TM4T Practical Guide 3 - Holidayz Part 1

Wot we do on our holidayz...

Oh dear, what a shame. No school for six weeks. Missing the kids already?
Yeah, right. Me too. We do have a bit of time on our hands, though... this
advice sheet is all about 'what teachers should do during their summer
holidays.'

Now you may be a member of what-I-call Group 1 - a shadowy fundamentalist

clique who insist that NO work at all should be done by teachers during their
summer break. If this is true - if you are aligned to Group 1 - then stop
reading now. Stick to your principles, ignore work, and step away completely
from teaching for a while - strictly speaking, you shouldn't even be reading the
Guardian Education section.

If you are Group 2 in spirit - if you can't quite tear yourself away - then this
advice sheet may help. If you are a newly qualified teacher, preparing for your
first chalkface year, you should definitely read on.

Plan Things First

The first thing you should do, in preparation for your long vacation, is to agree
a little contract with yourself, and with those you love. This sketches out when-
you-are and when-you-aren't going to drift away and do teachery things. The
details - the when and what - will differ depending on circumstance, but here is
a sketch of the-kind-of-thing you should jot down (in your Notepad, if you
follow the TM4T method):

Week Pattern Activity Workload

1 Plan Tidy up, reflect on last year, write down 0-2 hours per day
thoughts for next year; collect
information about next year; prepare for
Week 6
2 Work Groundwork 3-5 hours per day
3 Work Groundwork 3-5 hour per day
4 Holiday Total holiday - no thought of work 0 or less
whatsoever
5 Holiday Total holiday - no thought of work 0 or less
whatsoever
6 Work Plan and prepare next week, next term & 5-7 hours per day
next year

This little table is explained below:

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TM4T Practical Guide 3 - Holidayz Part 1

Work Patterns

You should define three daily patterns. The easy pattern is 'Holiday' - this
means that you have no work-structure at all - you actively avoid doing any
teacher-work at any time. Switch your phone off and add Guardian Teaching
and similar sites to your Internet porn-blocker. The opposite pattern is 'Work' -
this means that you have a self-imposed structure to your day; heck, you may
even need an alarm clock. You organise your meal-times and - when working -
you isolate yourself physically from the hedonistic languor which is all around...
and of course, you clock-off at a pre-defined self-determined time each day
and re-join the hedonistic languor.

It is psychologically important that you stick to your chosen Work pattern.

Many teachers find it difficult during term-time to establish good time-
management habits, and your vacation is a great time to get into a good
routine and get used to a sense of control.

A work-pattern of 'Plan' is more flexible - this implies that you have a couple of
hours of work to do, and it really doesn't matter when in the day that work
gets done. You can drift off whenever suits yourself and your loved ones, and
drift back whenever-whatever. In this work-pattern you should expect that
during your leisure time you are doing some reflection and incubation of ideas
about what you want to do and what you need to do - this differs from
'Holiday' (no thought of work whatsoever) and 'Work' (you switch off thoughts
of work when you clock off).

Workload

Group 1 teachers - who shouldn't really be reading this - relate to work in a

binge-and-purge pattern. They go cold-turkey each summer - cutting
themselves off from work entirely - then have a chalkface relapse when school
starts in September. Group 2 - those who don't switch off entirely - should
taper off work more gently. Week 1 should therefore involve a gentle reduction
of effort each day, and Week 6 should gradually ramp up to a work-pattern
mimicking term-time turmoil.

Week 1

As student teachers, most of use are urged to keep a diary or reflective journal
of some sort. Many of us have pondered, during our training, how on earth we
could find time to reflect on anything at all, and felt that even pondering on
how little time we had was using up time that we couldn't spare.

