Tag Archives: Time

Ode to Father Time⤴

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Today’s Daily Create is to write an ode to Father Time

O silent keeper of all things,
You move unseen through shadows cast,
With footsteps soft, yet never still.
The stars align, the tides obey,
All yield to you—relentless, vast.

Your hands are weathered, old as stone,
Yet you are ageless, ever new.
You mend, you break, you heal, you mar,
A sculptor’s chisel, carving through,
Unveiling lives in cycles far.

A child’s first cry, an elder’s sigh,
The bloom of youth, the winter’s breath—
You’re there, a witness to our change,
A fleeting gift, a final debt,
Each heartbeat passing in your range.

Unseen you turn the seasons’ wheel,
And all our clocks are but your play.
What power lies in your domain,
For all we are, and all we’ll be,
Is woven in your endless skein.

And though we chase, and though we flee,
There is no place to hide, to wait,
For when you call, we go as one—
Forever caught within your fate,
Eternal father of the sun.

Written by ChatGPT

Finding comfort and looking to The Light in 2021⤴

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I don’t need to tell you, dear reader, that this has been a funny old year. Over the festive break I have really managed to switch off, stop worrying all the time and have a bit of a rest. Of course in any year, we all need a bit of a break at mid winter, but this year I think we’ve all needed it more. The rituals of the holidays, despite the constraints of travel and numbers of people allowed to mix, can still provide some comfort.

One of my rituals, for the past 5 or so years is to re-read one of my favourite books from my childhood – The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. In fact I tend to read all 5 in the series. I know I’m not alone in this, there even is a #thedarkisreading for other who do the same.

Like any classic, every time I read it (and the others) I find something new to reflect on, and I am comforted by the power of the writing. The Dark is Rising is set around Christmas, so is of course very seasonal. At its heart is the eternal battle between the forces of The Light and the The Dark. The latter wanting to cause chaos and destroy mankind, the former to protect it.

Over the last couple of years, there have been a number of contemporary analogies to be drawn with the forces of The Light and The Dark. And of course this year, it’s hard not to see the hand of the Dark Lords in the COVID-19 virus and the chaos and death it has, and continues to wreak.

In the book, The Dark creates a huge snow storm that traps people in their houses, the menace of the storm never ending, whirling around, trapping everyone. Most humans are unaware of this battle between Light and Dark – apart from the band of children who feature in the books – but the forces of both The Light and The Dark are represented, at times amplified in human behaviour. The Dark feeding off and encouraging hate, selfishness and greed, the Light bringing care and hope.

When I see news reports of panic food buying, of the ever increasing wealth of tech billionaires, and the increasing divides in our society, I can’t help but think of the forces of The Dark. The Light fights back, but it is an uphill battle.

The books were mainly written in the 1970’s, another time of struggle for many, and this year I was struck, particularly in the last book of the series, Silver on the Tree, with a section explicitly on racism. The language of ignorance and fear it highlights is sadly just as prevalent today as when it was written, however I do hope that BLM is part of The Light’s challenge against this and language and understanding is shifting.I also discovered a fantastic Blacklisted podcast discussing the book which is really worth taking an hour to listen to too.

Now you might be wondering what is the point of this post, but it relates to one theme I that is always with us, but this year has been particularly prescient, and that is time.

This year time has really shifted. The time we spent at our screens, the times we could or could not meet with others, the time where work, family, play, everything, seem to merge into one. The Dark is Rising Sequence also has its fair share of time travel. One of the powers of the Lords of both the Dark and the Lights have is the ability to freeze people in time whilst they, for want of a better word, do and talk about “stuff”. No harm is done to those who are frozen in time, they don’t even realise what has happened and can carry on as normal.

“Normal” – now there’s word for this year! As I’ve taken some proper time out over the past week, I can’t help wishing I had the power to freeze time. I would love to give everyone particularly in education a bit more time and space to stop, breathe and think. To stop trying to carry on “as normal” when normal is still a long way off. To give a bit of time to think how to really change things to reflect our current context. To disentangle ourselves from the deeply entrenched, but now perhaps misguided rituals, for example, exams.

Some business had to shut down during the first lock down and were able to take time to figure out how to operate in a very different environment. Education hasn’t been given that opportunity – it’s had to soldier on. I’m not sure how long it can without a radical re-think. Technology can help but we have to be wary. The forces of The Dark and The Light are fighting a battle there too for equity, for freedom, for care, for access to data.

