There is lots of talk about pupils needing time to process the effects of lockdown teaching and learning, and the associated anxiety.

I haven’t heard much talk of teacher recovery.

But I am one week and one day in after the holidays, and I’m exhausted.

Not just tired. 1/

Holidays are not just about rest, and are not in themselves about recovery (and I know some colleagues only had a week of holiday, I work in a council that has a two-week spring holiday).

Recovery has to include more: there have to be ways to address the cumulative anxiety. 2/

The anxiety is about jobs and conditions, about SQA, ways in which positions might be moved or goalposts changed. And underlying everything: the risk of Covid infection, especially for folks not yet vaccinated.

Teachers have had to work through all this, and put themselves... 3/

... at risk, especially now we are back in school. There seems little acknowledgement of the cumulative impact of all this.

But folk are leaving, whether temporarily or permanently, and nobody seems to care (by nobody, I think i just mean government!).

For example: 4/

This weekend a friend of my wife’s said she was leaving her job to take time out. She is fortunate that her husband’s salary allows this, but in any case, most of her salary went on childcare so she could teach. Key factors in her leaving: the shambles with the SQA, and... 5/

wider Covid anxieties.

So here’s a perfectly good teacher taking time out. Will she return??

But there seems to be precious little acknowledgment of these issues amongst those “in charge” of education.

No real conclusions here, just wondering - what and where is recovery? 6/