my uncomfortable life

Tags

2019, 6*, abandonment, activity, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breakdown, broken, career, closed, compromise, contentment, context, Dad, disappointment, expectation, experience, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, frustration, greed, hope, injustice, laziness, life, management, no voice, people, politicians, powerlessness, Principal, requirement, resentment, self-cherishing, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-esteem, slogans, society, spin, teaching, thought, Tony Blair, turmoil, waiting, words, work

                I did not know contentment
                at work, what was required,
                what I thought, I never wholly
                got my teaching … sorted

                turmoil, and even when not
                outwardly angry, I was
                closed off and unapproachable,
                carrying anger and resentment

                like a thorny bush tied
                to my back since Dad left
                and people were ‘phony’ and
                society was stupid and words

                were insincere and all activity
                was a compromise and my equals cheated
                and laziness was always greedy
                and hope was rude and the politicians

                were tricksters and Tony Bliar
                and managers slogan-shifted like there was no tomorrow
                and the Principals
                wouldn’t know what to do with good practice if it writhed around suggestively on their desk in front of them and made them delicious promises of future dangerous liaison                      

                and by default I am
                at least disappointed, usually frustrated
                and often impotent-angry with them
                when they invariably reference me

                (and they always reference me)
                or when I am actually wronged,
                and then I’ll blow, beyond all immediate context
                because I have already been smouldering,

                waiting for the wrong to happen,
                expecting the wrong to happen,
                experiencing the wrong happening
                even before it has manifested;

                and I am right, it is wrong
                and compromised and greedy and unprincipled
                what they have done, even
                when they haven’t

                given expression to it, in fact
                especially when they haven’t
                given full expression to it
                and are sloganising and spinning

                that what is happening
                is entirely something else;
                and the powerlessness of
                not being able to have a voice

                no appeal to a universal
                right and wrong … built me up
                with no recourse and, I get broken;
                look at my tired eyes – my uncomfortable life

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment wormhole: south horizon
breakdown wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
career wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
compromise wormhole: raised brow
Dad wormhole: the reach turned to love
eyes wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
life & society wormhole: the old man;
management wormhole: how to teach
people wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
teaching wormhole: and … // … sound
thought wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
waiting wormhole: all // are // none
words wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
work wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873

 

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just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …

Tags

2013, 2016, 6*, accountability, air, breathing, broken, career, dialectic, encounter, experience, fantasy, oxymoronic, pavement, practice, Principal, recognition, results-led education, sidelined, skill, slogans, staring, talking, teaching, time, voices, words

                just saying, is all VI

                agh; the Principal
                walking this way
                can’t avoid it have
                to talk to him; ‘how

                ARE you?’; and to
                my reclacitrant ‘OK’
                he tells me my
                experience and skill

                count for a lot and
                I walk away staring
                at the edge of the
                pavement trying to

                fit the words to
                decades of sideline;
                why didn’t I just
                scream in his face

                that his word and
                his breathing are
                oxymoronic to each
                other as I so often

                fantasise doing; but
                I am broken by this
                place in which these
                OK-spores are air,

                I have no leverage
                of dialectic from
                which to speak, so
                easy to evade my lob

                and practice by
                referring the Briefings:
                ‘a little precious’, ‘not
                a team player’, ‘ask him

                about his children’,
                ‘doesn’t affect results’,
                ‘doesn’t make sense’;
                smile and shift-agenda,

                endear by using his
                own name, slip in a
                Slogan and, there,
                a free and frank

                exchange which
                has left me accountable
                for my own outbreath
                …

 

as of September 2016 I am retired early from teaching – without prejudice – because I could no longer find any more inbreaths to keep practising; the encounter happened about three years previously, the humanomanagerialasphyxia virus took hold about 2001 beginning an odyssey with no resolve; now I teach myself to breathe again by embracing … no resolve; the next ‘just saying, is all’ will be about life inside the plastic bag over my head, I know it, I’ve written in, I’ve breathed it

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & teaching wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
breathing wormhole: sleep now
career wormhole: travel
practice & time wormhole: interim
recognition wormhole: happen//ing
results-led education wormhole: teached / in the ass
talking wormhole: familiasyncopation
voices wormhole: did I get old?
words wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya

 

listen willya

Tags

2012, 7*, allowing, anxiety, budget, buildings, business, care, communication, consumerism, creativity, David Cameron, education, evaluation, exploration, extension, flag, Have, history, inclusion, innovation, investment, justice, knowledge, learning, lesson, life, listening, love, management, Margaret Thatcher, market, money, nurture, ownership, politics, privatisation, professionalism, prospect, public service, public service cuts, reform, slogans, society, speech, statistics, status, talking, teaching, time, tolerance, Tony Blair, understanding, value-bled education, value-led education, values, vision, wisdom

