Inspired by the various educators on staffrm who’ve been blogging under the hashtag #routines I have decided to join the party and lay out my routine for all to see. The trouble is, despite nominally living a life that, in term time at least, is ruled by a timetable there is less structure to my day-to-day existence than I might like. I have less contact time than I had earlier on in my career but those ‘free periods’ can be swallowed up by a bewildering and totally unpredictable array of tasks.
So I have elected to take a leaf out of C.S. Lewis’s book and present a routine that serves as an archetype, that characterizes what I mean when ‘I speak of a normal day (and lament that normal days are so rare).’
In my case, I am at my most productive and energetic when I live about six miles from my place of work, have no car and am therefore forced to cycle into work. For nearly four years when I first started at Uppingham this was my situation. Since then I have lived on site and so have not fully been able to realise this archetype again.
So here it is, my ideal (work-day) routine:
0600 - rise, have breakfast, get bike out of shed, stretch the dog’s legs
0645 - begin cycle into work
0715 - arrive at work; shower change
0730 - sort out admin. for day; check e-mails; finish of lesson preparation
0840 - teaching; observations; planning
1040 - break (good crowd in the staffroom; great ‘banter’)
1100 - resume teaching; find time for a blog post if free(!)
1300 - lunch (resist anything but the salad bar and some fruit - never happens, but hey, this is an archetype)
1330 - meet a member of staff (positive appraisal, all going well)
1410 - chapel (great sermon, favourite hymn)
1430 - teaching (kids really in the mood and fired up; transitions work perfectly; NQT observing is blown away by my proficiency)
1530 - debrief NQT; set targets
1600 - run - a long one, feel strong, pleasant ache in legs at the end
1645 - beer in the pub with some staff
1730 - cycle home
1800 - shower
1815 - walk the dog
1900 - supper (kids home)
1930 - kids washing up(!); wife and I relaxing on the sofa
2000 - kids finished washing up, we watch an episode of House together; legs aching nicely
2100 - a bit of marking, check my Blogtrottr feed, bit of Twitter action
2200 - news and Question Time on TV
2300 - bed, read a book (wife doesn’t complain about the light being on!)
2330 - light out, sleep