The End of an Era

As I write this, I have 5 school days left as a teacher.

It feels weird to say that. It is a thing I have defined myself by for 8 years. I am proud of being a teacher. So much so that it has essentially become part of my personality, and sometimes, I think, my whole personality. As a result of this, I feel like a huge part of me is going to disappear in a few days. Miss Darwin will no longer exist… _{(and not just because I am getting married over the summer and would have become Mrs Clark!)}

There are equal parts of me that are devastated and relieved about this.

I still believe that my move to teaching saved my life. I have never been quiet about this; in fact, you can read about it in my first blog post. As soon as I set foot in a classroom, I felt this sense of belonging and purpose that I had never felt as an actuary. I always loved maths, but teaching it gave me a deeper appreciation for it. I realised the beauty and innate complexity of the ‘basics’ and became obsessed with working out how I could better teach it to students. I have learned so much more about maths in the last 8 years than I ever did in my degree – the depth of my understanding is far greater now than it ever was while studying 8 modules per semester!

I have been so lucky to have learned my craft from some amazing teachers and mentors, many of whom I am now lucky to call friends. From my ITT, which I documented comprehensively on this blog, to today, people have shared their knowledge and wisdom on everything from behaviour management to how best to work with manipulatives or sequence a curriculum. I am forever grateful for my first teaching post at Outwood Grange as I got to work with some brilliant colleagues and the Maths Hub, which allowed me to learn more about Teaching for Understanding from the very start of my career. This set me up for my work with the NCETM as a Secondary Mastery Specialist and PD Lead; the things I learned as part of this group satisfied my geeky tendencies and then allowed me to spread the word to others and support their development too. My time on Twitter meant that I was able to talk to and then meet ‘The Big Dogs’ of the maths education world, stealing their ideas and knowhow to take to my own schools. Then I have shared my own with them by speaking at conferences and podcasts myself – I still can’t get over people wanting to hear from me on this scale.

I always thought maths was be my biggest love – I genuinely went to University because I wanted to learn more maths, not for Freshers Week –  but teaching quickly caught up with that once I started. I proudly classify myself as a teaching and maths geek. Because of this I have also had the honour of mentoring ITTs and ECTs over the last 6 years, and this year had my own lovely cohort of ECTs to work with through the Teaching School Hub. So now, my job is to talk about teaching in general, as well as about maths, every day. The fact that my love of maths and teaching has led to all these opportunities is just beyond anything I could have hoped for from my career. I feel so lucky to have found the thing I am passionate about and that it is my job.  

I am so proud of the difference that all this effort and learning has made to my students. My results show that my passion for curriculum sequencing and coherence has made a difference to my pupils in terms of their achievement.  But more importantly, I have students that feel they can do and enjoy maths, because my ‘enthusiasm is infectious’ and I ‘make everything seem ‘simpler and more connected’. The cards where they have written comments like this are some of the most precious things I own.

I have loved knowing that every day, I can walk into my classroom and share my love of maths with the students, and then my love of teaching with my colleagues. I have loved getting to know my students and helping them to achieve their goals. I love crafting lessons that will help student understanding, then picking them apart to decide what went well and what I can change to make it even better. I have loved sharing my ideas with colleagues and seeing them have success too. I have loved that every single day is different, and that I am continually learning and evolving my practice.

However, despite my passion, I am exhausted and anxious. I am beginning to feel jaded. And that is not how I want to feel about the thing that I genuinely believe saved my life.

People that have asked me about my choice to leave the classroom have got a variation of this response in the last few weeks: “I love teaching, but I hate being a teacher right now.”

It is no secret to anyone in the profession that teaching is hard right now. Particularly post-COVID, there are bigger challenges than ever facing our students, and there is not enough funding or time for us to do all the things we know will make a difference. The incredibly loaded curriculum and high-stakes accountability measures from Ofsted, and the ‘lethal mutations’ that come with this, mean that the expectations of teachers and leaders, and the subsequent workload, have become intolerable for many of us.

