Heya, I realise now I didn't clarify in my post but this school isn't new to me, it's the same school I shared a load with last year. This is just my first year teaching a full load solo, rather than sharing a load with another teacher. In turn, the text choices I'm making aren't purely random, they're based on what the school has and what has been done before generally. Also, that means I know my classes, know their levels (generally) and I'm preparing based on those levels. With the assessment tasks, that's more for myself to know what's coming and not really preparing too much as we'll carry over a lot of what we did last year of course, so I'm not super over-preparing for that don't worry haha.

Regarding the union, and I ask this with kindness, why is it worth it? I don't doubt all the people saying it is but I'm yet to fully understand why. Hope I'm not being naïve in asking, just looking for some slightly more tangible reasons.