Maybe an unpopular opinion, and I've been speaking to colleagues at school all with different takes.
Will you be striking this Thursday?
My intention had been to strike on one of the national days on March 15th or 16th.
I have refused to fill out the head's Google form about who will or won't be striking (that has been sent round repeatedly), in order not to make the strike less effective.
However, I'm really torn about whether to strike on Thursday or not. I'm currently planning and paying for my wedding, so losing a day's pay is really not ideal (especially as I plan to strike in a couple of weeks). I also will likely be spending the day working anyway and resent not getting paid for it, especially after doing a lot of overtime this week anyway!
And one perspective is the strike day will be happening with or without me, we only have exam years in school, so the only difference will be that my exam year classes miss a double lesson and an intervention that I could teach if I was in school on Thursday, plus get through a lot of marking.
On the other hand, it's probably £100 I'm losing - feels a lot but could be manageable. We've also been told teachers that go in could be asked to supervise key worker and vulnerable children doing online learning - it's usually my lightest day so I would lose a lot of planning time if all of that was used.
I do feel strongly about the reasons for the strike, just worried about losing pay and feeling like me not going might negatively impact myself and the exam years more than making a statement to the government, as most classes are already doing online learning at home. Would I be letting down colleagues for crossing the picket line?