19th December 2020 - The autumn term came to an end and once the structures and routine of work fell away it quickly became apparent that I wasn't very well. Three weeks previously I had discovered some fairly sizeable cracks in a house we bought just 4 months prior. This led to me experincing a difficulty breathing, which quite literally floored me and took me 20 minutes to pull myself around from. Later I discovered that this was in fact a panic attack. I arranged for a builder to come and inspect them (we'd already had a full structural survey) but I immeadietly started catastrophsing. Rationally I couldn't reason why this affected me so much. I'm not some sort of wall fetishisht who couldn't bare the thought of imperfect walls. I had every confidence in the structural survey we'd comissioned. Yet none of this was enough to prevent me feeling like it was the end of the world.
20th December 2020 - Very quickly it became apparent that I was in crisis. Throughout the night I had alternated between holding my breath to contain the panic and further panic attacks. At 5 am I got out of bed, rang my GP and a mental health hotline. By 9 am I had a plan.
23rd of March 2021 - Fastforward three months and I'm feeling much better. A combination of medication, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, phenomenal support from colleagues, friends and Michaela (my wife) and the fact that I'm sheer bloody minded when I set myself to something, means I have managed to change my thinking.
With time and space to reflect, I realise now that this had almost nothing to do with the cracks. It was just the last problem in a long line of problems which led to me not coping. Priortising the wrong things meant that I had neglected myself and my wellbeing. Consequently my resilience was virtually non-existent.
Without the cracks I would have never have glimpsed the light. I wouldn't have realised that it was possible to behave differently, to think differently, to feel different. At first, I kept pondering when I would feel like my old self again. Then one day I felt good. Really good. Better than I had done in six months. Maybe longer. But not like my old self. And then it hit me: I was never going to feel like my old self. But that was a good thing. I'd been through a crisis and it had changed me, for the better. It wasn't a pleasant experience, in fact at times it was genuinely terrifying. However if I can apply what I have learnt as a result of it, it will have fundamentally altered me for significant long term benefit.
Our education system has been through a crisis. The cracks are visible to anyone who has spent the pandemic inside a school. Despite this enormous stress, we've adapted, sought support, supported our communities and coped remarkably well. However I'm terrified for myself, for my colleagues but most of all for the children that we're striving to get back to where we were. For school to feel like it did. If that's what we aim for, I have no doubt that we can achieve it (we're a very determined sector). However that would be a further tragedy.
Through hard work we have strode bravely in a new direction. We have embraced technological and pedagogical change in weeks and months that might have taken years under normal circumstance. All around the country all teachers have been engaged in discussions about curriculum, relationships between school and home hae been strengthened or where necessary forged anew. We're becoming increasingly comfortable with being uncomfortable due to the rate of change we've endured. If we lose this then we will have lost our best opportunity in many generations to reform our practice. Not just what we do tomorrow, or next week. But that we look to the horizon and embrace the technological and pedagogical developments that best support or learners.
The stress of the situation has revelaed and widened the cracks that were (mostly) already there. However they've also let in the light. We've glimpsed how different it can be. We've glimpsed what it is like when the reach of our learning transcends the traditional structures that have typically defined what a school is. Let's not resort to filling the cracks. Instead lets look to build new structures and systems that are inherently more resilient, reach further than our school drives, that are firmly embedded in our wider communities and as a result are less likely to crack in the future.
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