                                listen willya

                David Cameron, Tony stupid Blair, Margaret bloody Thatcher,
                and all your snivelling Secretaries of Career, and learn this, now –

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

                you’ve created a RIGHT MESS trying to make it go
                and you’ve spent a QUARTER CENTURY trying to make it go

                trying to work it out with long division, taking everything apart
                to make it go; it just has no value anymore

                nothing has any value anymore, no one cares anymore, we are
                all just anxious; dy’know

                you said KUE* every lesson, I said don’t be so silly,
                I spent five years making it work, I said I’ve made it work

                you said don’t be so silly – it doesn’t influence the statistics;
                I have to go to school now and pretend I’m a professional

                in all sorts of ways to make it look like it goes,
                but it just doesn’t; y’know we’re going to have

                to start all over again if we want anything like education in society again,
                right back to the drawing board; and no history; let’s see –

                                                           _creativity_
                                              nurture ) education

                                               exploration_
                                listening ) education

                                                          _wisdom__
                                              tenure ) education

                           _inclusion_
                vision ) education

                                                                    _innovation_
                                              management ) education

                                                    _extension_
                                exploration ) education

                                 _allowing_
                creativity ) education

                                                            _tolerance_
                                              wisdom ) education

                                                       ___love___
                                              care ) education

                                   _prospect_
                investment ) education

                                        __justice_
                                love ) education

                oh I could go on and on; and – no offence – but stuff your statistics
                and your statuses and your budgets and your slogans

                and your privatisation and your reform, screw them up
                into one huge ball and throw them

                in the bin, and let’s just have some
                honest communication now; you, all of you, went wrong

                as soon as you thought that public service should be value for money,
                (should save money, should make money), but no –

                                               ___don’t go!___
                                business ) public service

                a society that is alive, and rugged, makes money
                to build public service, not own it, to run public service,

                not demand of it, gives service to the public, not a market,
                gives life to society, not just consuming it

                you lot don’t know the first thing about big society, none of you,
                public service should absorb money, it should be

                soaked with money, it should lose money: the only reason
                money should exist is for public service,

                because the service it gives is always far more important
                than a big building and a flag;

                so, stop playing your endless games of balance and measure –
                you’re wasting far too much human –

                and start saying something alive, start doing something truthful;
                c’mon now, you look ridiculous

 

* Knowledge Understanding Evaluation

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

it might well be that the above format won’t make any sense if you are anywhere under the age of 45: it is the revered and ancient way of setting out division calculations in Mathematics; it ‘reads’, “business [divided into] education [=] don’t go”, where you might more readily have “5 [divided into] 60 [=] 12” … the result appears ‘on top’, leaving the space below to do the working out of long division (“17 [divided into] 43.6299 [=] 2.56646470588”; ‘show your working-out, boy’ thwackk)

I first wrote this in 2012 when there was industrial action over teachers’ pay and conditions – just about the time I started completely losing my emotional marbles at work; I have slightly reconfigured the piece and re-posted it on the day that the NUT is taking industrial action over teachers’ workload, pay and budget cuts: what does the government respond: ‘we are spending more than ever on education’!? … ‘show your working-out, girl’ thwackk!!!

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

allowing wormhole: need
anxiety wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
buildings wormhole: the policies came to nothing
communication & politics wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
creativity & life & love & society & teaching & time wormhole: ashramas
education wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
evaluation & understanding wormhole: the Apple
Have wormhole: Jericho
history wormhole: currency of generations
justice wormhole: dedication
knowledge wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
learning wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
listening wormhole: plop!
management wormhole: dry rot
money wormhole: tired
professionalism wormhole: dash
speech wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
talking wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
value-led education wormhole: Totnes
values wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,

 

aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …

Tags

2012, advert, assessment, belief, boredom, bureaucracy, education, education system, educational behaviourism, expectation, identity, learning, measure, process, processor, program, pupils, relevant, slogans, speech, system, targets, teaching, training, uniform, virus, water

 

 

 

                                              aghh – we’ve been infected
                                              it’s spreading through the system
                                              we’re losing our files …
                                              it’s taken out the processor …
                                              I, I can’t open with this program anymore …
                                              it’s scanning me –
                                              I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program
                                                              from it …

                we process education
                                and pupils get measured
                we condition education
                                and pupils find their selves
                                defined or confused
                we target education
                                and pupils lose their trajectory
                we measure education
                                and pupils believe it
                we make education relevant
                                and pupils get bored
                we sloganise education
                                and pupils wear uniforms
                we teach education
                                and pupils ‘don’t get it’
                we teach learning in education
                                and pupils just remember
                                at best or not
                we train ourselves in education
                                actually we don’t anymore
                we workshop education
                                and pupils fill out forms
                we expect in education
                                and pupils leak like water

                here and there a teacher teaches
                                and a pupil learns
                but that soon stops because everyone
                                is too busy
                we teach, pupils learn … something
                                but there is no
                                education

