2020 was a strange year for the world as we've all tried to cope with the fallout from the pandemic. With the year over and a new one just begun it got me reflecting on the interesting journey my family and I have been on.
My wife and I were teaching abroad in Saudi, having packed up in Summer 2019 with the intention of being abroad for quite a few years. We had hoped to see the world, show our girls different cultures and societies and hopefully save for our future too whilst enjoying the perks of international life. However, the pandemic had other plans…
With the rising Covid cases across the world, different countries undertook a variety of strategies, some which worked better than others, which we know now with retrospect - after all, who would have thought leaving airports open with no temperature or health screening during rising Covid cases would be a bad idea that would come back to haunt us?
In Saudi, lockdown was very strict, with all but essential travel restricted and schools closed on 9th March. This meant all schools in the country had to undertake distance learning. Luckily enough, our school had been going paperless for a couple of years and so the technology and systems were in place to transition pretty smoothly.
Over the next 2 months our school held meetings on Google Meet whilst we teachers planned bite-sized lessons which the pupils could access in their own time and do independently. We assessed their work and offered feedback on the online learning platform SeeSaw and met online with our students for 6 hours a week to discuss their work, as well as their physical and mental health. It was wonderful to see the children, as well as their pets, stuffed toys and various accoutrement they felt compelled to share, as it kept that teacher-pupil relationship alive during a time when people could feel isolated. Considering the circumstances, our school did well in ensuring the children had a cohesive system in place for delivering the curriculum whilst also keeping pupils engaged with communication from us teachers.
However, I'm not gonna lie- it was intense and incredibly demanding. My wife and I sometimes worked 18 hour days as the workload was incredibly gruelling at the beginning. Being a new development, the goalposts were often changed and we would have to pivot to new ideas and plans which were being forged by the senior leadership team who were responding to circumstances as they appeared. These innovations had to be implemented with very little lead time but with having our own two children at home, it made delivering what was demanded all the more difficult. This was heightened as the facilities in the compound were closed, social distancing enforced heavily with crippling fines and the balmy 40+ degree weather meaning you couldn't stay outside for too long. Our children, and others in the compound, could not use the swimming pools, play centre, sports facilities, parks or other play facilities which made the days long, but as we had a live-in nanny we had it easier than many of our colleagues and others in the wider community. With time, my wife and I (and I believe all of my colleagues--though I don't wish to speak on their behalf) persevered and we gradually fell into a pattern and things became easier.
What I noticed was that, after the initial whirlwind of direction and activity, distance learning let us thrive as teachers as we were left to plan as a grade and this allowed us to show our true professionalism and expertise. In fact, I'd say that some of the distance learning lessons were some of the best and most cohesive I'd taught over the year as we had to mainline the learning and put the various, works-in-progress Common Core, 'Student Directed Learning' and 'educationally progressive' trends to one side. Being taken away from this 'progressive accretion' meant that the lessons taught were more focussed and streamlined with no ‘filler.’
I'm not a Luddite but some of the initiatives I've had to go through as a teacher over the years have been counter-intuitive and this school was no different in that regard. Not everything worked but as this was a top-down led school with a singular vision, we had to adhere to the strict guidance we were given.
When flights were available, we flew back to England to complete the final several days of Distance Learning from home, safe in the knowledge that if flights were shut down we were close to our nearest and dearest. I wrote about that in a post in May 2020, which was the last one about our work and life and Saudi. This is the follow up and a ‘state of play’ up to now.
Our Summer in Devon was great as we had the beach and moors pretty much on our doorstep.
Our school closed for the end of the academic year on May 21st 2019 and we were informed that we would have to wait and see about what would happen as regards the virus, the financial fallout and its effect on enrollment and thus the implications for our jobs. The international teaching circuit is heavily affected by financial instability and when the economy takes a downturn so do the pupil retention rates at fee-paying schools. There was a real fear that many student would leave the school or be unable to return (due to flights not being available) and so a sense of dread filled much of the teaching staff. We were hopefully going to be informed about our jobs mid-August 2020 but this late date meant that we would have passed the point for most job applications for teaching here in the UK and also meant that most international jobs would have gone too. Some schools had released some staff with severance packages and an apology but our school took the sensible approach of 'wait and see' but this meant that we had an uncertain future.
