August 9th – Book Lovers’ Day Through the beauty of my twitter trends list this morning, I found out that today is Book Lovers’ Day (known as National Book Lovers’ Day in the USA.) This is a day that screamed out for me to make a return to writing a Sunday Shelf post! I amContinue reading “Sunday Shelf, Vol. 3”
Author Archives: onequietteacher
Empowering the Quiet Ones
When ’empowerment’ emerged as a theme for the #DailyWritingChallenge, I thought long and hard about it. I feel as though I have been empowered by this blog, sharing pieces of myself with every entry I post and making connections with new people who have been affected by the things I have written. But this time,Continue reading “Empowering the Quiet Ones”
Are Treadmills Over-rated?
I’m in a weird in-between stage in my life, and I don’t know if I like it. Actually, I think my family would attest to me not liking it very much, considering how much I’ve moaned about it lately! All my life, my next step has been predetermined and secure. I have always known whatContinue reading “Are Treadmills Over-rated?”
Resolve
Or, keeping calm and carrying on I have been fairly resilient for a long time. Setback after setback has tried to stop me living my dream, but here I am, the end of my NQT year a hair’s breadth from my grasp. I had rather hoped that my crusade of forced resilience might come toContinue reading “Resolve”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Stillness
I have craved stillness all week. A classroom is not the best setting when temperatures are rising, and the movement required of teaching Year Ones, even in a bubble, is not the most comfortable thing in the world when outdoor temperatures are high. But the real stillness I’ve wanted has been mental rather than physical:Continue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Stillness”
I am not ideal.
I am not ideal. Let me unpack that, because in its stark brevity it may be jarring, despite its truth. The terms ‘extrovert’ and ‘introvert’ to describe the two ends of the personality spectrum are relatively new, having been popularised almost 100 years ago by Carl Jung. But the predisposition towards one or the other,Continue reading “I am not ideal.”
NQT/ECT Advice #3
What do I do in my first week? This was requested on Twitter by @miss_jwoodcock – I hope there’s something helpful in among all this! I think this is the blog I would have most wanted to read myself, as an NQT-to-be. There was so much running through my head, and despite all my placementContinue reading “NQT/ECT Advice #3”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Choice
An average teacher in an average classroom makes 1500 choices every day. Our working life centres around the outcome of these decisions and then making infinite other choices as a result. Decision fatigue is very real; at the end of a day it’s not uncommon to see teachers struggle over the smallest choices because we’reContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Choice”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Happiness
I struggled writing this! Not because I’m not happy, but because there’s a lot of things that can make me sit back and say “Yeah, I’m happy.” And for someone with a chronic anxiety disorder, it’s pretty great to be able to do that! When I sat with my blog notebook today, this is whatContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Happiness”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Humour
I love to laugh. In my family, shared time is best spent with the kind of laughter that forces tears from you eyes while you silently rock, too amused to even produce sound. We find laughs everywhere: the obvious places like The Last Leg and Gogglebox; the more niche choice of Richard Osman’s House ofContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Humour”
#DailyWriting Challenge – Roots
I’m currently reading Becoming by Michelle Obama; after lusting after this book, life got in the way and I ended up putting it down for an extended period, more than once. But there really is no excuse not to read, in lockdown! Though that makes it sound like a chore, and this book is farContinue reading “#DailyWriting Challenge – Roots”
NQT/ECT Advice #2
On Rejection… I wrote this in the wake of what initially felt like the end of the world: being unsuccessful in interviewing for a further maternity cover at my school, that would have allowed me to stay for another year. I was crushed because I’ve loved working at that school, with wonderful children and fantasticContinue reading “NQT/ECT Advice #2”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Compassion
Compassion is seeing a need for help, and helping; it is being thoughtful and kind; it is wanting to help, out of one’s own goodness. Teaching is a compassionate career. There’s no two ways about it: we devote our working lives to improving others, but if you spend any length of time in any school,Continue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Compassion”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Hope
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness Desmond Tutu This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. While I think more is needed than conversation and awareness – perhaps, better access to healthcare, more acceptance of those with mental illness and less stigma around their being among usContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Hope”
NQT/ECT Advice #1
What can I do over the summer to get ready? This was requested by @Miss_Grimmer on Twitter, and it’s actually been quite nice to reflect on what I did last summer, what I didn’t do and what I maybe should have done! I hope there’s something useful in here for soon-to-be NQT’s thinking about theContinue reading “NQT/ECT Advice #1”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Harmony
Harmony – noun – the state of being in agreement or concord There has been a lot of negativity about teachers this week. Some of it is aimed directly at us: poisoned arrows of accusation that we’re not working hard enough;that we haven’t worked while schools are closed; that we think ourselves ‘special’. The worstContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Harmony”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Integrity
Integrity. Noun. Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty. Dictionary.com After a lot (and I mean a lot) of indecision and restless thought about this blog, I turned to friends for advice. I had looked up the dictionary definition, read the blogs of others and breainstormed pages of notes that ultimatelyContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Integrity”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Respect
This is not the blog I expected to write today. I was almost sure I wouldn’t be able to harness the enormous theme of ‘respect’ into something brief and engaging enough for a #DailyWritingChallenge entry… and then a very good friend, an NHS paediatric nurse, brought something to my attention that boiled my blood. ForContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Respect”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Curiosity
Curiosity. Noun. The desire to learn or know about anything; Inquisitiveness. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/curiosity?s=t Curiosity is the value that immediately sprang to mind as I chatted to one of my pupils this morning (over the phone, observing and respecting all social distancing and professional boundaries, I feel obligated to add!) They told me excitedly about all theContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Curiosity”
Sunday Shelf, Vol. 2
Anime, Audiobooks and Alexis Ffrench I’m not sure how everything that I came to writing about ended up being something beginning with A… But here they are, three things that are certainly keeping me going at the moment while lockdown carries on and distractions are welcome. Anime is a very new love. Since titles startedContinue reading “Sunday Shelf, Vol. 2”
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini [Review]
I finished reading this book a little over a fortnight ago and I’ve known since then that I wanted to write about it, because reading it was an experience that I am eager to explore and share. The Kite Runner is a bildungsroman published in 2003, charting a journey to adulthood that begins against theContinue reading “The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini [Review]”
November
While this is an addition to my NQT series, it is equally an entry for the #DailyWritingChallenge, under the heading of ‘perseverance.’ November was a long, hard slog for me: not a month I will forget in a hurry for sure. I moved out of my parents’ house, for that first taste of independence andContinue reading “November”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Creativity
With the time to reflect, my weekend and the days leading up to it were more than a little stressful, despite the small respite of my 22nd birthday on Thursday. Unfortunately, this entry slipped to the bottom of my to-do list, which feels like a great shame as I usually consider myself to be aContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Creativity”
#DailyWritingChallenge – Change
As a self-confessed history geek, I have to admit that this blog prompt felt like a lightbulb moment for me. I loved history at school, and fondly remember the themes of ‘change’ and ‘continuity being imprinted on my mind as they arose time and time again. There is no doubt that the period we fndContinue reading “#DailyWritingChallenge – Change”
There’s no such thing as a Zero Day
Like many things, the concept of the ‘zero day’ stresses me out. For those who haven’t come across the phrase, a zero day is one during which you get absolutely nothing done, as a result of feeling mentally rubbish. When I first came across the idea, I was in a rough patch. I clung toContinue reading “There’s no such thing as a Zero Day”
One Quiet Teacher 