The academic year looms again....

Tomorrow is a red letter day for me because it marks the return to school for myself and my colleagues. As always, it has come round very quickly. I feel terrified and unprepared, yet I am also aware of a previously absent level of confidence. Although it can be a very difficult shift - mostly due to reasons of unruly, anti-social student behaviour, lack of effort and professionalism from fellow classroom teachers, and frequent mismanagement from the leadership staff - I feel settled in the school and, rather strangely, I am looking forward to meeting head on the familiar, inevitable challenges that I will face before the now very distant thought of the next summer break becomes a reality. The fact that I am a returning, relatively well-established teacher certainly makes a difference and this experience will determine certain aspects of how things progress for me, whereas new staff will no doubt be hindered and more aggressively challenged, as I was and others before me were, due to their obvious lack of familiarity with the school and it's students. I have come to realise that experience is vital and it cannot be under-estimated. It breeds confidence in the teacher and sometimes fear and respect in the students, it allows me to relax while keeping them on their toes. They know that I know how things work and, vitally, those whom I have taught previously are well aware of both my tolerated limits and my behavioural/academic expectations. Working with returning students will therefore be less complicated; and new students will be easier to deal with because I have now reached a certain level of comfort in terms of my teaching and class management. All of this combined will help me to create the atmosphere of controlled learning necessary to allow me to guide my students, willing and disruptive, through the subject. I have no doubt that this will prove to be another interesting, challenging, exhausting and hopefully thoroughly rewarding year for me in my role as an educator.