Teachers I need solidarity before I leave the profession

Why do you need to though? Just do the lessons. That's why they're at school

Good point. I'm expected to work extra hours if required with no overtime

Fair enough. I wouldn't go away on a residential trip unpaid with a load of kids.

And other people work for free at their jobs. It's not only teachers.

I qualified in 1997 and left last Summer. I miss some of the kids but that's about it. Too much of the 'all behaviour is communication' brigade and SLT and my line manager requiring me to 'validate' the feelings of entitled students and parents. I'm pretty resilient and developed a thick skin over time but I felt utterly broken by the end and wish I'd left sooner.

And they can, and increasingly are choosing not to do it because of shitty parents.

And then parents moan that there aren't any school trips.

They chose to do it

Yeah I get one appraisal a year and sometimes get positive feedback during the rest of the year bur I don't mind if I don't get it

I think the point is that residential/trips/clubs are NOT part of the job - they’re run voluntarily so would be nice to be acknowledged for the unpaid time that goes into running these events.

Do teachers think that working parents receive thank you mails all the time doing our jobs? I don't...

(We always get teachers a Thank You gift and card at the end of year. Last year one out of three thanked us!)

This has reminded me that, before my school’s lower school residential, we always share the menus with parents and ask them to pack snacks or alternatives for their children if won’t like what is on offer. There’s also always a meat free choice, allergies and religious choices are always catered for, it’s always fresh and homecooked, 3 courses, always a salad bar and bread basket like you COULD NOT HAVE MORE CHOICE.
Cue parental complaints when we get back cos a child didn’t like ANY OF THE food on offer. Every single bloody time!

It's not their fault your friend died though. If you can't do your job because of it then take time off

I think you'd have been better off not doing it. 5 kids get to go and they could end up being the kids who already get advantages in life so it's not like you're trying to level the playing field. If you can't see how this isn't fair or even necessary then yeah teaching isn't for you.

One parent out of 40 emailed to thank me post foreign residential. Her child has special needs and we didn’t think she’d make it onto the coach but gentle persuasion got her on and she told her mum she was having ’the time of her life’ during the trip, which is fantastic. But only one parent!

That’s very interesting. My DH is retiring next year (early 50s but a job that pays a decent pension) and wants to move areas. I will obviously go with him but I don’t think I’m ready to retire. I’m starting to wonder if I can do without the holidays and do something else entirely.

And that’s the sad part. Some of my best memories are of taking children in residentials. We did some awesome ones camping at the seaside, adventure ones in the new forest and we even took a whole key stage to a welsh seaside town for a long weekend.
Now endless fucking drama from parents demanding what room their child is put in with whom, who they sit next to on the bus, endless drama over what they will and won’t eat, endless expectations that the teacher takes pictures ever hour and god forbid a child isn’t on a photo. Endless complaints that they can’t take mobile phones (which apparently means they aren’t ‘safe’), complaints about the activities (too difficult /too challenging / my child felt uncomfortable because everyone else did x but they didn’t want to/ they got wet /they got muddy) and then the final load of shit if the bus doesn’t arrive back at the exact time given. I stopped them all in the end.

No word of a lie, my DH told me about a mum who was sitting in the training her son was supposed to attend to join the emergency services. When his absence was noticed and she was asked why she was there, she said he wasn’t up to attend so she would feed back to him. She was hastily removed. Unbelievable.

@Philandbill turns out getting punched and spat at by out of control children and then being screamed at by parents telling me it’s all my fault isn’t a normal working environment and no where else other than some areas of the public sector do you have to put up with it. The rhetoric on here is all about evil Tories austerity ruining the public sector (despite us now having the highest DWP bill in history) but those of us in the sector know that the public are ever bit as culpable. You can double teachers wages and I don’t know a single one of us who have left who would go back

@Philandbill
I work for a charity - aligned with education but not directly. I had to take a pay cut but it was so worth it and I discovered you don’t need the holidays (not that I ever had 13 weeks off or even close) when you aren’t exhausted. It’s literally been life changing

I never came across this but twice with girls who were an exception who gould be ignored. Litle miss I've got to do subtraction by equal addition not decomposition, and little miss I'm going on holiday before the end of term so I'm going in your cupboard to get my books. And the parents who went to the head because their son wasn't going to grammar because of my work.
But I'm wondering. Time was when the brightest in the village went off to learn more than the village could provide to return and teach. See Gilbert and Anne in Anne of Green Gables, and I understand various Scottish accounts. The parents knew the teachers knew more than they did and respected that. Now every one and his dog thinks they know more and treats the teachers as employed servants. That's why they think they can home school. Anyone can do it.
See also the way that people are portrayed speaking to police in programs like Morse.

That’s awful. My brother and both did it and it really helped our university scholarship applications. So depressing that some entitled ‘gentle’ parents are ruining it for everyone.

I used to organise a big residential trip for year 9- usually taking 200 of them away in two groups. I would never do it now!

Was this a job interview?

I'm a teacher and not surprised by this at all sadly. One of my key frustrations is the lack of resilience in some young people when things don't go their way/ they fail and it starts with exactly this kind of parental entitlement. Those parents are doing their poor kids no favours here.

I vividly remember working as one of many volunteers on a heavily subsidised and oversubscribed summer play scheme. I was shocked the first time I got a vitriolic email into the generic play scheme email from a mum I knew from my child's school (whose child hadn't got a place). It was awful and totally opposite to how she came across in the playground. When I replied with my actual name she apologised saying she hadn't realised it was me fielding the emails as a volunteer! I definitely judged. Sadly every summer there were several similar emails.

As a teacher I think we can use this as a learning point. I give up on some parents but most kids accept that there is an element of luck in life and you don't always get what you want or deserve but you can choose how you respond.

You sound like a lovely teacher so please don't let something like this pull you down.

It's just a sign of the selfish society we are living in these days. The constant "it's not fair" about anything and everything in life. Nobody gives a shit about the good of others anymore and it's all about them and their true/authentic/real self.

The stories here are all horrific. Teaching in HE means that I don’t have parental complaints. Though, those entitled students retain that sense of entitlement as they move up through education. If we didn’t laugh at the ‘feedback’ on our teaching, we’d cry. Many do.

However, I don’t really blame the students. In every single facet of work going back several decades now, there’s a growing tendency to complain. In some cases it emerges from the good intentions of the ‘every child is a winner’ movement in North America (later proved to achieve the opposite), to governments deliberate shifting of responsibility to schools to meet targets, to the clear commodification of education, to our ‘rating’ society started by Facebook with its thumbs up or down.

Everywhere we are trained to be outraged, to be indignant, to feel aggrieved but crucially with the right to complain ‘it’s unfair’. Unfortunately, this is what an atomised late capitalist modern society looks like. We’re all rats in a cage with limited resources marketed the myth that we should all be living influencer’s lives.

Read Putnum’s ‘Bowling Alone’.