The Next Step: Eleanor

The next step

So, I’m finally here. I’m at the end of my PGCE teacher training course (ok, three days left but whos counting?) and I’ve got a teaching job lined up ready for September. This September.

 So, how am I feeling? Terrified.

If you asked me a few weeks ago how I felt I would have told you that I felt stressed, tired and antsy about whether I have the capability to be a good teacher. Wondering if it was a reflection of me; that I was reaching for the wrong goals, that there was something else I should be doing, someplace else I should be.

There has been several particularly stressful areas in the last few weeks. I have never been one for moaning, but they could have been different.

1.       Going to interviews. Ok, so that should be stressful and is stressful (for most), but added with the pressure of finding your own interpreter and finding the means to pay for it. Originally I thought that a government run scheme Access To Work would pay for them. So, for my first interview I simply booked an interpreter through an agency, read the Access To Work website who said they would pay for any costs. Simple right?

It all went through swimmingly. I received a claim form, filled it in and the interpreter was paid. So, that must make my assumption right?

 Wrong. I didn’t get that job, so I went to another interview, and another. Booking the interpreters myself, informing ATW as soon as possible that this was happening. Days passed, no information, no payment, no ‘case officer assigned yet’. Finding the time to call them in my hectic teaching day because my interpreter leaves at 3.30pm and I can’t call because I can’t hear. My emails get ignored or simply just avoided. I call them, I get the question ‘which council is the school under?’ ‘do they have an equality policy in place?’ ‘does this include reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates?’. A stopper in the never ending game. The internet doesn’t help. More calls, to the councils, to the schools. Yes, yes, yes to the questions. I call the case officer back, keen to end this ping pong game, my rubber soles wearing away with every missed lunchbreak, the missed evenings when I could have been marking, preparing.

 She is on holiday. In just one hour, she has left the office and headed to the beach. My problems are on pause.

 A week passes, she hasn’t called back. I call, she isn’t in, she will call back the next day. She doesn’t call. I call her. The claims are rejected. Why? Because the council should pay. Why has this changed in the last few weeks? Why didn’t anyone simply tell me this before? The ball remains firmly in my court. It is still my fault. The agency wants paying, I made the booking.

 I make more emails. Things are starting to look better now, and last I heard, the schools are now paying forwards the interpreter costs. I wish I had known, I wish someone had explained to me in simple terms that I needed to do, who I needed to talk to. Why did ATW pay for the first but not the others? The game is ending but the questions stay the same.

 

2.       The pressure to be ‘awesome’. When I first attended my final placement back in January, I was given the heavy burden of finding my own interpreter. The UEA couldn’t help and knowing I had budgets and limited hours of funding, I set about advertising for one myself. As luck would have it, I found a seemly good interpreter, willing to work for a good price and had most of the dates available.

There was a problem though, that came to light when I started working with this interpreter. She wasn’t right for me. Some of her signs were different. She struggled in the environment of demanding children. Slowly, I felt disempowered, unconfident, hesitant to use my voice, to communicate to the school, to the staff, to the children. I felt as if she knew the staff better than me, that they were going to her and I was just a spare part. All in my head. I should talk to her, tell her how I feel. The feeling continues to spiral and I feel lost. Enough. I have a break, some weeks at university and some at my first placement.

Going back to my first placement made me feel alive again, I feel the passion and the enlightenment from teaching, these children know me, they want me and they call me Miss Craik and I smile.

 I knew things had to change. So when I went back to my final placement I arranged a different interpreter. I changed my thought processes. I became determined to be the best. And being the best put an amazing amount of pressure on me. It turned into this huge ‘steep’ learning curve. It turned into having to show and justify to people, to everyone, to myself that I could do this.

 I am here. And *touch wood* I’ve done it.

3.       The interviews. Rejection. It isn’t easy to take. Amongst the pressure of being awesome, trying to ‘fix’ things and finding a job, it really questioned my belief.

4.       Father’s Day. It really sucked. That day, one year ago was the last time I saw my dad. Although I am so happy that I did see him, it still stings to know that was it. And everything that has happened in a year. Sorting through his things, selling his house, his funeral, saying goodbye. When I stop and think, it doesn’t feel like a year, and it definitely doesn’t feel like he isn’t here anymore. He will always be down the road in my heart. And lately, he hasn’t left my thoughts. I miss him. It makes me question, where is he now? Is there a such thing as heaven? Or reincarnation? I’ve been flowing the catholic religion lately (school purposes), trying to link anything to it. But I don’t believe. I don’t believe in anything. I want to say that he has gone to a better place, that he is watching down on me now, that when I think about him, he is there listening, that when I’m out walking and I see an ‘amazing view’, that he’s standing next to me seeing the same thing through his eyes. Through my eyes. Maybe sometimes he brings his own chair, to rest at the top. Does that happen? Does it matter?  Is there a difference between needing to believe, and actually believing?

But that was then. This is now. I have a job and I am fast on the route to becoming a qualified teacher, progressing to a teacher of the deaf. This is step two in my long road. I am so excited but so nervous, hesitant. I still have this undying urge to be the best I can be and I punish myself heavily when I fail or seen as ‘satisfactory’. I dislike that word. I want to be awesome, I want to be amazing and I want to inspire, motivate and engage. But most of all, I want to teach.