So, over the past two years, the thing that once saved me began to crush me. Because I always want to do well for myself, and my colleagues and my students, I became lost. There wasn’t much of a distinction at all between Miss Darwin and Kathryn. My anxiety has been the worst I can remember it being for years; I never felt I was good enough, as a teacher or in my ‘real life’. I wasn’t taking time to enjoy my life outside of the classroom, because I felt I had so much to do, and when I did take time out, I wasn’t able to relax. And all those brilliant things I listed above became a source of stress and comparison, instead of joy and growth.

The past few years, I spent a lot of time evaluating what is important to me, what my core values are and how I want to live my life. My ultimate realisation was that the good elements of teaching no longer outweighed the impact it had on my wider life. This has not been a quick or easy decision for me – this change happened over time, and started at a place I thought would be my ‘forever school’. The issues I was facing made me think that this wasn’t the case anymore…  The adage goes that a change of school can help, and so that is what I did. But it has not changed my mind. In fact, it has compounded the decision for me – the issues I have didn’t go away. They were in the new school, and they very much feel like part of many others too – the problems are ‘system deep’. And so the profession I have loved is now something I need space from.

That does not mean I am not grateful and sad to be leaving it behind. I will not miss the break duties, or the defiance, or the marking… But I am also sad to lose some of those things that are specific to working in schools. The mad things that students come out with that make you laugh. Seeing how your meticulously planned lesson goes in the classroom. That moment when a student finally understands something because of you. The moment you know you can teach something better because of a CPD session or a chat with a colleague. The camaraderie among teachers. I’ll probably even miss the structure of a day lived by the school bell (though being able to go the toilet when I like will be freeing!)

I do not, and will not, regret being a teacher. It has taught me so many things about the world and about myself. Without it, I would not have ever learned my own power. But I do regret how much of myself I gave away in order to do that. I need to rectify that to heal.

So, I did not just apply for “any old job”. I knew that whatever I went for needed to fulfil the same values that my teaching career does so that I can be happy in the ‘work’ aspect of my life. I needed to get back to the place of belonging and purpose. I still wanted to be in education, preferably still within maths, and working on something that would help the most disadvantaged students to succeed.  As a teacher, I have served communities that mirrored my own as I grew up; where economic disadvantage meant social disadvantage and limited not just their prospects, but even their dreams. I had friends that truly believed they could not leave the area, or they couldn’t do the things they wanted that could change the world – and they were wrong. Our teachers showed us that. And I firmly believe that I have aided in changing the life chances of many of my students in the same way.

This is why working as Director of Learning (Maths) at Dr Frost Learning feels a good fit. Not least because of the drive of the charity to make good quality resources available to students and teachers in disadvantaged areas. But also, because it fits with my passion of curriculum and lesson planning –I will get to think about how to help students to understand maths best all day, every day. I am excited to use all the expertise I have accumulated over the past 8 years in a new way, and to drive the development of a product that has been a regular feature in my own lesson planning for 8 years. I am excited to get to work with teachers across phases and even different countries to affect change in maths education across the world. And I won’t lie, I am excited that I get to do all of this from the comfort of my own home, with my lovely cockapoo by my side! I am hoping that this will help me get back to feeling like “Kathryn” again.

All of this has sat along a strong sense of grief for the loss of my “teacher-self” over the past week or so. I have largely just seen myself as a teacher for 8 years, and I am still not 100% sure I know who I am outside of this, but I am trying to remember.

I think rather than thinking of this as ‘The Death of Miss Darwin’, I think I need to see this change as more of a rebrand, and a refocussing of my priorities. The birth of ‘Kathryn Clark’. (I get married on 5^th August before I start at Dr Frost, so why not roll them into one!) Kathryn Clark is a (soon-to-be-)wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend and a dog mum. She is a baker, a good cook, a massive maths geek, an avid reader, a good conversationalist, a huge fan of Taylor Swift, who likes dancing in the kitchen and singing at the top of her lungs… and so many more things I have let myself forget.

And I will still be an Educator – just in a different way. In fact, my work for Dr Frost Learning will mean my impact reaches far beyond what it ever has before. I will be part of the education of thousands of children, not just in my local area, or even my own country, but across the globe. Which is a scope of influence larger than I could have ever dreamed of.