I like to make myself indispensable. In my previous school it was almost a joke with myself to see if I could get a message in every weekly staff briefing – a trip or club I’d organised, a talk I was giving. I liked to think I was important, and noticed, of course.
One crunch point in the life of a secondary school teacher is the run up to exams. In May 2011, I was second in English in a big department in an 11-18 comprehensive, and I was busy. There were three sets of exams to think about (GCSE, AS, A2), extra pressure and marking and revision lessons – we even ran exam warm ups on the morning before each exam, where we’d give students bananas and flapjacks and bottles of water, check they had working pens and highlighters, and remind them of key points to remember, like the timing for each question.
Preparing for a practical GCSE Drama exam takes things to a whole other level. As a Drama teacher you are director, light and sound person, stage manager, videographer, prompt, general organiser, on top of managing the students’ emotions, and running last minute rehearsals every lunch time and after school.
So having a miscarriage on the day of the practical GCSE Drama exam was far from ideal.
There were signs the day before, of course. I was bleeding but took the midwife’s advice to carry on as normal, and so did a morning of dress rehearsals/tech runs. But by lunch the bleeding was so bad, I needed to go to hospital. I had to tell the Head of Drama who could NOT HAVE BEEN MORE SYMPATHETIC and shared with me about her own two miscarriages and of course told me to go. And so I went, and then didn’t return for a week, which meant missing English exams too.
And do you know what? Everyone coped. Everything went on without me. The Head of Drama roped in her son to help and they figured out the sound and lighting that afternoon and then ran the performances the next day without me. The Head of English told me to take the time I needed, combined our two classes together and taught 60 odd students in the hall for their final lessons. I could not have asked for more supportive managers.
The students were amazing too. They’d been told I’d had a family emergency, and when I got back, in time to run the GCSE English literature exam warm-up, NOBODY did anything but smile at me. That Year 11 were a pretty special year group. I had a Year 11 form, and taught Year 11 both English and Drama, and so I knew quite a lot of them pretty well. I’d like to think they’d know I wouldn’t just disappear at the worst possible moment without good reason.
The senior leaders advised me not to tell the students what had happened when I got back, which in hindsight was good advice. I would have become tearful, and they needed to focus on their final exams, and not have to deal with my added emotions. But when September rolled round and I saw plenty of their familiar faces again (lots of them took English Language or English Literature for AS) I did tell them, because 1) I actually think that teenagers should know that miscarriages happen and 2) I wanted them to know why I disappeared like that at such a bad time. Again, they were lovely. One girl cried for me.
Fastforward a few months and I was telling them I was leaving again – to have a baby. There was zero resentment, no, You disappeared before our GCSE exams and now you’re going again before our AS levels! They were unreservedly delighted for me. One class organised a baby shower, complete with a pin the dummy on a baby game. One girl knitted a baby jumper. Maybe teenagers are always so generous spirited, or maybe they felt particularly invested because they’d shared some of that journey with me.
But I was leaving a changed person in one good way: I was leaving having learnt that I was dispensable. The school didn’t need me like I had liked to believe it did. I helped make a plan to cover my timetable, wrote long letters in place of parents’ evening meetings, set someone else up to run the primary transition visits, kept checking emails, but clearly they were all just fine without me. And I never even ended up going back.
Having a baby is obviously totally life transforming. Here was a tiny person utterly dependent on me. Again, I thought myself completely vital. And I kind of was – breastfeeding does that. The thought of leaving him with someone else for more than a very short time was incomprehensible to me. I looked at friends who would leave the baby with a babysitter and go out with their husbands, and would think with complete incredulity, But how can they do that?
But I had another lesson to learn here. We had a lovely childminder and my son massively benefitted from his time with her, and I ended up going back to work part-time (more locally, and without doing all the things that I thought made me so noticed and important beforehand). So I have to admit I am not so imperative when it comes to raising my sons either.
A few years ago, a beautiful friend of mine, also a teacher, died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving an 18 month daughter behind. Her death rocked our little mummy gang: we had lost a dear friend, plus the thought of our own mortality and the idea of leaving a small dependent child behind was unbearable. But, amazingly, admirably, her husband coped, and their lives went on. With help from family, friends, and church, he continued to raise his daughter beautifully, and now she even has a wonderful new stepmother who couldn’t love her any more than she does. My friend would be so pleased and proud. And it shows me that even in the case of child-rearing, it seems we are not indispensable.
Last night, my seven year old couldn’t settle to sleep, so I lay down next to him, and immediately heard his breathing change and felt his legs do that twitchy thing. It was a sweet moment, and reminded me of all the times I’d been with them as they fell asleep when they were little.
It’s lovely that our boys are growing up and becoming more independent. Sometimes I like to remind myself of how much they still rely on me - I do their buttons and explain the world to them. Other times, it’s good to remind myself that I am not as important as I’d like to think, and that it’s healthy to encourage them to move on from having me at the centre of their world, and to see them forge their own relationships and make their own decisions.
But for now, I’ll enjoy the moments where I still feel completely needed and wanted and loved.
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