The Summer I Turned Horizontal

This summer marks my first full school year back in a primary classroom since 2017. What I can say with absolute and satisfying certainty is that going back was exactly the right professional decision for me. It was a really personal one too. If the professional place isn’t striking the right chord with me, I have to move. That’s just who I am.

Walking away from a permanent post, particularly in this economy, wasn’t the obvious decision. Taking a pay cut certainly wasn’t either. But I trusted my experience, I trusted my instincts, and I knew I was moving towards work that aligned much more closely with the teacher (and the person!) I want to be. I was (and remain!) annoyed by ignorant assertions that going back to school is a career regression, but that’s their ignorance to deal with. Oh, if only they knew! I will return to that another time.

A year later, I’ve worked my way back towards permanence again. More importantly, I’ve worked my way back to myself. I’ve never measured career success by salary alone. I measure it by whether the work feels like it matters. Whether I’m contributing to something bigger than my own professional output. That’s something I felt every day in my previous school, something I worried I’d lost for a while, and something I have unquestionably found again.

I have loved this year.

Working with children remains the greatest professional privilege I know. I feel like myself again in ways I hadn’t expected. Better still, I’m back in my school. It feels like a home now. I’m not going anywhere, and after everything there is an enormous peace in being able to say that. Happy days. And thank God for them.

So. Lots to reflect on. There is perhaps one major challenge (a reality one must confront and face with such positivity on show here in every other regard!) that is worthy of exploration. Before this, I spent a number of years lecturing. That work brought its own pressures, deadlines and responsibilities, but I can honestly say the tiredness isn’t comparable. Working with children is extraordinary because children are on all the time. They’re curious, hilarious, emotional, impulsive, endlessly questioning, wonderfully creative and constantly seeking connection. That’s precisely what makes teaching such a magical profession.

It’s also exactly what makes it so demanding.

Every summer teachers seem to have to relearn how to live at a normal pace. I knew this, of course. Even when I wasn’t teaching, I’ve always had one eye on schools, and I’ve seen just how depleted teachers are by the end of the year. It’s only now that school has stopped that I realise just how relentlessly switched on I’ve been for ten months. This year there were twenty-nine children, thousands upon thousands of questions, constant interactions, tiny moments to notice, problems to solve, friendships to repair, emotions to regulate, lessons to adapt and decisions to make. Every minute of every day somebody needed something from me. And, of course, it's harder now that I have two of my own at home.

And the funny thing is… the hard part is my favourite part. Genuinely. I love the relationships. I love the unpredictability. I love that no two days are ever the same. I love being trusted with children’s stories, their triumphs, their worries and their joy. But it is also utterly draining in a way that is almost impossible to appreciate while you’re living it. The fatigue is real. So what follows is an appreciation, and an explanation, of why teachers need the summers they have.

Teaching isn’t task-heavy. It’s people-heavy. You don’t spend your day ticking jobs off a list. You spend your day giving pieces of yourself away. That’s a very different kind of work. People often assume teaching is intellectually exhausting. Of course it can be. But what truly drains you is that you’re socially, emotionally and physically available to other human beings every minute of every day. There is no stepping back. No closing the office door. No disappearing behind a laptop for twenty minutes to gather your thoughts. There isn’t even time to think about yourself. You’re simply there, completely present, from the second the first child walks through the door until the last child leaves. You don’t even notice it because you run almost entirely on instinct and adrenaline. That heightened state simply becomes your normal. Then school finishes, the noise disappears, and your nervous system almost doesn’t know what to do with itself. It takes time to come down from that constant alertness. Even then, the teaching doesn’t entirely stop. There is so much to do when they are home, heck, when you are home. Your mind starts planning. Reflecting. These thoughts and plans needs to materialise in masses of paperwork. Thinking about needs. Accounting for need. Wondering about the version of children who’ll walk through your door next. It’s a profession that asks an enormous amount of your head as well as your heart. I’m not saying this to justify anything (I think we’re absolutely entitled to the holidays we get!) but I do think it’s worth explaining to people why things are the way they are.

This year I finished school, completed a week-long summer course, and then went straight into a week of Summer Provision. Provision was busy and rewarding in its own way, but it also reminded me just how much the mainstream classroom demands. Working with a much smaller group meant interactions could be planned, paced and supported. It was still teaching, but it simply wasn’t the same as trying to meet the needs of twenty-nine children simultaneously for five hours every day, where there genuinely isn’t a second to yourself.

People often compare teaching to other professions, but there is one thing that’s almost impossible to explain unless you’ve lived it. We don’t get a moment. There is no “I’ll answer that after lunch.” There isn’t really a lunch. There is a vague attempt to eat something while you have the one opportunity to interact with another adult in your working day. You’re on. Every second. It really is showbusiness, toots. And the reviews come in live (hello, Aladdin!).