 

I published this a while ago and no one noticed it – it probably went in to most peoples’ spam box; as I go through my haemorrhage from school some of these pieces will re-surface, I’m afraid … wait ’til you see ghosts with opened wounds again – it’s coming, can’t you hear it rattle; ‘well no, that’s the whole point!’ …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

education wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
identity wormhole: my / superpower
learning wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
speech wormhole: impressionism
targets wormhole: just saying, is all – III
teaching wormhole: dream career // groggy
water wormhole: clouds

 

… anymore

Tags

2014, advertising, brick, building, career, educational behaviourism, identity, infrastructure, lintel, loss, managerialism, message, politics, public service, shadow, slogans, sound, speech, teaching, time, value-bled education, values

 

 

 

                      this velvet coup worming
                      silent and diseased through
                      all possible infrastructure of
                      any manner of public service

                      I was
                      once good then I refined and developed
                      over 27 years to become
                      barely satisfactory; my values and value

                      shadowed away under something, sounded like crisisinourmidst
                      (New Improved Formula – whiter than white, kills all known germs –
                      dead) under some hammered-up dry-walling – forgotten and mouldy –
                      listening to the bish-bash-bosh of Educational Behaviourism

                      being delivered (reverse lights, hazards, weird-sounding alarm
                      with patently self-obvious message; beware)
                      and wondering why I cannot control a class the way
                      I used to when I am not in the same room

                      but they hammered and they plastered
                      on time with only the cheapest materials – some nails
                      bounce out of the batons, some corners crumble, held by noxious sealant
                      (… oh, I see, Work Experience, Giving Young People a Future)

                      so that by the time it all comes down
                      (and it’s … justabouttocracking) the damp
                      will be all through the bricks and lintels and no one
                      will remember how to stagger bonding to begin anew …

                      … anymore

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: CV
identity & speech wormhole: block ‘n’ role
managerialism & politics & teaching values wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
shadow wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
sound wormhole: 1963
time wormhole: Summertime, 1943

 

just saying, is all – III

Tags

2012, 2014, 3*, accountability, achievement, assessment for learning, career, CPD, dialogue, education, funding, GCSE, inclusion, intervention, love, measure, National Curriculum, nurture, outcome-led education, planning, politics, process, professionalism, public service cuts, pupils, results-led education, school, slogans, statistics, subjects, targets, teachers, teaching, vocation

 

 

 

                                                                                    just saying, is all – III

                                              I watched the first generation of pupils sit their GCSEs

                                              then I watched the National Curriculum
                                find a gear
                and crunch-jerk launch the level system of attainment
                                across all the subjects
                                              then I watched the whole dialogue –
                political and educational
                                and the funding that went with it –
                                              shift from process and nurture
                to outcomes and statistics

                                and then I felt the reform of teaching professionalism
                and watched the proliferation
of endless sheets of planning, four – part lessons, Assessment for Learning, Ready for Learning, Every Child Matters, Inclusion, Continuing Professional Development, targetting, intervention, Boulders into Pebbles, Investors in People, accountability, Achieving Together, Be a Part of It, G₂O                      
                                the unforgettable 2 As & 2 Bs
                the Freedom to All Think Along the Same Lines (glorious times)
(and I’m really looking forward to the innovative work to be launched soon by Professor Cobbly from the prestigious University of Fisc’ut, Corporateshire, (not least of all because he happens to be my uncle))

                                              and all the while
                                those who work hard achieve well
                                              in the wash
                those who don’t don’t whether they are intelligent or not
                                if they are going to be angry or lazy
                they will find a way to be so
                                              whether you teach them to their very marrow
                                or just let them alone

                                              most teachers
                                just get through their career
                all of them measured to within an inch of their vocation
                                some keep their love
                                some make a difference
                                              sometimes
                                when no one is … measuring

                                              all kids
                                just get through school
                                most kids do OK
                                some kids thrive

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
education & results-led education wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
love wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
politics wormhole: my life is not your market
professionalism wormhole: the Lamp
teaching wormhole: which is worse

 

that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*

Tags

2012, 5*, April, career, consistency, faith, grey, hope, identity, managerialism, professional development, recognition, red, religion, slogans, teaching, waiting

