedback and Loom feedback. These are useful time saving strategies that still give students personalised feedback but don’t eat into your time. You can record a voice over as you read work and students can improve their work accordingly. Perhaps you could use a QR code they could scan to get their feedback or link it directly to any online work. I’m really excited to see how I use this even more as I develop my practice as a part time teacher.
I’m ashamed to say that being part time has forced me to think about the quality of feedback more by using the following questions:
- What is necessary to give feedback on here for this piece of work?
- How can I deliver this feedback with maximum impact for student outcomes but not at the cost of teacher burnout?
I say I’m ‘ashamed’ mainly because I hadn’t really given it much thought before going part time. I gave feedback because I needed to and wanted students to improve, but I wasn’t necessarily SMART about it. Knowing that my working hours have shortened means that the feedback I give my students has to matter. I don’t want to be marking for the sake of marking, otherwise my already limited time frame has been cut short by completing a task that lacks real meaning behind it. What would be the point in that?
So to summarise, working part time and having a child has taught me that I can still maintain high standards of performance, but I am also far more flexible and creative than I used to be about working smarter with regards to workload. Oh, and people appreciate honesty about workload, so be transparent from the beginning and set out your capacity. It helps everyone involved!
Lesson 3: Being untethered to a base/classroom is scary but see it as an opportunity for professional development.
Like I said earlier, I never knew how much I relied on a classroom before it was taken away from me. From storing books and stationery, to where I kept my car keys and my resources, it was the place that I could rely on to be my own corner of safety. Logistically, it was helpful; emotionally, it was necessary. Then I went part time and BOOM, nothing. I quickly asked for a base. I needed somewhere. Something to pin my professional identity on to. Somewhere to keep my phone. Somewhere to work privately. Where was I going to store those exercise books? But even that came with its challenges. I’ve done a mixture of things; I’ve worked in empty classrooms, staff rooms, workrooms, outside, hot desking in faculty rooms… It still feels unnatural. It was terrifying. I felt alone in my fears whilst everyone around me started their new academic year in comfortable rhythms whilst I started to get my head around how to teach, as well logistically how to work in new conditions.
But then I moved schools in the middle of an academic year and suddenly, my perspective shifted. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still completely freaked out not to have any real base classroom still, but there are perks, so rather than focus on the negative, I’m going to focus on the positive:
- No having to decorate classrooms.
When I first started teaching, decorating classrooms was AMAZING! It was an opportunity to be creative and to stamp my identity all over it. But now I feel liberated. I love classroom decorating but it takes time that I just don’t have. I’m very happy to be in beautiful classrooms that I can be free from responsibility to maintain
2. Digital opportunities.
One of my fears about being a peripatetic teacher was that I wouldn’t have access to challenge tasks or working walls for student to get up and find independently. However, I’ve now created digital ones of these so students have QR codes that take them to constantly adapting and changing challenge tasks and working walls for them to upload their work. Time saving, and ironically, useful in a pandemic.
3. Opportunities for independence.
Another fear I have is leaving students alone when I have to walk from one side of the school to the other between classes. Oh, the carnage that can sometimes follow! But, I’ve started setting my expectations early with classes that even if I’m not there straight away, they will have a ‘DO IT NOW’ or ‘BELL TASK’ activity that they can access on their Google Classroom, which should give me enough time to get from one class to another. Should…
4. Take what you need for your class.
I no longer take for granted resources in a classroom. Some teachers will have glue sticks, some scissors, some may have neither. So I always try to make sure that I have bag full of the things that I need so I’m not caught out. If I don’t need glue, I won’t take it. Or, I’ll liaise with the teacher who has the classroom beforehand to check availability. It means I’ve become more creative in the tasks I’ve set, how students present work and it has forced me to think more carefully about the meaning behind the task. If I can’t carry everything, is there a digital alternative?
I’m genuinely a bit excited now about the fact I’ve got a trolley and a cupboard next year. Initially I was apprehensive to still be room-less again, but for all the reasons above, I think it will make me a better teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably still be stressed out at times, but it’s all about maintaining a healthy perspective!
Lesson 4: Don’t be afraid to take on new challenges or opportunities- you have a lot of experience to offer
I’ve found that working part time and spending my two days with my daughter has been an eye opener for my professional development. Whilst out and about, or whilst she naps, I listen to audiobooks, I read more widely, and I brush up on my CPD through videos and resources online. I feel more knowledgable about my pedagogy and practice than I have done in years, even though I know there is still so much to learn.
I’ve also become more confident applying the things that I’ve learnt to my own practice, and it’s led to amazing opportunities to give in-department and whole school CPD sessions because of amazingly supportive line managers and members of SLT.
Like I said earlier, when I came back from my maternity leave initially, I lacked a huge amount of confidence, but slowly that’s returned, again due to the support of colleagues and the incredible MTPT Project community who championed me on, often without them even knowing it.
Part time doesn’t need to seem like the end; it’s a new beginning, full stop.
There are other experiences and lessons I’ve learnt, but I feel that’s enough for one day.
Maternity Reads and Thoughts 