Over the next few months we waited and watched the spread of the pandemic, the fluctuating spikes in infection rates and Covid hotspots, reflecting on if this would affect our livelihood and Saudi home. The school was not very forthcoming or communicative about what was going on and what kind of position they were in as, to be honest, they didn't know themselves which way the wind would blow and so… we waited.
During this protracted period of time we were in a state of limbo and didn't know what to do. The constant waiting took its toll on our mental health but we are fortunate in that we are key workers and that allows us at least some guarantees of work in the teaching marketplace should the situation go LIFO (Last In First Out). However, from a familial point of view this was a terrible position as our girls didn't know what was going on in terms of their schooling and we couldn't make any financial decisions as we didn't know what would happen:
Would our girls go to the local or Saudi school and what would this look like?
Would schools be safe if we went back?
Would we be penalised for not being able to get back to Saudi because we left?
Would we be given any severance?
What would our references look like?
Would Boris continue to be a muppet and handle the situation badly yet still deny it whilst speaking nonsensical Latin phrases to show off his privilege?
A couple of months later the school asked us to fill in some staff questionnaires to get a feel of our mood. So we had a decision to make:
(i) be honest and say we would honor our 2 year contract but state that we were concerned about what the school would have in place for our daughters whilst we were doing distance learning which might include a live lesson component, or,
(ii) be honest and say we didn't want to return due to rising Covid numbers in Saudi and then be told that we had broken the contract and suffer the harsh financial penalty?
As you can see, we were very conflicted and my wife and I oscillated back and forth between these two options but we filled in the questionnaire as honestly as we could saying we wanted to complete the two years but that the welfare of our daughters would take precedence; after half a year out of school we couldn't in all good conscience have our daughters' learning left as a question mark.
And so we waited until we were informed on 21st August that we were to be released from our contract. It was a shock but also a relief to be honest. At the time, we were disappointed that we had been let go as we'd had a tough year but we had wanted to finish our time and say goodbye to colleague and friends. Also, as a parent you want your children to have a sense of closure, for them to say thank you and bye to the friends they had made but this would not be possible now, except through online means. During such uncertain times we were glad to be home near friends and family and the NHS.
The lateness of our termination had us scrabbling to get our girls into school, buying a car, looking for jobs, looking at housing etc. All pretty intense stuff at the best of time let alone during a pandemic but we were given a fair severance so that helped alleviate any short-term financial concerns. Also, we had made some preparations for this eventuality and so we put that into action. We had considered going to teach abroad in Brazil (like seriously, there was a job going… I’m not just saying that as in old films it’s where all mobsters and criminals would run to to get away from the Feds) but we decided to settle in Devon as Bolsanaro was handling the pandemic nearly as badly as Trump. Also, Devon was where we planned to settle in some undetermined 'future' so why not do it now? With the beach and moors nearby we had beautiful landscapes to explore as well as the in-laws nearby, but you can’t have everything eh? (I kid, I kid!)
Meanwhile, our friends and colleagues in Saudi helped pack our villa for us and sent our belongings via shipped freight, for which we were eternally and immeasurably grateful. However, this meant that for a few months we would not have our belongings and the stuff we had left in England before our international departure in the summer of 2019 was in storage… in Kent!
However, the priority for my wife and I was to get our girls settled into school as it had been 6 moths since they had last been in a classroom with their peers. My eldest daughter settled in at the local two form mixed year school really well as the SLT knew about what had happened to us regarding Saudi and the nurturing school environment was to get the children settled and address the issues that may have arisen after several months out of school.
My younger daughter meanwhile was a little more difficult to place as there were a few pre-school around but we didn't know which one to go for. We opted for 2 to see which one she liked the best, a pre-school attached to her sisters, she calls is 'Twin School' and another that was based a few miles away in a temporary porta-cabin structure as the original building had been damaged a few months ago due to a neighboring fire that broke out. The draw of this porta-pre-school was that it had pigs and donkeys and had a big focus on nature and singing, two things my daughter loves.