 

 

 

                                                                          that’s me
                                           in the corner that’s me in the spot light
                                                    losing my religion*

                                   I lost my faith in 2005
                                   against a grey-red wall with
                                   only clutter and no hope
                                   that teaching was of
                                   any contact on a day
                                   in April after waiting
                                   four long years for
                                   response to my call
                                   and hearing only
            slogans and standards while you
                                                   you were all busy and pressed
                                   being consistent

 

*yes, yes, of course; lines from ‘Losing My Religion‘ by R.E.M – I do not claim that I wrote these words (and I certainly don’t make any money through publishing them on my blog – *ironic emoticon*), just that I nicked them because they fitted so well as the title to the experience I had died through and the piece I had written ‘to see if I still feel’ (I didn’t write those last words either, if you can tell me who did I will award you one of the left over No Prizes that I never won during the Mighty Marvel Age) but that the words pervade the fabric of my dysfunctional relationship with teaching like the smell of cooked cabbage is mine, wholly mine, I tellya

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career & managerialism & professional development wormhole: … just saying is all I
grey wormhole: I glimpse above the rooftops
identity wormhole: no quota too empty / no fate to fulfil
recognition wormhole: lost self
red wormhole: …still waving!
teaching wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
waiting wormhole: waiting

 

in verse / question / m a r k ?

Tags

2012, 4*, being, doing, identity, life, mauve, mirror, offer, olive, samsara, settling, slogans, society, voices, world

 

 

 

                                                                                    in  verse
                                                                                    question
                                                                                    m a r k ?

when I try to make my play I am wronged even while I am preparing while the
whole world shuffles and shifts slightly uncomfortable (although bravely
facing up to the gloopy mauve-olive snot of ‘we’re all in this
together’) while easing my offer carefully to one
side I am rendered ‘by the way’ and always
find myself on the other side of ‘how
things are’ ‘just one of those things’
‘how things are done’ ‘things have
changed’ I will never play my make
I have tried to make it play for all my
wilful life strung along by ‘maybe this time’
but only gathering ‘it’s not what we need’ to my
identity face it, boy, I will never be needed and I’ll never
find the party I should be where I am and not try to make the play
where each attempt mirrors me back fractured.   I should dwell apart whole …

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & settling wormhole: tired
doing wormhole: practising
identity wormhole: and
life wormhole: update
mauve wormhole: Infantino world
mirror & olive wormhole: … still waving!
samsara wormhole: Have what, now?
society wormhole: Child of Illusion
voices wormhole: only
world wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually

 

The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

Tags

Academy status, capability, career, compromise, consultation, government, money, obligation, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, recognition, slogans, teaching art, teaching craft

Preface: the UK government is driving all sorts of misery right through the art of living in the name of preparing national life for the future and responding to The Economic Situation That We All Find Ourselves In!!!   Nowhere more so than in public service, and most keenly felt by myself in Education, where the reform seems to be aimed at disenfranchising the professional teacher from the very exercise of their own skill: teaching.   Schools are being put in a position whereby they have become reliant on providing an education service which can only run on various extra fundings (erstwhile specialisms); the fundings have now disappeared – ‘wail, what can we do?’ – and ‘never fear, we offer you … Academies’.   With what seems a lot of money – we were made an offer we couldn’t refuse.   However, legally, these Academies have now haemorrhaged from local authority control – big saving of money.   Management of Academies has devolved to the Academies themselves.   “Freedom,” bannered our school when it became an Academy at the beginning of this year (‘aha,’ I thought ‘this could be creative’) “… to all think along the same lines” (‘wail’).   Towards the end of this year the government has made proposals that Performance Management (through which a teacher is targeted and measured how well they do their job) and Capability Procedures (through which a teacher goes if their work is perceived as inadequate) should be grafted together into one procedure.   Our Review would henceforth start with the check to see if we are still capable, and that if there is the slightest question over any aspect of our performance our review would suddenly become a struggle for our jobs.   Our Academy would like to take this up.   We have a period of consultation.   The following is what I offered to the discussion:

Of course the government document highlights and emphasises that grafting performance management and capability is the way forward in management of teachers.   The ‘way’ ‘forward’ is to streamline the teaching workforce into a unified cadre of Education Deliverers and the only way to do this is to nullify teacher thought and experience – the very vocation that has moved a person to turn their life to teaching in the first place – to sterilise it by declaring it an obstacle to progress, to make it un-relevant.   But this does not fore-decide that we should do likewise.   We are an Academy now.   This means we have the freedom … (oh, ‘to all think along the same lines’, damn, I thought I had a good point there – even the opportunity to pursue a dialogue is now denied me).   In pursuing this ‘reform’ the school is demonstrating its willingness and determination to weed out those who are not ‘like-minded’ (as narrowly and ineffectively defined by the school), quite independent from whether they are good and effective teachers or not.   How ironic, now, that this would be performed under the aegis of what was formally known as ‘professional development’.   This move would simply make it easier to define individual teachers out of their jobs – it would complete the bypassing of the organic, sharing, collegiate creativity that is the craft and art of teaching.

