Feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we leap out of bed and are ready to face the day ahead, now that teacher-assessed grades (TAGs) are out of the way…
OK, that may be a little far-fetched, but there is a least a small glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel - if we ignore the omnishambles that is exam board sampling, of course. Isn’t there?
The cloud of TAGs still remains: from evidence-gathering to sampling and then to appeals, this exam season has not brought with it the closure we normally get. It has not signalled the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Instead, it can all feel a little anticlimactic.
On average, we have around four weeks left of this term, and how we choose to spend it is more important than ever. As secondary and further-education teachers, we are used to the concept of “gained time”, when our exam classes have left and there are a few more gaps in our timetables. Gaps that are rapidly filled with curriculum reviews, scheme-of-work writing, reports, references and all things except relaxation.
But this is our chance to get ahead, to have thinking time and to make our jobs that little bit easier for the year ahead. However, this year looks and feels that little bit different.
Covid and schools: What will the new academic year bring?
Lots of questions hang in the air. What will next year look like? Will we have exams? Will we have to isolate? Will there be further school closures? What are we preparing for exactly?
Because the truth is that none of us actually knows what next year will look like, or what we are preparing for. And it can be easy to fall into the trap of allowing that lack of security to descend into helplessness and deflation.
But this year we have learned a lot. We have fine-tuned our ability to adapt, to be flexible, to develop our teaching and to respond to the needs of the circumstances, faster than we have ever learned before - we have learned to continue to provide the best education possible, even in the midst of a pandemic.
Therefore, these next four weeks may be different from usual. They may not be filled with the joys of end-of-term productions, concerts, sports days and the appearance of new faces for transition. It may not be the ending or the new beginning we are used to or so desperately crave.
But it is all that we have right now - and for that, I am choosing to be grateful. It is time to reflect on this whirlwind and it is time to apply what we have learned to making our future curriculum even better.
These next four weeks, I will focus on all of the classes that may not have had my full attention because of TAGs, I will be the best I can be for them.
So I choose to remain optimistic, to remain hopeful that next year may be closer to normal than we have experienced in two academic years. Which is what our profession is so good at: reflecting, reviewing and reinventing ourselves like a phoenix from the ashes.
Louise Lewis is a research lead and deputy head of science in a Yorkshire secondary school. She tweets as @MissLLewis
