BETTER...

 ‘Do better than your best,’ my mother used to say to me, when I set off from home on days when I had a school test, a music exam or other such challenge ahead of me, and promised her I’d do all I could. 

I took her words to heart.  Every class test, every exam, then in later years every job interview and every day at work… I’ve always tried to do better than my best.

But it’s starting to take its toll.

My mother, Cork accent and all (just imagine that upward intonation!) enjoyed watching The Apprentice:  as well as laughing at the bombastic failures, I think she liked the aspirational talk of giving that task 110%.  A dealer in the mathematically impossible, my mother liked the concept of the ultimate effort.  Not for her, the humble ‘do your best’ or ‘give it 100%’.  To win my mother’s approval, I had to give my work more than all I had.  I had to do more than I was capable of.  If I failed, I had to fail having pushed myself well beyond my limits, and any success I had was not gained with any ease.

I’m not sure that this is feasible any more.  And I’m beginning to wonder if it ever should have been.

I’ve been a teacher for well over 20 years:  long enough that my students occasionally ask me how many years I’ve been in their school, with a calculator whizzing in their eyes as my answer helps them try to guess my age.  I urge my students to be aspirational, to push themselves, and to do their best.  I don’t tell them to do better than their best, though, and I hope my mother would forgive me for that.  Oh yes, occasionally I administer a gentle push to a student who’s lacking in self belief… who doesn’t believe they can accomplish something which I feel is within their grasp.  I tell them not to underestimate themselves and to give whatever it is a try.  I congratulate them if it works out, and tell them to be proud of themselves for trying if it doesn’t…

Right now, I’m exhausted.  I’ve just spent many weeks working on the grading of GCSE, AS and A Level exams over my two subjects:  CDGs as they’re called in Northern Ireland, TAGs in England and Wales.  Every other acronym has drifted through my mind, including OMG, WTF and occasionally FFS.  There have been jokes about the plural acronym for AR:  assessment resource.  It’s been hell on earth.  I feel strongly that the CDG/TAG system involved teachers doing better than their best across the land.  Colleagues have reported dreaming of spreadsheets and grade boundaries: that’s just the people who could sleep.  Channelling Macbeth, I’ve felt I must have ‘murdered sleep’, so much have I suffered from insomnia throughout this process.  I feel haunted by mark schemes and by the huge A3 portfolios our school has issued us with to keep our ‘evidence files’ secure.  We’ve done blind marking, all the while reading articles on news websites about how teachers simply cannot overcome unconscious bias, giving the best grades to those with specific personality traits.  We’ve watched the teacher-bashing snowdrift build, in this unseasonably cold and wintry May, as we’ve pushed ourselves harder and harder and harder.

My colleagues seem to be unwell in record numbers, and it’s almost impossible to find supply teachers at present:  evidence which supplies its own grade evidence about how teachers are feeling right now.  The impact of all of this on teachers’ physical and mental health appears to be immense.  I’m speaking only for myself and for my teacher friends…  I’ve never seen my colleagues look so shellshocked with exhaustion.  After months of online teaching (when popular opinion was that we were on some kind of extended holiday, whereas really we were welded to our computers and ipads, barely breaking for coffee and mostly needing an optician’s visit even more than a haircut when these became available again), it was straight into the evidence-gathering snowstorm of the CDGs.  I’ve never had that moment of ‘what did I go upstairs for again…?’ so often as in the last six weeks.  This morning, during breakfast, I thought of something I needed to do before leaving home, only to forget it again, seconds later.  And I know it’s not just me…

And that’s all before the ultimate accountability of the appeals process begins, in mid-August.  Yes:  mid-August.  Don’t think that teachers will be getting that long summer holiday you’ve always resented them for, this year: results season begins on 9^th August this year, with appeals and evidence-based justification going on from there until the start of term.  Oh, and some exam boards will be gathering evidence until mid-July.  We’ll be lucky if we get a few clear weeks to catch our breath…

But it’s all just proof that we’ll have given it 110%.  Done more than we can.  Done better than our best.

I will never give my work less than my best:  I don’t need to promise this to my school, I think: I hope they know it, whether that’s my Principal, colleagues or students.  But I don’t think I can promise to do better than that any more.  I don’t want to end up a tragic statistic.  I don’t want to be, any more, the person who lives to work:  who gets up from a family dinner to do more work just because a notification happens to have pinged saying that someone wants something, there and then.  I realised this quite clearly, in brilliant focus, when out walking in my favourite place, close to the end of a pier, one Monday evening two weeks ago.  Someone had sent me a work demand.  I attended to it, there and then, from my phone, at the end of the pier, then continued my walk.  Afterwards, I chastised myself for my Pavlovian obedience:  responding like a well-trained dog to the demand that showed little consideration or spirit of compromise. 

Why was Pavlov’s hair so soft?  Because he conditioned it.  A joke I read on Facebook late last week, from an old acquaintance who does his best to make people laugh each day.  I’ve been conditioned, all my life, that my best isn’t good enough.  That I need to do better.  Work harder.  I’ve compared myself to Orwell’s Boxer so many times that it now feels part of me.  But maybe, with my health now quite compromised by all the years of this, it’s time for a small change.

Maybe I need to do my best for myself, as well, and for the family members and friends who actually care about me (as opposed to just appreciating what I do).  Maybe I need to do better there, as well.  Work a bit harder at not working all the time.  Take more of that lunch break.  Look at the view from the pier, rather than checking my work messages when I pause for a moment.  Read what I want to read at night, wind down a bit, so I get more sleep. 

Maybe I need to think about what grade I’d give myself.  Could do better?  Probably.  Has done her best?  Certainly.  Has lessons still to learn?  Without the slightest doubt.

I’ll still be doing my very best, at everything.  But if I slip away from that for five minutes now and then, you’ll probably find me reading.  Or talking to someone I love.  Or looking at a beautiful view.  Because work won’t last forever.  My own teaching grades will be reviewed, confirmed and the final analysis written down.  And then I’ll be left to get on with what remains of my life: and I need to leave myself a little space and energy just to do that.

Perhaps that’s where I need to think about doing better.