The cup slams down on to the desk. Lukewarm coffee splashes on to the pile of documents I’ve yet to read. I don’t sit down in my chair, I collapse into it. The chair doesn’t invite me, I surprise it. In revenge, the wheels send me backwards into a cabinet. Three ringbinders, piled precariously, fall to the ground. I can’t be certain but I’m pretty sure my sighs can be heard in at least three adjacent classrooms. I stare at the 10 email requests I have received since the beginning of the previous double period. This can’t be what it’s all about. It just can’t be.

“What just happened there?” should be the question most on my mind. “Why did that lesson go so badly?” I should be thinking about the endless planning I did for this lesson; the immaculate resources I prepared; the constructive yet essential use of ICT; the clear outcomes set; the challenging but achievable goals. Everything was perfect. It should have been perfect. I should have been thinking about these questions. But I wasn’t. I had 10 minutes to get ready for the next lesson - another one I had planned for ages. I didn’t have time for questions.

Blaming myself

That the rest of the day went well doesn’t really matter. They usually do. However, when I’m driving home, when I’m eating dinner, when I’m spending time with my wife, I know damn well I’ll be thinking about that lesson that didn’t go well.

I’ll be blaming myself and punishing myself and coming to the conclusion that I cannot and never will be much good at this teaching thing. Then I’ll be back at my desk for the obligatory two or so hours of marking and preparation and I’ll be in school at 7.30 next morning to go through it all again.

Perhaps this portrays the reality of an impossible job - or perhaps it merely confirms the reality that you never stop learning. Reflecting on what goes wrong makes us stronger.

However, 19 years down the line, I’ve finally arrived at the point where I know that, no matter how hard I’ve tried to get over it, that feeling will be with me, 24 hours a day. I’ve dreamt of bad lessons, of troublesome students, of difficult colleagues. I’ve woken up at three in the morning worrying about course work. It never goes away.

I generally love my job. In all those years, there have rarely been days on which I wasn’t excited about getting to school. Recently, though, that feeling has been harder to come by. This is, in part, owing to an increasing awareness that the big and bold project that is Curriculum for Excellence is nothing but a pipe dream, crushed under the weight of poor implementation and bad decision making; and that there will inevitably be a new strategy to add to the pile of those we barely had time to implement last session. I’m left with a creeping feeling that, despite everything, nothing much has changed in secondary schools.

We attempt to develop a broad general education from S1 to S3 without any real commitment to changing our timetabling structures. Then we resort to what we know - exams - and it becomes a matter of the tail wagging the dog, once again.

We’re told things must change, though.

The first of September was a quiet Friday, it seemed. Like many teachers, I’d been back a couple of weeks and was just getting used to a new timetable and new classes. I might never have noticed it had I not been sent a link on Twitter, but there it was. Another major report released quietly on a Friday afternoon, lost in the maelstrom of the school day. The Teacher Workforce Planning for Scotland’s Schools document, from Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, contains much to discuss, much to debate.

The report suggests that - and as an English teacher I raised an eyebrow when I first read this - new teachers, unless they wanted to teach English, wouldn’t require Higher English on entry to teacher education but at the point of exit instead.

Interesting comments

I wonder how this will go down with those who see Teach First - now with a realistic prospect of establishing itself in Scotland - as a way to attract “high-quality” graduates? Shouldn’t we expect high levels of literacy to be in place when a student leaves school?

There were interesting comments on the prospect of a return to something akin to the Chartered Teacher Programme, which was scrapped in 2012. Recognition that promoted posts are scarce and that teachers are leaving, or planning to leave the profession, owing to lack of opportunity, is important.

But these documents, and other like them, are not really my concern for the moment. If you’re like me, you’ll sit through meetings about the latest report and smile. “Of course, we’ll read that document. Of course, we’ll reflect and discuss the main points.”

Of course, we won’t, probably. I’ll add it to the workload document I didn’t have time to read, and the follow-up report (that one is sitting underneath the National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan).

Oh, and there are the new literacy outcomes that came out in June; the Education Governance report and the Delivering Excellence and Equity in Scottish Education: A Delivery Plan for Scotland document also require attention. (Excuse me while I slam my coffee cup down on the desk again.)

You’d never guess from the media coverage but we teachers are utterly fantastic at what we do. We teach kids to be better than they ever thought they could be, work harder than they ever thought they would. And we do it every day. Enough with the documents, though. I’m like that drawer in your kitchen, full of carrier bags. You know it’s so crammed full that you can hardly open it but you keep cramming another one in the following week.

I want to get back to loving this profession again. There must be a better way.

Kenny Pieper is a teacher of English in Scotland