1.3 Elsewhere is a shadow

Stop press. New season announcement.

I started this blog, this endeavour to live in a van and teach away from home, thinking I had four months in this tiny tin belly. Little did I know it would become eleven months.

I do a four day week. This gives me an optimal balance: 3 nights in the van, 4 days away from home; four nights at home, three days with my lovely wife.

That’s 44 nights sleeping in the van. That’s okay, I breathe.

Now it’s 73 nights from January to July on top.

One-hundred and seventeen nights in total. 117.

Exclamation marks are overrated.

“What happened?” you ask.

I pause. I don’t know how to tell this story. Let’s start with the fact I had two job interviews this last week.

One was twenty minutes up the road from the warm bosom of home, the other requires a DIY camper-van. What could go wrong? My head said, “Bosom. Bosoms are good. Stick with the bosom.”

My heart beat the loyalty drum. “Stick with what you know, you’ve managed two months in the van you can go the distance.” My heart is a competitive creature. It beats to the rhythm of challenge.

“Shouldn’t it have been an easy choice?”

No. No it wasn’t.

In the blue corner: A school I know. Colleagues I know. Children I know. Abounding affirmation from pupils and fellow champs. My love language.

In the red corner: A school, unknown. Twice the size. Twice the monster. Smiling faceless colleagues. Faceless children. A future on paper. Not lived.

I haven’t always taught in the same school. I taught elsewhere once. Elsewhere opened a door. Behind the door was a stairway into shadow. Colleagues were shadowy beasts, sneering, leering, lunging wretched wisps keen to find fault, find cracks, and all with a smile and a slip of paper reading “Could do better.”

At the end all I knew was I could not teach. I was not a teacher. I was less than I was when I began. My learning objectives sometimes took 27 minutes to appear. That was bad, apparently. It didn’t fit the checklist. I was the other. I was different and different was bad. I took pills, but the shadows were never dispelled. Not even now. After that I was a man with two shadows. One, my loyal partner, the other with breath of its own, a step of its own and a consuming stare that waits on every weakness.

Elsewhere’s scars are still felt. Still give pain. So, I was cautious of this new place. Even if it was close to that bosom. I can’t go to Elsewhere again.

I told them the truth. Why not? “I have another job interview tomorrow.” The school that restored me, I think. From mental dingy and back from the brink. The school that reminded me I can teach. Mental healthy. Told me my lessons are stunning. Quote. For real. That’s not even in the Ofsted vernacular. Special.

So I hedged my bets, cautious. Unsure whether I should risk it. There were some signs and they gave me pause, as they must. A text at 11 o’clock at night from the red corner was one. A TLR on the table, “but 24 staff uninterested?” I asked the question.

“They all have too much on.” The reply.

Oh.

“You have a great CV. All these things you’ve done. The TLR?”

I pause. New school. Midway through year. New children. “We don’t call it behaviour,” they tell me. So many ropes.

I think, but do not say, TLR posts should come from within not from the outer rim.

The blue corner, with arms wide open want me to stay. And it turns out the red corner isn’t interested anyway. An apology a day later. “We called yesterday. Employed the NQT. Left a message, but just realised not on your phone.”

A message is out there on the airwaves, somewhere. Elsewhere.