On Friday we had a end-of-year buffet. This gave opportunity to embarrass any departing staff. References were made to underpants, dodgy pictures were shown on powerpoint presentations and the deputy head declared her love (presumably platonic, but who knows?) for the Advanced Skills Teacher.

The biggest leaver was the Head who had announced his retirement back in December. You could tell that everyone felt a bit sad about it and it's going to be difficult for our new head to fill his shoes. You could tell from his speach that he was a little sad to be going himself.

The other speaches were mostly quite funny, back to the underpants. Though given the amount of in-jokes it left a lot of us feeling a little bemused, though humoured nevertheless. The head of technology gave a more serious and thought-provoking speach. She'd been teaching for thirty-nine years and still clearly had so much passion for her job. If I'm half as enthusiastic when I retire I'll be very happy indeed. She talked about not counting down to her retirement which made me feel a little guilty about counting down the days until the summer holidays. And she said something about the job not being about the teaching but being about the kids. She meant that we should take every opportunity to get involved, which includes things like camps and after-school clubs. I'm sure there's something more subtle to what she was saying too, but I can't quite pin-point what it is.

Regardless it was nice to hear other people talking about teaching. There is a tendency to switch off unless speaches are grabbing your attention and making you laugh but I find it amazing to hear people talking who have been teaching since before I was born. I was feeling a bit sad earlier this week because it felt like things were coming to an end. No longer an NQT and looking back on a difficult year. But I now realise how lucky I am because it's all ahead of me and I've got so much time. I left school that afternoon feeling a strange sense of tranquility, already looking forward to going back in September.

Only forty-four more days until I get to teach again.