The Day We've All Been Waiting For!

At last, it's here.

The day all teachers live for- the end of summer term and the start of the holidays.

We were given our timetables for next year last week.  The first thing most teachers do upon getting their timetables is to look who they've got on the last lesson on Friday.  (As it turns out I've got one of my Upper Sixth classes - a mixed blessing).

Then when we get out teacher planners, we usually spend hours meticulously writing out the term dates, each day's lessons from September to Christmas, January to Easter and then from June to that day in July when term ends.  A frisson of joy and sheer ecstasy shivers down the spine at the very thought of walking out of school and not coming back for the best part of six weeks.

That feeling will be experienced by thousands of teachers at some point tomorrow lunchtime.  It is not that the weather will be brilliant.  Recent Augusts have been painfully disappointing.  Autumn has usually started by the end of August and if you're really unlucky, even before the August Bank Holiday.  In addition it seems this year that summer 2013 was July 2013.

It's just the knowledge that you can stop worrying about 8G, can relax that no parents will be e mailing you demanding to know why little Jimmy has gone down from a 7b to a 7c and what you are going to do about it when his target is 7a!

Only a teacher understands why teachers need six weeks off in the summer to recharge their batteries.

Not that I will stop working between now and September.  I have already planned the new Year 10 lessons for the Interwar Years 1919-1939 course for the first half term.  During the holidays I will be rewriting the lesson plans for the new Year 11 Cold War 1945-1990 course.  I should also be rewriting the Schemes of Work for the AS courses on Stalin's Rusia and Mao's China, let alone the A2 Superpower Relations 1944-1990 course.  Then of course there's A level results on August 15 th and GCSE results a week later.  Those will require a detailed, written analysis for the Headmaster for early September.

Nevertheless school finishes on Wednesday and I won't have to teach another lesson until the month after next.  That's a great feeling.

HAPPY HOLS!!