Why are we teachers generally a bunch of martyrs? Or maybe it's not that we are martyrs, we just have an overdeveloped sense of our own importance and the value we add to our school and our students. I decided it was time for a long-overdue update on my life at school. In the past 6 weeks (so, yeah, most of this term actually) I have had tonsilitis 3 times. This third time (diagnosed on Thursday morning) is by far the worst. Razor blade swallowing would be less painful I am sure and the sweaty, half delirious nights brought on by my raised temperature are severely over-rated. The question is - did I take time off school to recover? Answer- No. Well not any full days anyway. I did what most other insane teachers do and prioritised my health below my Year 11 English student's preparation for their Point of View essay on Nuclear Energy. So Thursday morning I managed to work period one and two and then went home, slept for 4 hours and did two hours of curriculum writing for the new BYTES modules starting on Monday. Friday I rang in sick but told them I would be in at lunchtime, again to teach my Year 11's so that I dont have to postpone their assessment task.
It is interesting that we have this stupid notion as teachers that we can never afford to have time off. This time of the year is particularly bad for teachers with senior classes as the Year 12s (and I have two of them) only have 5 weeks left of school and the Year 11s not much longer. Add to that my BYTES load and I really can't afford to miss school - I get way too behind. So you would think that that would make me be smarter about my health and look after myself so that I dont get sick. Right? Wrong. The reason I am getting sick is because I am so run down. I had this theory that I would find a balance this year and work 12 hour days during the week if needs be (I generally only need to work 10 or 11 hour days so that's not too bad) if it means that I can go out both nights of the weekend and do no schoolwork during the weekend. It has been working fine except that I am going back to school on Monday tired from the weekend and worn out and it is finally catching up with me. The annoying part is that I had made the decision to start taking it a bit easier and to stop going out on the weekends for a bit starting next weekend, but illness beat me to the punch. And boy am I suffering. I feel the worst that I have since I got glandular fever in 1998 and I am only spending marginally less time in bed. If this is what it takes for me to learn my lesson though then I can handle that. Everything in moderation I guess. I havent really had anyone to tell me that for the past year. So in the meantime I am spending this weekend in bed watching episodes of Scrubs on my video i-pod that a student downloaded off the internet for me. Hopefully by tomorrow the razor-blades will have become a little more blunt and the golf balls that are my glands will have gone down a little. Hopefully I will be able to get some more of the work done that needs to be done for Monday. Maybe one day I will actually be able to relax and put my health first... Keep wishing for that one... Pigs might fly too...
