Rock and a Hard Place

As you're probably aware, teaching in the UK is getting worse and worse. Shifting goalposts, enormous workloads, constant negative feedback, absurd performance pay, and so on. I'm going crazy with stress and can't keep up with everything I'm supposed to be doing unless I have absolutely no life. I could work 12 hour days 7 days a week and still never get on top of it all.

I keep reaching breaking point, then finding I can go that little bit further, then reaching breaking point again. I almost resigned for Christmas, but I was too scared of the money issues. Now I'm invested in these kids and want to see out the year, but the fight-or-flight response is on constantly and I'm living through a rollercoaster of adrenaline. This has to be my last year of this. Come summer, I am done with classroom teaching.

I'm going to try to get a job back in the heritage sector, with supply teaching as my stopgap until something in that field comes through.

But this comes with a price. I was hoping to have a baby in the next year or so, but we can't really afford one if I'm not in a full-time, decently-paid job in which I am entitled to paid maternity leave. Statutory maternity pay isn't really enough for very long, and I'd be wary of not having a job to go back to anyway. So if I take the plunge, and get out of teaching and into something else, I have to put off having a baby until I'm in whatever that something else turns out to be. At nearly 33, that's not a decision to be taken lightly.

And yet, it's simply not safe, mental health wise, for me to suck it up long enough to have the baby.

I can't balance it, and I don't know what to do.

Shellshocked

134 confirmed deaths, with the toll expected to go over 200.

More than 700 houses destroyed.

More than 7000 people homeless.

Heaven knows how many injured in hospital.

You'd think I was talking about a border spat between Middle Eastern countries, wouldn't you? I'm not. This is happening right here in Australia, and the attacker is mother nature. Australia's worst recorded bushfire disaster.

Entire towns have been declared crime scenes, and if they catch the bastard arsonists they're going to try them with mass murder. Good.

I think I've made a mistake watching footage of it for the last two ours, I've had tears in my eyes the whole time. It's just unbelievable. This may be Australia's worst ever (recorded) natural or man-made disaster with the exception of those that occurred in wartime. It's worse than the previous two 'worst' fire events, worse than Cyclone Tracy, worse than the Bali bombings. If the death toll goes as high as some think it might, it could even be worse than the Japanese bombing of Darwin in WWII. It's so horrible.

I'm scared, too. Perth is entering a heatwave for the next week. Logically this heatwave is no more dangerous than any other, and we've weathered worse. We've had our own share of casualties too - nothing close to this in recent years, but there've been bad ones. This heatwave is just another dangerous Perth fire weather week. But what if there's copycats who have seen what's going on in Victoria and purposely light fires to try to emulate it? People who wouldn't otherwise? A good portion of the people I love most live in the Perth hills, one of the most dangerous fire areas in the Perth region. I WORK in a school in the hills which could easily be obliterated if a fire came through. I'm scared.

The school is having a fire drill tomorrow, and I'm just glad the principal warned the staff in advance that it was happening. I'm usually level-headed in a crisis but that might have been too much for me! I hope the kids get through it untraumatised. The fires are very much on their minds - lots of drawings of the Victorian bushfires in free time today - and they need to know how to act in a fire situation. And they have to believe it's a real threat or they won't know how to react when they're afraid and likely to panic. But I hate doing it to them. I hate the whole thing.