Teacher Diaries, Entry 4: End-of-year teacher life
Mia Tarau
From standard ESL blog posts to real-life post-PhD tertiary experiences: welcome to a new series, from the mind of a young teacher with a true passion for what she does
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24 November 2022
Dear Diary,
It is the last week of teaching my own courses and classes this year. Exams and marking next week, some cover teaching, then FREEDOM to recover from THE most intense year of my professional life to date.
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1 December 2022: The Aftermath
What an absolute killer of a month it has been, building up to a similarly-killer of an end-of-year TO-DO list!
Within the last 10 days, I have:
· marked all the end-of-year assessments for my Structure of Language MA course
· marked TWO assignments for my Foundation Humanities course
· prepared my three Foundation Programme Academic English classes for their end-of-course exams
· invigilated those exams
· waited with a lot of excitement (and some worry) to see my students’ exam results, as I did not mark them
· marked end-of-course exams for different classes than my own, during the same one-week deadline as all my other Foundation Programme end-of-year marking
· in-between marking and invigilating, I also helped out a few colleagues by covering several classes from different intakes (these courses will end next year, so they were still going)
· TRIED TO STAY ALIVE
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6 December 2022: IT IS DONE!
I made it! As I write this, I feel both JOY and NOSTALGIA: JOY at the thought that my students have achieved their goals and are ready to move on to the next exciting step in their learning journey, and NOSTALGIA, thinking back at the wonderful moments we have had together, moments which have now come to an end.
It was strange to wake up yesterday with nothing left on the giant end-of-year TO-DO list; I had imagined that I would feel relieved and happy that it is done, but in truth, I felt a bit lost. Fortunately, the holidays are nearly upon us; and I have an exciting week of planning and getting ready for an overseas holiday spent with my families in New Zealand. This should help with feeling a bit lost without my classes and my work – however, I look forward to settling into this feeling of ‘IT IS DONE’. I am not sure how this will go; I will follow up on this in my next blog post, the first of the new year.
Until then, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
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When you reflect on end-of-course teacher life, do you also feel a bit lost on the first day without your classes? How do you navigate that initial period of new-found ‘freedom’?