There is conflict this morning!
As my readers know, this blog is essentially about my experiences about moving to Kolkata/Calcutta, from the UK and starting a completely new life, learning a new life, with my family.
You may, or may not know, that I used to teach in the UK. I’d been in the profession for about ten years, if you don’t count the tutoring I had done before hand and I loved it. Yes, there were challenges and there were struggles and there were ‘dark night of the soul’ and all that. There were grumblings and fumblings, improvisations atop meticulous plans, there were tea and biscuits and strong, strong coffee, just to keep us going and at the end of it all, were the children who received and loved us and put us up there on a pedestal. There was no greater feeling when a child actually learnt what we taught, be it the beauty of words and numbers or the beauty of their own being.
It was an honour to serve, it really was, along with my peers who also were just doing the best that they could. Who still are doing the best that they can. I have nothing but respect for them and the profession.
But.
I’ve abandoned them, my colleagues. I wish I was there to fight with them, alongside them against the monster that is Gove and the present government. I’m watching and following the happenings from a distance as they strike repeatedly at the dreams and the aspirations and the verve and ideals of the teachers who only wanted to do one thing. They wanted, they want their pupils to win, to succeed in being the best that they can possibly be. The standards the government set are not relevant to an individual because an individual is just that! Unique, flawed, scarred with experiences that cannot be accounted for on levels and standardised tests set from ivory towers by men and women who do not know what it is to teach.
Leave the teachers alone!
Watch this video. She says it so beautifully. I had tears in my eyes by the end of it.
It made me realise that I have an opportunity to teach here and I really should just pursue it. Writing will go on. Now the floodgates have opened there is no reason why I should not do both. I’m discovering again…and it’s taken me a while, that this is ALSO something that I need to do.
Barely here nor there and quite firmly here and there.
http://www.pixable.com/share/5tFnT/?tracksrc=SHFAIPH3