Dear Teacher,

I just wanted to say well done!  You made it to the end of the 2018!

I have always found the winter term to be the longest and the hardest of all to get through.  Even when I was a student at school, I always hated the winter term – the darkness drawing in either side of the day so that you would wake up in the dark, go to school as dawn broke, spend all day inside a classroom, and then back home in the dark again.  Hashtag northern hemisphere problems I guess, but still.

And there’s all that getting used to things that you need to do in the winter term.  It’s all slightly new, not what you’re used to, new books, new material, new colleagues.  You need to get used to your students and figure out what they want and need from you – pedgogically and emotionally – and they need to figure you out and work out where the true boundaries lie, what you’ll let slide and what you won’t.  We all need to take the measure of each other in the winter term…

I always think of the winter term as being the Monday and Tuesday of the school year – but good news!  It’s now officially Wednesday!  We have broken the back of the school year – the days are starting to get lighter again (as of yesterday) and we should all have some time off to recover, relax, and rediscover ourselves a bit.  So if you do have that chance, take it.  Accidentally use your marking to light the fire in the fireplace (thinking here of “the roaring in the chimney“), get out some of your favourite eats and drinks, and indulge yourself.  It has been a long road thus far and you deserve the break.

To all those of you working in countries where Christmas is not celebrated officially and where you may be working on December 25th (as I remember having to do in years gone by), then know that I am thinking of you also.  I know it isn’t much consolation, but I shall raise a glass in tribute to you all next Tuesday!

I am now going to take my own advice and take a break – I shall probably be back on the blog on or around the 5th January.  Until then, may Santa bring you what you wish for!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

David

 

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Image credit:

Clipart by Theresa Knott on Wikimedia Commons

 

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