Today is a big day for me. I'm leaving my current workplace after a long term of service. I moved to a new job in a school in a former mill town north of Manchester back in 2001. I was thirty one. Isaac was three and Eliza had not been born. In 2008 the school was closed and new academy replaced it and I've been there ever since. I didn't plan on staying in one place for so long and within the school I've done several different jobs and held several different roles. Isaac died in November 2021 and in January 2022 I went back to work. I was off work for five weeks in total. I think part of going back to work was partly about getting some routine and familiarity back into my life, which had changed beyond all recognition. Going back was very difficult. I was on a reduced role and timetable. At times I wondered to myself, sometimes out loud, 'what the fuck am I doing?', but I kept going and my closest colleagues (some of whom I've worked with since 2001) were very helpful and supportive. I look back now at those first six months after he died and don't know how anyone manages in such a situation but you do find a way to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. In the summer of 2022 I stepped down from my then role on the leadership team and went back to the job I was doing when I first arrived there in 2001, Head of History, which had a neat circularity to it if nothing else.
Without going into any detail and washing some very dirty laundry in public, my workplace has had a very rough time over the last five years, gone through a number of structural and leadership changes, changes that are still taking place, and it has been at times a very difficult place to work. Schools in challenging circumstances are hard work and working with good people alongside you is the thing that gets you through some days. I'm leaving behind a group of colleagues who are friends and who I've spent a lot of time with. We've been through a lot together. Thank you, you know who you are.
I knew a couple of years ago I needed a change, a new start, to be somewhere else, that something had to change and that it had to be change that I chose. We've had so much change forced on us since November 2021 and I wanted to be the one that made a decision, choosing to change my life. Getting out and getting a new job has taken me some time and while living with grief it's taken finding the energy to do it as well. A year ago I thought I was stuck, too old and too expensive compared to the younger and cheaper teachers that were being appointed ahead of me. At the end of May I was interviewed for my new job and got it. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right job, the right place, the right people, to fall into place.
When I leave at 12.30 pm today I'm leaving a lot behind me and it's going to be a wrench in lots of ways. There will be tears and goodbyes and a sense of leaving something which has been a massive part of my life but also I am really looking forward to being somewhere else, closer to home (you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to not being on the M60 every day this winter), in new surroundings. When I got the phone call in May to offer me the job the sense of relief I felt was enormous, the proverbial weight being lifted. Today is an ending and a goodbye. I have a few weeks off and then a new beginning. Wish me luck.
3 comments:
I wouldn't begin to compare my own experience with what you have been dealing with in recent years, but ten years I left a job I knew I had to get out of for my own sake. There have obviously been ups and downs since but it has all worked out and I still get to hang out with the good folks from the old place. I haven't regretted it for a moment and I'm sure you won't either.
I can very well understand what must have been going on inside you to steer your life in a new direction. Good luck in your new job, Adam.
All the nest for the new job Adam. As someone who has also worked in education for a long time, I know how important colleagues are when things aren't going well.
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