Working from home blog #2

Brought to you by Hayley Draper

This week, as I sat waiting for my printer to work its way through almost 200 sheets of coursework for marking, inching its way through the printer and mocking me with its incompetent speed, I realised how quickly Christine would have done it.

I knew that when the doors closed 2 weeks ago I would miss my job, I love teaching. What I didn’t realise was the numerous silly things that I would begin to miss as the days ticked along, and hoping to raise a few smiles, I thought I’d share a few.

I miss starting my day hearing Kinsella remind everyone at 8.41 “You’re late! Get in your tutor rooms!” It’s a ritual and I like it. At 8.41 this morning, there was no such ritual, but I did set an alarm just for a laugh.

I miss the endless supply of cake in the staff room. With the lack of eggs in the supermarket at the moment I have had to make a cheesecake. It is not the same. Especially when it’s not shared with friends.

I miss the feeling of dread when the phone rings and it’s Helen. We love her dearly, but she puts the fear of God into us when we have a free on a Friday period 5. For the record, I’d happily cover one of those today.

I miss pain au chocolat during Year Team meetings on a Tuesday morning.

I miss hearing Fran & Kinsella singing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at anyone attempting to go the wrong way down the English corridor as they smile when greeted by a chorus of ‘turn around’. I am utterly convinced that children come towards them just for their vocal skills.

I miss Stuart wrangling the Year 13s to my lesson as they come up with their latest excuse for why they’re late or where their folder is – especially when one of those excuses was, “I’m late because there were a lot of pigeons by the door and I had to walk round the long way”.

I miss my newly found feud with the Maths faculty and the incredible musical collaboration that has been put on hold.

I miss being able to call down to the ladies in Student Services and know that whatever random thing it is I need, they will know where it is, what it is and why it is and they never judge me for being useless at using the printer.

I miss emails at night from Jennie asking us to pull off some sort of miraculous feat the next day and then grouping together and nailing it anyway.

I miss going through the Inter-Tutor Group competition each week to check we’re still on top, even if we’ve had a rocky week and know there’s work to be done. 

I miss Year 11 telling me how much they hate Macbeth but that An Inspector Calls ‘wasn’t that bad’. I miss telling them how proud I am of what they’ve achieved. I said they’d be a class that goes down in history – this wasn’t entirely the way I had planned though.

But what will continue to push me through is the sound knowledge that one day, not too far off, we’ll get this back and we will be all the more thankful for it, because wherever we are: we’re KC.