A Day In The Life of a Media Teacher... During Gained Time

Gained time. Two magical words that appear in the teaching calendar like an oasis in the middle of the summer term desert. This is especially true of us Media teachers, who tend to teach KS4 and KS5. It’s that rare window after exam groups have flown the nest and before the full chaos of end-of-year activities kicks in. For Media teachers, it’s less “feet up and cruise control” and more “finally get round to everything you’ve been mentally bookmarking since October.” But there’s also room for a few treats.

8:00am - Coffee, calm and a quiet office

No frantic last-minute printing for period 1. No just… stillness and reflection. I actually get to sit with a proper coffee before the day begins, not to plan, not to mark, just to chill in a quiet office for five whole minutes. Honestly, it feels like a tiny luxury. And after the December Component 2 deadlines, the after school interventions and the exam revision sessions, I'll take it.

9:00am - Emails and actual conversations

This is the part where I slowly start chipping away at all the emails I flagged back in March with “I’ll get to this later.” Well, it’s later. I finally hit send on three of them and then reward myself with a chat in the staffroom. I talk to someone from Drama I haven’t properly seen since exams began. We discuss Love Island. It feels nice to decompress.

Breaktime - Library Duty

In the hierarchy of duties, this one's pretty good. It’s calm in here and the air con is on. I manage to mentally plan the start of tomorrow’s lesson while a Year 7 asks if I can help them with a maths equation (I try but can't remember a thing).

11am - Still teaching

Year 10s and Year 12s are still very much in the building and they need guiding through either their practice attempt at Component 1 or the mysterious outlines of the next NEA brief. But this is the fun bit. Lessons are more open, more exploratory. There’s time to watch part of that documentary on censorship I bookmarked three months ago or experiment with a new brief idea. What exactly does an 'inclusive' product look like? I get to be creative with them - and they feel it too. It’s still work, but the kind where you come out of a lesson buzzing with ideas, not just drained by admin.

12:00pm - Schemes of Work: time for a glow-up

With a bit of space, I finally revisit our Year 10 SoW and tweak the intro sequence based on the moderator's feedback. I add in some framing slides and lighting workshops and swap out the superhero analysis and replace it with something more current from Blackpink. I write three new starter activities. I love planning. Yeah, I know...NERD!

12:30pm - CPD Presentation

I also finally tackled the 10-minute CPD presentation I’d been putting off - just a single poster allowed (which, of course, I kept nudging down the to-do list). Once I got going, it came together quickly. I used AI to help analyse the results, which sped things up and naturally spent a bit too long making the poster look nice in Canva… because, well, I'm a bit obsessed with the software. One more CPD session to go on Friday and then I can properly shift into wind-down mode.

1:30pm - Filing and Forgotten things

This is it. I face the junk drawer and filing cabinet that is my desk. I find September INSET booklets from two years ago, a DVD (without its case) of The Boat That Rocked and a post-it that just says “Ask Science?” I have no idea what that was about. The bottom drawer is like an archaeological excavation, but I do find that pack of small stickers and a Twix. Winning.

2:15pm - Meeting Next's Year Students

Easily one of the best parts of this quieter part of term - meeting the new Media cohort. There’s a brilliant kind of energy that comes with introducing the subject to students who’ve never studied it before. This year, I ran a mini decoding task on the trailer for Eric. They were curious, switched on and full of ideas. I keep it fun but purposeful. A gentle balance between “Media is exciting” and “Yes, we’ll work hard too.” I always jot a few notes in my planner afterwards - names, ideas, what media texts they're into (this year Tik Tok came out on top), so come September, I'm ready to roll.

3:15pm - Resetting for tomorrow

Desk cleared (again). Resources all ready to go. I scribble down a to-do list that actually includes things I want to do, not just what I have to. And then… I leave before 4pm with the sound of some 80s classics in my ear as I walk home. That’s the real magic.

So What is Gained Time, really?

Gained time isn’t really time gained - it’s time reclaimed. From chaos. From exhaustion. From that relentless “next deadline” energy that defines most of the year. For Media teachers especially, whose job is part curriculum, part creativity, part chaos management, this little window lets us breathe, rebuild and reimagine. Yes, there are still lessons to teach. But there’s more space for invention, more time to dig into what students could do, not just what they must do. It’s not a break but it’s a different kind of work.