When I’m in school it’s for 2 days a week. It’s a cracking 2 days a week and I enjoy is immensely. It’s a good chunk of my general weekly workload and it’s something that makes everything else I do feasible. But it’s also not that much of the week in comparison with those who are in school as full-time teachers. It means I have great variety of work and that I get to enjoy some really diverse activities on my other working days. Then, all the work I do is informed by my days in class. I get to meet lots of different people but I don’t always see them often and I don’t always know them well. ‘
But of late, I am finding out new stuff about people I work with in various guises and in various walks of life. Much of it is because we’re all connecting in different ways via ether and tinterwebs. And some of it is because I think we just have that little bit more time in the day. For me my extra time comes from not commuting. Granted, we are tag-teaming the Little Dude and working around that, so it does eat up a lot of my ‘commute-gained’ time. So I have a little more wriggle room to chat to colleagues on the twitter-machine or in Facebooks.
And it’s amazing. Today I learnt that someone I work with is an epic cellist. The other day, I found out that a lovely friend is engaged. I’ve had virtual coffee mornings with church folk, and learnt to use Microsoft Teams whilst in a meeting with people from the DfE and the Council for Science and Technology. And it’s proper chuffing cool. I’ve not had time, money or inclination for now to gain a massive new skill or to learn a new language properly- I really want to learn Brazilian Portuguese- I’d want to spend a month in the country so that’s not going to happen for a little while yet!
But there is stuff. There is stuff I’ve learnt. It’s not massive stuff. It’s not life-changing stuff. It’s little things about people, for people for work or about my doglets or Mr Dr Ross.
And for now, stuff and little things are good. They’re things we can focus on when we’re having a wobble in the middle of the most difficult thing I’ve ever lived through. And for me that matters.
I’ve been focussing on the small things and since the start of lockdown, each day I’m tweeting my positives for the day. I’m going to keep on at that, and I’m going to keep enjoying the little things, the little interactions and the small stuff that I’m learning about everything because that’s what I want to take forward with me after all this passes.
