One A Day, Day 38: False Start

I got it the right way around.

Normally, teachers surviving until half-term will immediately collapse upon finishing a big block of time at school, then be struck down with some mystery unpleasant illness, rendering them incapable of enjoying their holiday due to any combination of snot, sneezing, coughing, puking, diarrhoeaing, headaching or good old-fashioned exhaustion. I managed to get through most of the holiday without feeling too bad, with only what I thought to be a “stress cough” showing itself in the last few days, before developing into full-blown unpleasantness on the Monday I returned to work. Found myself burning up, sore-throated, coughing, clumsy and generally a complete mess. So I’ve had the last couple of days off sick.

Being off sick is always a strange experience. When you’re off sick from a teaching post, the feeling of guilt is enormous, even if you know you genuinely are sick. Of course, there are people everywhere who take the piss with sick days, but that’s no reason that the rest of us should feel guilty at taking some time off to recover. Fortunately, the one good thing I can say about the school I currently work at is that they’re pleasantly understanding about illness and don’t even demand a day’s worth of cover work to be sent through, unlike a previous place I worked. Yes, that’s right – one previous school I worked at actually expected you, however sick you were, to send in some cover work for the day. That didn’t help with the guilt.

Still. I will be back in tomorrow, worse luck. Not looking forward to it. The first day back wasn’t fun, though that was probably mostly the “not feeling well” talking. Going back again after the class having had a couple of days of supply teachers isn’t going to be any more pleasant. And the knowledge that the inspectors are coming back soon, along with a whole host of “monitoring” activities, is not making me feel any more positive about the whole thing – but at least there’s not that long to go. In fact, there are only three and a half weeks to go. By now, I don’t give a shit about the outcome of the aforementioned “monitoring” or the inspection, but that doesn’t mean I can just switch off from the whole unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, there’s no way of me “opting out”, despite the fact that my negligible contribution to the school will soon be a distant memory.

Oh well. I guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that the inspectors decide to show up after I’ve left. It could happen. But, with my track record of “luck”, it probably won’t…