Dear School Diary,
You are a pristine place where no man has set biro. An anthology of emptiness where no scribbled engagements lurk and where the future is yet to be determined. In your pages destiny remains unwritten and my event horizon is empty. For now at least, I can flick through time and enjoy its brand new smell.
No ordinary diary can comply with the natural order of a teacher’s life. I can’t even contemplate a world that begins in the bleak landscape that is January. We all know that long before autumn term is over, the months beyond will have been turned into a ruined landscape of pencillings in and crossings out. A tangle of rearranged rendezvous,cancelled engagements and unlikely deadlines.
Dear School Diary,
By the start of next term the crush of obligations will threaten to overwhelm your remaining pages. By the time the fairy lights have been returned to the loft, we’ll be back in education’s fast lane. Reckless assignations and perilous appointments will speed towards us.
New dates will jostle with old dates, like cyclists in a packed peloton, each vying for prime position in the long sprint towards summer.
The year end is August’s rightful place. An alternative dimension in time and space. A no-child’s land of blissful unawareness, entirely separate from the reality that begins in September and ends in July. In the chronicle of school events, August is a sacred place where I will write in capitals, using a fat marker pen, one word followed by several exclamation marks: “HOLIDAYS!!!!!”
Dear School Diary,
Today is the first staff meeting of the year. It is an event that will begin with the ritual gathering together of teachers who can’t quite believe the summer break is over. In the childless hinterland that is education’s New Year’s Eve, most staff will still be in holiday mode. They will swan around in jeans and showing off suntans, and will sow the first crop of congealing coffee mugs on window ledges and shelves while they go in search of display paper and a staple gun.
Very soon now, Ms Boudicca will call us together and display her proposed itinerary for our annual attempt to raise academic standards and keep one step ahead of Ofsted. At this point teachers will gaze mournfully at a banner that reads “Some Key Dates for Your Diary” and wonder if her use of comic sans is meant to be ironic.
Of course, I could access these dates electronically, but I prefer the future to be handwritten. Like a child with a new work book and a misguided sense of optimism, I will begin by making careful notes of important dates: professional development training days, target setting meetings, special educational needs reviews, parents’ evenings, book scrutiny dates, Superheroes Week…
Dear School Diary,
Time is no longer on my side. I have conflicting commitments in mid-October … My amendments need amending … My writing is losing the will to remain legible … A coffee stain has appeared in the middle of Week 4 ...
Dear School Diary,
For the misuse you are about to receive, please accept my sincere apologies.
Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield
