Well it happened, Wednesday Term 1, Week 9, my casual pool was exhausted. With a stomach bug and colds doing the rounds I’d been kept busy the weeks leading up to Week 9 always managing to easily find casuals to cover my flailing colleagues. Not this fateful day, with three away and only two casuals out of a pool of 30 available my successful run had come to an end. I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly, I’ve no doubt the fact that it was the Wednesday before the Easter long weekend contributed greatly. Usually a couple of SMSs around 5:30-6:00am and voila lessons covered. Not this day, every response was “sorry already booked” as I worked my way down my list touching base with casuals we hadn’t utilised before, the polite declines continued until the end of my list was reached. This is where my lack of experience became evident, thankfully I am surrounded by supportive people happy to assist me in my learning curve. They walked me through the tricks of the trade and the crisis was averted, for now. Anyone interested in casual teaching out there? Send your resume my way.
These last few weeks I’ve begun to delve into the various responsibilities of my role. I’ve started working on our WHS compliance, with the assistance of some very knowledgeable peers who are not only happy to share their time with me but also their work and the tools they’ve created. I come from an industry where for the most part people were possessive of their knowledge, their knowledge was their power. It is refreshing working with people that have time for others and are willing to share not only their knowledge, but the work they’ve invested their time in to ensure that you don’t have to waste yours. My challenge now, finding a snippet of time in what is already the over extended teacher’s day to cover off on legislated WHS compliance requirements.
PTA, Peer Review as well as the Tetras of timetabling have been on my to do list of late. A 3 day Timetabling Solutions training course exposed just how little I knew about this beast called Timetabling Solution as well as how intense those that timetable can be – for those of you that don’t know, it’s a very serious business. I thought I was across the ins and outs of the Daily Organiser yet here I was creating duty rosters on a word document each week along with RFF payback and casual spreadsheets. So many hours spent ensuring a fair allocation and that there were no yard duty double ups. What? You can do all this in Daily Organiser you say! As I lament the hours spent, I value what I’ve learnt. I now have a clearer understanding of how these things fit together, the pieces of the puzzle. I’ve no doubt this will assist with timetable problem solving in the years to come. To say I wasn’t quite ready to venture solo into Term 2 timetable set up would be an understatement. No doubt term 3 I’ll be all over it.
I love my job. I know many others would find it tedious and boring, and so I find it difficult to write about as I can’t imagine my daily challenges could be of interest to anyone other than myself, but I will continue to blog, as torturous a task as it continues to be. Take homes since my last blog; I had someone thank me for being so nice when they called in sick. I was shocked, what else would I be? You’re sick and it’s part of my job to replace you. They’d experienced rudeness in the past and had dreaded making that call. I will admit I had a moment where I thought maybe I’ve made a rod for my own back by being sympathetic and concerned for others, would this mean I was doomed to spend more of my days finding casuals as I wasn’t scary enough to deter staff from calling in sick. That moment passed and my advice to others will always be to engage with others respectfully and compassionately. And yes there will be those that take advantage of your kindness but the majority will give back ten fold. Value others and what they do, no one is more important than another. As colleagues we are all pieces of a puzzle and sometimes its the background pieces that allow the picture pieces to shine.
A further observation; never be complacent and never stop learning. A recent conversation I had with a friend made me realise just how lucky I am to always be open to advice and feedback, to seek it and to understand that there is no limit to knowledge, there are always takeaways. It might be one line in 500 page book or one light bulb moment in Timetabling Solutions course (okay that didn’t really happen but you know what I’m trying to demonstrate here), all of those around us can teach us something, to close yourself off from that will always be your loss.
Dear Catherine,
I resonated with the line that you included in this blog “As colleagues we are all pieces of a puzzle and sometimes its the background pieces that allow the picture pieces to shine.” The work that you do is such an integral and vital part of St Luke’s and you do it so graciously. Thank you.