Anyway, I hope, dear reader, that you have managed to get some time to rest this festive season and have found some comfort too. I wish you a very safe New Year and let’s hope that the forces of The Light start to talk hold in 2020.

NB The first of book of the Dark is Rising Sequence I read was Greenwitch, It had a profound effect on my 10 year self So much so that many years later, I did feel a resonance of The Light when this little landscape formed in my head and onto canvas.

photograph of an artwork titled Greenwitch
Greenwitch, Sheila MacNeill, mixed media on canvas, 2019

Is time the great killer in our profession?⤴

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“Lost time is never found again” Benjamin Franklin.

Teaching is a hard job, it is incredibly demanding. Before you start, I know we get great holidays but we can’t deny the massive wellbeing issue we have with teaching staff across the country. I can’t remember a day of my teaching career where the school hasn’t had to cover a staff absence. A lot of that absence is due to stress related factors which are all caused by the job.

In a recent report Scottish teachers were found to have among the highest contact times in the world. Contact times being the time spent teaching classes and being in front of children. If you add to this the findings of a recent survey of 12000 teachers that our teachers go even further by working way more than their contracted hours to provide the best possible experience for young people.

This is having a big impact on the mental health of teachers and this workload issue is now the biggest priority for our teaching unions. It was reported early in 2019 that nearly 4000 teachers in the UK were signed off with stress and stress related illnesses and 75 percent of Scottish teachers frequently feel stressed due to their workload. This is a real issue in our profession.

If we want to improve schools and attainment then maybe we should consider the wellbeing of staff and how they spend their time. This study from Briner and Dewberry outlines that staff wellbeing is the key to a schools success.

Time is our most valuable resource and how we spend it has a direct impact on the quality of our lives. Time is a big issue in schools and it is often wasted by teachers and school leaders. How many times have you sat through a staff meeting and began listing off your to-do list and how much better life would be if you could just go and get on with it.

Time in front of classes is invaluable and time well spent. Providing, of course, you have planned for a meaningful learning experience and the students have left with more than before. It is not here where we need to tackle how we spend our time but it is with the rest of our hours that we need to be more selective.

So what are the biggest killers of time in our profession and how do we go about tackling them.

Meetings. Who wants to go to them and how many times have you left a meeting feeling it is a waste of time. Far too often meetings are a waste of time, are dominated by one or two personalities, fail to produce decisions and are costly in time and money. However this doesn’t have to be the case. Here is a very small list of recommendations on how to make better use of meeting times:

  • Avoid lunchtime meetings where possible. Everyone is entitled to a lunch and should have one.
  • Think about alternatives – why not try a google doc everyone can edit in their own time and share ideas.
  • If you must have a meeting share the agenda and required reading 48 hours in advance.
  • Consider if everyone has to attend the meeting. You could invite a small number and have them cascade the information.
  • Appoint a chairperson, timekeeper and snack bringer. The timekeeper must ensure you stick to time.
  • Make the meeting 30 minutes or less and don’t waste a second of time. Make time your prisoner.
  • Send out a summary of the meeting so that agreed outcomes are actioned.

Emails. They take time to write, read and action so it is important that they are used properly. We can’t get away from emails as a quick and easy way of sharing information but they shouldn’t be something you check every time you have a second. There is way more to life than an email. So what can you do to take back control of emails:

  • Set times that you allocate to reading and responding to emails. Perhaps when you arrive at work, for 15 minutes at lunch and 15 minutes at the end of the day.
  • Only respond to emails when it is impossible to speak directly to the human on the other end.
  • If you use apps I would highly recommend Boomerang. You can pause your inbox (meaning no emails will be received during paused times) and you can boomerang emails so that they can be delivered back to you at a specific time.
  • Never, ever send an email in the evenings. That is your time to be present for your family and loved ones.

Marking and Reporting. Until this year I would spend hours of an evening writing reports to be sent home to parents about how young Simon is getting on in my class, often using the copy and paste tools. This is unfair on pupils, parents and more importantly teachers. Could we find a better way to report. My school has and it is much quicker, user friendly and involves the young person. If you want to know more check out http://www.didbook.com. As for marking, I have spoken about this before where I advocate for replacing it with Verbal Feedback. You can check this post out here.

It is important that we streamline what we do and make everything we do for the right reasons especially if we want our schools to be high performing and happy places to work. First and foremost every action we take must improve pupils outcomes and secondly they should ensure a teachers wellbeing is a top priority. After all a happy teacher is a good teacher, surely?