The Decompression chamber

I often extend the metaphor of diving to educating. Often you take a deep breath in the morning and go under to experience the environment. Depending on your daily structure some days can be deep dives persistently underwater for hours looking at the environment around you and only resurfacing to wolf some food down or visit the toilet. This is an issue though if you are down there too long how do you manage to decompress.

Educating has developed a break neck speed over the past 5 years and the needs of the community and the demands on educators increase. Within the vast oceanscape neuro-diversity a better understanding of well being, the persistent social media drive to be better and more perfectly presented, curriculum changes and rapidly changing technologies and jobs abiotic factors that affect your time under. It becomes more and more apparent that decompression is needed. How do you go from serving a community to looking after yourself?

It is a question I probably pose to myself too often. I really care about my work and more so about the students, whānau and community I serve. I feel overly responsible and responsive to the queries and needs of both ākonga and whānau. With an increased number of communication channels open to students and whānau, for example the Otago eSports discord server that connects students from across the region. This adds a burden of care for a number of communities. Luckily though with a team approach to this with eyes of other teachers on it and an excellent student admin I will be good to step away from the server for a while.

So the decompression will begin. It usually starts with a wee bit of rue. The opportunities missed or not taken throughout the year. This year has been massive in terms of personal development. I further developed the first ever Otago eSports league and this culminated in the first ever Otago High School eSports tournament, as I write we are looking at developing this further across Otago Southland. Rugby refereeing this year saw me take up the whistle for the under 12’s though resistant to the idea it was a real highlight of the year, it is the best view of the game. Rugby coaching so runners up in the Rugby 7’s B section as well as the Under 12’s competition, Winner of the Under 15 10’s competition, part of the lead school in the Nz Concussion pilot with numerous training and development programmes and meetings with the facilitators. I graduated from Te Ahu o Te Reo course which saw me develop resources with the local iwi to help facilitate the teaching of Aotearoa histories with a localized understanding. Ulearn I attended and facilitated a workshop at Ulearn with really positive feedback, so much so I was invited to take part in a reflective podcast looking at destreaming Aotearoa with an eye to stopping the practice of white streaming schools (the practice of placing students in classes based on perceived academic abilities which has led to segregation). This on top of the standard duties of teaching and learning. When you look over it it is no wonder time to decompress is needed.

Decompression for me usually starts with a social wind down a declutter of the desks but to be honest the final week saw me treading water I essentially couldn’t even go under. Smiling and nodding was my go to. From here though with final duties wrapping up I will drop off the internet for around a month, that said I still want to listen to podcasts and e-books, this will just end the doom scrolling and media chasing. The ability to switch on and off though is something that needs to be fully ingrained into your timetable. I had to have a designated wellbeing time in my weekly programme on Wednesday.

A jog would allow me the space to breathe a little, issues were often resolved while out. Unfortunately as the year rolled on this tended to get over written by other things, moderation meetings etc. I had to put this into my timetable as if I didn’t I would miss out on this wellbeing time. How can educators build in this practical time for themselves? One way I would like to explore next year is more self-direction through professional development. We have an idea that a small group of us could continue our journey with Te Reo. We are lucky to have money and resources to be able to lead and develop our own Te reo skills within our professional development time will be invaluable and rather than have this time crammed with listening and compliance meets this would really tick a lot of boxes for me. This would work well with any appraisal and teaching council compliance including our commitment to te tiriti o Waitangi. As well as play based learning and supporting taha whānau or social wellbeing. Does any of this sound really like decompressing though?

Social needs should be met in a number of ways, but the biggest constraint on these is time. Our work colleagues are some of the people we spend the most amount of time around yet often we never get time to connect with them in any meaningful way. How can a school culture further support collaboration and collegiality? Personally a shared goal and vision is required for education workforce to buy into. This is something that requires careful planning and management. On a governance level it has been great to see this collaborative model develop at Wakari School and across what is known as the Dunedin Hill cluster as they have developed their own community of learning. I had a fantastic time also collaborating on resource development with one of the science teachers at our school for an assessment this year and it was empowering for us both to get the time to work closely and efficiently together. Deliberate acts of collaboration are key to empowering teachers to develop this model.

Well really I could continue to ramble on here but am preparing to head away on the Gold trail with my whānua and truly think that the decompression has begun. A lot of educators are already flagging that 2022 will be even more difficult than 2021. I hold a lot of hope and have been absolutely blessed with my time in the classroom this year. Whatever is happening in your worlds right now look after yourselves and continue to be kind. All the best for 2022.