As for work, while I was waiting for my DBS police check to clear before getting myself out there to do some supply work to suss out the schools and figure out what was next, I undertook some online tuition and it kept me busy and our family afloat during this difficult transition. My wife, who is also a teacher (much better than I in my opinion) took the role of maintaining the house and looking after the kids as with the return to school and potential closures of bubbles, we had to have someone available at home. After being at work, this was a difficult transition but hopefully would only be temporary, at least until things got back to some kind of normality.
Once our children were settled, I finally got my DBS through in early October. I started to put myself out there via a supply agency and it was an interesting experience. I'm from London where teaching jobs are plentiful and abundant- opportunities as far as the eye can see. Here in the South West it's definitely not like that. Long term teaching jobs are rare as teachers stay until they retire or die, which is fine but it means lots of younger people leave for the bigger cities. Also, as I didn't want to travel for dozens of miles and I had the additional curse/ blessing of being an experienced teacher who was on the Upper Pay Scale which made me prohibitively expensive for many schools there were few roles out there for me. It got to a point where I even went for a Deputy Headship role, even though I’ve only ever reached middle management levels before. I think I could have done well in the role with mentoring and guidance but who wants that during a pandemic when the Head could go off ill? And so I didn’t get it due to lack of managerial experience but maybe that is something for less germier times for me to consider…
However, I haven’t minded it as it has meant I have had to hustle. In between the occasional TA supply job and rare teaching supply at mainstream and SEN schools I have been doing online tuition and making *sigh* content for my website. Now the supplying has been great as it has offered me an ‘in’ at schools and shown me insights into what schools are like as well as seeing good practice. In a way being out of a full-time teaching role was liberating as I didn’t know what was going to occur day to day. It was just my Mazda Sport 2 and I on the open road, taking in new places and learning more about this area that I know quite well but with no experience of the schools. In many ways I felt like a proper Millennial, doing loads of things whilst trying to see what sticks.
After my Honda Jazz, this Mazda 2 Sport was a bit of a power upgrade. I’m not gonna lie, I was scared to drive it initially but now I love it!
I worked at a SEN Autistic school for much of the later Autumn 2 term as a TA and occasionally as a teacher. This experience was great as I had to adapt my behaviour and teaching strategies and learned so much. I had the occasional interview or teaching role at other schools here and there but this SEN school was pretty much a constant and taught me a lot. I loved the experience, even though it was challenging and exhausting, as I developed new friendships with staff and forged bonds with many of the pupils, many of whom didn’t initially know what to make of me due to my appearance and cultural background. With time they opened up and accepted me and it led to some interesting conversations about identity. I had a pupil with autism say in all earnestness, “You’re blowing my mind, you’re asian but you speak english so well. And you say you were born in east London?” It was touching and it was moments like this that really made me smile as by having chats like this other kids would come up to me and tell me about their heritage, often whilst we were playing football at lunchtime. I also hope that by engaging with me I tackled some of the stereotypes and misconceptions they may have had about asians.
Just before Christmas I applied and got a fixed term teaching position at a mainstream school in Torquay which should tide me over for the Spring term. I don't know what's going to happen after but in a weird way I feel excited to be given an opportunity to find new positions this late in my professional career.
It’s been a heck of a year but in the words of the poem ‘Hope-o-potamus’;
There’ll be times in your life when your road will be tough.
You’ll be tempted to say that you’ve had quite enough.
There’ll be poeple that try and convince you to stop,
And you’ll feel that you’re just about ready to drop.
But those are the times when you’ve got to keep moving.
And with every small step you will see things improving…
I don't regret making the decisions my wife and I have made as, even though things didn't all work out, life is all about trying new things and shaking it up. This is what makes life interesting and exciting. It doesn't always go your way but in my view it's much better to do something and it not work out rather than have this feeling of regret or ennui at not embracing life to its fullest potential.
In life it’s the journey that’s worthwhile.
LINK- Straight Outta Quarantine: 14 Days in Blighty
LINK- Flying Home From Coronavirus
LINK- One Month on From Social Distancing in Saudi
LINK- Life in Coronavirus Lockdown Saudi
LINK- Life in the Times of the Coronavirus
LINK- The Further Adventures of Anjum of Arabia in Saudi
LINK- High Tea and High Times in the Riyadh Globe
LINK- Reflecting on Life in Saudi Arabia After 5 Months
LINK- Life in Saudi Arabia 3 Month On