This week I announced to my primary school colleagues that I am retiring at the end of this academic year. I have been very fortunate to teach at the same wonderful school for 27 years. At no point has the grass ever looked greener at other primary schools compared to my own - although there were the odd moments that I did attempt to try a different patch (but thankfully, in hindsight, it was not to be).
Retirement sounds to me like 'knitting and slippers'. The definition in the online dictionary is: 'the action or fact of leaving one's job and ceasing to work' . Working as a primary teacher, and for the last 10 years a Deputy, has been rewarding and exhausting in equal measure. I am planning to leave now because my husband and I have done the maths and figured we have 20 active years left in us and want to make positive and exciting choices with this next section of our lives. I am 'leaving one's job' but choosing the freedom to work or give or be active in any way I desire without a very early morning alarm clock, marking and planning late into the night or the constraints of the school year.
A few years ago in a creative workshop at an all day training event hosted by the Trust my school belongs to, I had a small but significant 'moment'. We were asked to draw something from within. Anything. For some reason I chose to draw an illustration that I remembered from a favourite story book from my early childhood about a dog called Harry. In the scene I drew, Harry was trotting down the highstreet in the town where he lived - past the butchers of course with sausages hanging in the window. Goodness knows why this suddenly came to mind but there was much that seemed poignant and special in that drawing: memories of childhood; the soothing of an old familiar 'read a thousand times' story; the high street reminiscent of visits to my Nana in north London when very young; the dog in the drawing which, rather than Harry the terrier in the story, I replaced with a mix of our family labrador cross we had when growing up and our beautiful (but dizzy) school labradoodle. I looked at my drawing and felt it was both naive but brilliant all at once. It was the start of something new.
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