‘FREEDOM … to all think along the same lines’ isn’t this the most oxy-moronic slogan to have been heard?

More and more, a career in teaching feels like life in a cult: the over-riding and rendering-irrelevant of the very basis and reference that formed an individual’s teaching identity in the first place.   If my thought and creativity do not comply with the ‘acceptable’ practice of the organisation I am immediately rendered anathema by the organisation which holds tight to the only means of endorsement of my work and identity: performance management.   My thought and creativity will be banished, excluded, rendered untouchable, polluted, much like the ultimate punishment of early societies – to be banished was to lose your very identity, it would have been far better to have just been killed.

This is not what I came into teaching for and yet I am obliged to have to respond to it.   I am obliged to have to conform in it.   And the proposed streamlining of capability and performance will complete the alienation from my own endeavour in teaching that has been making me ill, now, for the past decade.   How on earth can I be expected to believe that this is in the ‘best interests’ of teachers, let alone pupils or their parents?   When the proposal goes ahead – as it inexorably will – will my objections in this consultation render me ‘incapable’ unless I change them?   And will I then be ‘performance managed’ out of my career?

I will say it now, and I will say it here, (even though it will not have immediate sway over what is happening anyway, but being one in a million who marched on the streets of London in 2003 saying ‘NO’ to Tony Blair obliged him to become so ridiculous in his determination to go to war that it rendered him a liability, I can hope): government-nurtured management of education/schools/teachers is just plain, simple wrong.   This current proposal is the epitome of wrong management, of either people or public service.   It is demotivating.   It is mechanised only to identify the lack (or even just the ‘satisfactory’), it absorbs the good and immediately takes it for granted, rather than seeing how it works and cultivating it.   Teachers work hard now to cover their backs and stay out of hassle rather than culture their practice.   Lazy management just demands over recognising or understanding or nurturing; it doesn’t bother working out how to meet (and therefore manage) the demands itself.   It narrowly pre-defines success criteria – extracting from the whole community that is communication – reducing education to a process rather than a growth.   It practises outcome-led management to the detriment of value-informed practice, and in this way exploits endeavour rather than nurturing it.   Management does not recognise teachers as a resource but as mechanisms (reductio’d ad absurdum) to those imposed outcomes in which they have no investment and in which they had no decision.   Management has become dictatorial and inconsistent and determinedly non-democratic or non-nurturing.   It may be the way the government wants management to be, but it is wrong.   Governments are often wrong.

Am I saying all this simply because of my own experience of being ignored rather than managed during the last decade?   Yes.   Are my words therefore rendered irrelevant because of this?   No.   Unless the way I have been treated was all a very long-running mistake.   And unless the litter of other teachers’ careers I have seen discarded by the roadside, crumpled and shaking, was wrong as well (I have seen teachers with decades of successful experience reduced to ‘satisfactory’ and then retired; I have seen teachers hounded to cure a hastily diagnosed symptom until they became ill and left the profession; I have seen passionate teachers walk out of their career with no forwarding post, during a recession; I have seen teachers shift out of their job to become successful elsewhere where they were listened to; I have seen teacher’s whole legacy rubbished once they were retired; I have seen teachers dis-abled in their career because they hadn’t been practising the sudden advent of a new initiative for years previously; I have seen teachers shifted into teaching wholly different subjects as a reward for evading being made redundant; I hear, every day, the attrition of spirit every time an e-mail is opened).   Wouldn’t it be better for my career if I just shut up and didn’t express my unhappiness and reservations about this ordeal which is my career?   For the decade past, it makes no difference; if this proposal goes ahead: yes.

If I don’t send this, it is because I need to look after my health.   If I do send it, it is because I believed the word ‘consultation’ and because I shouldn’t be thinking only of myself.

(I did send it – it presumably got consulted, although I have not talked to any manager about it.   We hear the results on Monday 16th July – the week we break for the summer holidays.)

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: Child of Illusion
compromise wormhole: really
money & performance & politics & teaching craft wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
obligation wormhole: the / pyrrhic / play
performance management wormhole: teaching performance
professionalism wormhole: responsible
recognition wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
teaching art: Resource