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TM4T Practical Guide 3 - Holidayz Part 1

That, dear reader, is what Week 1 is for. Catch up on a few months of

reflective practice. Step back, reflect, and write down (in your Notepad) ideas,
issues, and actions arising from your experience last year. If you are following
the TM4T method, you will already have a page of 'Rainy Day Projects' to
review and consider. You should do this as soon as possible after term-end,
when you are still mentally attuned to the realities of your term-time
experience. This means that you are less likely to commit to any over-
optimistic or unrealistic changes to your teaching.
As far as possible, you should spread out your workload over this week, like
Marmite on toast, as thinly and evenly as possible, leaving time in between for
ideas to brew and ruminate. During Week 1 you should not be embarking on
any projects of self-improvement or curriculum improvement, just getting it
clear in your mind what you have to do - or might have to do - in preparation
for next year. Then: prepare to forget your students and your school for up to
four weeks.

Groundwork

In the TM4T lesson-planning method, Groundwork is really important. So

important, that I don't have room to discuss it all (read about it here). There
are, though, two immediate points to deal with:

a) Holidays and Groundwork are exchangeable: if you want to spend Weeks

2&3 on holiday and Weeks 4&5 on Groundwork, that's absolutely fine.
However, you should try to do each activity as two distinct timeslots; don't
interweave or mix the two - you need two weeks complete rest.

b) Groundwork requires a change of mindset. You should start off by mentally

clarifying what your teaching subject or discipline is. For some teachers, of
course, this is a no-brainer. If you've just completed a Citizenship PGCE then
you can be pretty sure that you're a Citizenship teacher. However, in a couple
of years, things may be less clear - your subject focus may have narrowed
(you're now effectively an RE teacher) or broadened (you pretty much cover all
Humanities). When you are clear what you do and who you are, you should
then start work to find-update-procure Resources in your chosen discipline.

This invariably means extensive Web research.

You should do this without any reference-to or conscious consideration-of what

students you are going to teach next year. Your mindset should not be that of
a teacher; it should be the mindset of a chemist, or sports scientist, linguist, or
whatever-a-citizenship-specialist is called (sociologist, maybe). You should
remind yourself that this is a specialism you have chosen, and that looking for
interesting stuff in your chosen field of interest really shouldn't be that

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TM4T Practical Guide 3 - Holidayz Part 1

demanding or onerous. If it still feels like a pain and a burden, then you should
pause and consider next term carefully. Maybe mother nature - via the
Internet - is trying to tell you something.

Your Groundwork - maybe two weeks of squirrel-and-magpie work, seeking

shiny things to tickle and please, should result in a mass of well-organised,
interesting and kind-of-relevant electronic resources to see you through next
term certainly and next year mostly.

Towards the end of these 'middle' two weeks is also the best time to consider
any longer-term career plans or life plans you may have.

Holiday

Well, I think you can figure this one out for yourself, can't you? Keep calm and
do nothing.

Week 6

You should regard Week 6 as work, plain and simple. We don't care what
Group 1 think - Week 6 can be the most important week in the entire school
calendar. For most teachers it won't have life changing effects, but for a few -
a select, distinctive and distinguished few - it represents the fulcrum of their
career. I am talking about those unfortunate young teachers whose
commitment is decayed in their early years of teaching, and who leave the
profession shortly after joining it. The most frequent reason for this is
workload, and the underlying cause is very often a lack of useful preparation.
Note: not lack of preparation, but lack of useful preparation. In many ways, it
is better to do no preparation at all, than to do the wrong, useless preparation
- much less effort, much less de-motivating, much less stress.

Week 6 - and the quality of your preparation is therefore key in determining

how successful - and how stressful - your school life is going to be.

Obvious advice first: it is frequently counter-productive to plan-and-prepare

specific lessons in minute detail, especially difficult lessons, a long way in
advance.

You do need to plan and prepare specific aspects of your lessons and to
avoid wasting time on other aspects.

You also need to be constantly aware of how much planning you are doing, and
avoid planning too much too early. That is why I am going to stop this advice

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TM4T Practical Guide 3 - Holidayz Part 1

sheet right now, and leave the rest of the advice for later....

[Detailed advice for Week 6 - the week before term starts - will be posted in
around two weeks - that's when I get back from holiday ]

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