I have a modest policy proposal. Just as every citizen can be called for jury duty, I think every adult should have to complete one compulsory week in a primary classroom. It should preferably be in the final week of June. We’d go easy on ye. No planning. No correcting. Just existing in the room. Five days of Sports Day, sponsored walks, awards and graduations, melting children, forgotten water bottles, emotional goodbyes, spontaneous tears, end-of-year excitement and hearing “Miss… Miss… Miss…” approximately fourteen thousand times before lunch. I suspect we’d hear considerably less commentary afterwards about teachers’ holidays.

The reality is that schools have changed too. I’ve noticed this in profound ways this year, and the wider societal shift is evident in my experience. Increasingly, children don’t just arrive carrying schoolbags. They arrive carrying life. Friendships. Anxiety. Family worries. Regulation. Identity. Loneliness. Questions about the world. Questions about themselves. Need. The “third places” that once existed in communities (youth clubs, neighbourhood groups, casual outdoor play, places where children simply learned how to be with one another) have disappeared in many places. I’ve written before about this through the lens of additional educational needs, but the truth is it extends far beyond that. For so many children, school has become the place where everything lands.

That means teachers increasingly become the adult who absorbs everything. It’s a privilege. It’s also a weight. The intensity of the school year is so great that you almost stop noticing your own body. I’m genuinely not exaggerating when I say there are days when two o’clock arrives and I realise I haven’t had a proper drink of water. The tea is stone cold. I haven’t been to the toilet. I couldn’t honestly tell you the state of my personal appearance because I haven’t given it a second thought since leaving the house that morning. You’re not neglecting yourself intentionally. You’re simply responsible for twenty-nine children who can’t be left alone for even a moment. Your own needs quickly slide to the very bottom of the list.

It’s only now, with nowhere pressing to be, in the wonderful Julyness of it all, that I’m beginning to confront just how tired I actually am. There’s lots of exciting life happening quietly in the background too. Big things. Lovely things. Family things. The sort of things that take emotional energy in the nicest possible way. They deserve my attention too. But even with all of that going on, nothing comes close to the cognitive, emotional and social demand of a school year.

This week I’ve been fit for absolutely nothing. And I think that’s exactly what my body has been asking for. The heatwave has almost been a blessing. It forces you to stop. It gives you permission to sit outside while the girls play. To reconnect with toys that have sat untouched all year. To drink a cup of tea while it’s still warm. To read until your eyes close. To potter around the house doing very little at all.

It forces stillness.

And it’s only when you finally allow yourself that stillness that leisure fatigue arrives. I completely understand the phenomenon. Your body finally believes you when you tell it the emergency is over, and suddenly all the exhaustion you’ve been outrunning catches up with you at once.

That’s where I am now. Learning how to live more slowly again. Learning how to exist without constantly scanning a room, anticipating needs, answering questions, solving problems and holding dozens of tiny threads together in my head.

One of the most valuable ideas we explored during my summer course (themed around wellbeing) was that self-care isn’t a luxury for educators; it’s a professional responsibility. We ask so much of ourselves during the school year that we have to take equal responsibility for repairing ourselves afterwards. That’s something I want to carry into this next decade of my career. Not because I want to work less hard (that’ll never be me), but because I want to keep loving this profession with the same energy, enthusiasm and joy for many years to come.

It’ll probably take another two or three weeks before I genuinely feel normal. Only then does summer stop being about recovering from the year that’s gone and silently becomes preparation for the year that’s coming.

That’s why I’ve never understood the criticism of teachers’ holidays. The holiday isn’t an extended break from work. It’s recovery and restoration. So a reminder, in case you needed to hear it. Sat down? Here we go. You cannot spend ten months pouring yourself into other people without taking time to refill the well. That’s not self-indulgence. It’s the only way this work is sustainable. The best teachers don’t return in September carrying more laminated resources or another folder of Pinterest ideas. They return carrying more of themselves.

So that’s the focus for the next few weeks. How to achieve it? Slow mornings. Tea that’s actually hot. Playing with the girls without glancing at the clock. Reading because I want to. Sitting in the garden because the weather insists upon it. And, perhaps most wonderfully of all… Going to the toilet the very second I realise I need to. It’s remarkable how exciting basic bodily autonomy becomes after ten months of teaching.

By the end of August I’ll have found my rhythm again. I’ll have rebuilt whatever this year took from me, and I’ll walk back into Room 4 ready to do it all again.

I genuinely can’t wait to meet next year’s 5th Class.

But not yet. For now, it’s July. And July is for becoming yourself again.