It is always the same at this time of year. I am sure that you are feeling it to. The change of pace. When we break up from school I know that I will immediately slow down and change into a different slower gear. It is just great.

One of the most important ways this affects my professional work is that it allows me thinking time. During the working term it is so difficult to find quality time to relax and think about the work you are doing, the projects you have had success with, the new tools you have used, the ones you yet still want to explore or the blog posts you have read! So little time. I feel a mental decluttering as soon as I am a few days into the break and it allows me the freedom to peruse some connections or projects I have had to ignore.

Changing current pedagogies in your classroom to embrace a powerful new tool requires quality connections to be made and this, in my opinion, demands quality time. I am lucky enough to have non contact time to plan, prepare and assess at school – we call it PPA time in England. But there is no T for Thinking in there. I would call it TAPPT – deliberately in that order too. Thinking, Assessment, Planning, Preparation and Thinking time.

Recently I went for a walk with my son, I love to just amble along at his pace. It’s great, there is no hurry. He came across a tree and just wandered around it a couple of times. Exploring the possibilities it held – feeding his curiosity. He stopped and continued to walk – but then he went back to the solitary trunk and went round again. Time was no issue.

There it was, exactly what I enjoy about the holidays during the year, no time constraint – a freedom to wander off but then return to a thought if you want to. For me that is what I want from a teaching job – built in reflective time to explore ideas. Not as a bolt on or rooted in the time away from school, but intrinsically part of your working routine. A routine that understands and values how important that time is.

I have always remembered a phrase Bill Watterson used in a Calvin and Hobbes strip:

There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

Do you find you slow down during the holidays? Does your school allow you quality time to develop ideas and make connections in your work?

During the holiday period do you find yourself thinking much more clearly about utilising technology in the classroom?