How to enjoy a decent cup of tea

I've been on a tea kick for a couple of months, and my ritual at work is a curiosity among colleagues. The spring-clip infuser is an invention on par with the mousetrap. Because of it, I can drink leaf tea brewed in a cup, and clean up easily afterwards. Here's the routine:

1. Place napkin on small tray, and two cups (large and small) on napkin.
2. Locate teaspoon in desk drawer.
3. Select desired tea(s) from among five small tins – yes, I blend them occasionally.
4. Transfer a teaspoon of leaves to the infuser.
5. Take the lot to the kitchen.
6. Warm the large cup with hot water from the urn. Remove water.
7. Place infuser in cup and fill with hot water.
8. Take the lot to whereever the tea is to be consumed.
9. Wait five minutes.
10. Transfer infuser to small (empty) cup so tea is no longer brewing.
11. Imbibe!
12. Empty leaves from infuser into bin.
13. Remove stubborn leaves from infuser by running under tap.
14. Rinse both cups.
15. Take the lot back to my desk, ready for next time.
    

It's sooooooo much nicer than a teabag. Open a teabag sometime – even a good one – and empty out the tea. It's like powder or dust. It's what they sweep off the floor when all the tea leaves have been packaged!

The infuser doesn't match a teapot for flavour: a pot allows the leaves more room to unfold and more contact with the water; it also traps the aroma. But teapots are a nuisance to clean. So I thank goodness for my infuser during the week and use a single-cup teapot on the weekend.

My selection of teas includes: Assam for straight-up tea taste; Russian Caravan with a smoky flavour; Prince of Wales for a fuller body that's good for blending and great with a snack; Earl Gray for that classic citrus aroma; and Stockholm Blend containing Assam tea, vanilla pieces, dried fruit peel, and probably other such stuff. I'm hoping to acquire some green teas with various accompaniments soon.

Halfway through the busiest year of my life

It's unbelievable. There's one week to go before I enjoy a well-earned three week holiday, and even that will be punctuated by work. The life of a first-year teacher is not enviable, unless you happen to be that first-year teacher and love your job. That said, I enjoy my job more in theory than in practice at the moment. This eight-week term is well known as the busiest time of the year, with exams, marking, parent-teacher nights, and reporting putting a lot of pressure on everybody. Those things create nearly a full-time job in their own right; never mind the actual teaching of children. When one is inexperienced, the consequence of a heavy extra workload is that one cannot properly prepare for the 4.5 (on average) lessons per day. Teaching suffers, the students suffer, and I suffer. The ultimate consequence is exhaustion.

Am I complaining? No. It's a learning experience, and I know that this time next year will run more smoothly. Writing reports, for instance, is much more time consuming when you haven't done it before. Writing a decent exam takes more time than anyone outside the profession could imagine, but that also surely gets easier with practice. Marking is time-consuming, but at least it's not stressful. And parent-teacher nights are usually a positive experience that help you understand more about the students.

The first term was really busy because everything is a new experience, and working in a deservedly elite school, there's plenty of pressure from parents not to be a bad teacher. In the second term, I was forced to fly on instinct. I have planned exactly three lessons in seven weeks. The rest I more or less worked out as I went along. That's sometimes a good thing, but often the result is tetchy students, opportunities for misbehaviour, and me falling behind the curriculum. It's going to take a lot of planning next week and during the holidays to get things back on an even keel.

Nonetheless, there have been heaps of positive experiences, many learning experiences, and a general sense of doing the right thing with my life. The professionalism of the maths department at my school is superlative. It adds to my workload, because expectations are high, but it makes the job more satisfying as well.