Tabula Rasa

I received a very exciting letter a few days ago, telling me which school I have been placed at for my induction year into teaching!

I originally started my induction year in August 2012, but had been diagnosed with depression in the April, and found it a struggle to manage the everyday stresses of teaching alongside my shaky mental health. Three weeks into term I made the difficult decision to resign from my job and take the full year off. Up until about Christmas I had a self-indulgent wallow in my illness, but one day in January I woke up and actually felt a glimmer of excitement to be going back to teaching... That little glimmer grew and grew and I began to really look forward to finding out where I would be placed for my second attempt at induction year. By the time the letter actually arrived I was fit to burst!

I know that it will still be a tough year for me, even though I am really looking forward to it, and decided that blogging about my experience might be a more positive way to deal with stress than last year’s response of napping or crying at every given opportunity... We were encouraged at university to be reflective practitioners and I love looking over my old placement folios to see how much I have grown over the past five years. Hopefully having this blog to look back through and see my triumphs and learning curves over the year will be a good confidence boost on my ‘down’ days.

The school I have been placed at is a few miles down the road from me – close enough that I can walk on a good day. It is classed as a rural school and only has around 100 pupils divided into composite classes, which suits me perfectly. I did my final university placement in a composite class and love working with a mixed age group in a small school setting.  The school was hosting a fete and family fun day on Saturday and invited me along to meet my colleagues in an informal setting. Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcoming, from parents to my headteacher and the day really helped to put me at ease for next year.

It was a gorgeous day for a fete, but being as fair-skinned as I am, I came home to discover myself very burnt! Obviously in the excitement of meeting everybody and nosying around the different stalls, I forgot to reapply suncream and now am a beautiful shade of lobster... So begins my journey into my first year as a teacher, sunburnt but smiling J