How Stressful is the PGCE Really?

I'm leaning towards this view as the thread progresses, although I'm generally pro-teaching for everyone and usually quite proselytist about getting people to switch to teaching!

You do have to be resilient to cope as a teacher. Also, I don't know how to phrase this better, one needs to be more emotionally buoyant than op seems to be.

It's easy to take it personally when you have a bad lesson or a bad day or an interview rejection etc. But you have to shrug it off and not navel-gaze, or philosophise deeply about the state of modern society/the economy/the British education system/[insert gripe here] contributing to your woes etc, otherwise you will be miserable quite often and it wastes a lot of time. This ties in with what I was saying earlier about the importance of not being perfectionist or inefficient. There's not much time for sociopolitical pondering in a busy school day!

Just get on with it and then clock off, that's the way to do it.

They either failed the course or were asked to leave through sheer incompetence. They are not teaching in the halcyon lands of milk and honey which you seem to be imagining.

I would suggest that if this is truly "life or death", get over yourself, get the idea that your lineage means you must teach, or that teaching is your final option. Do something different. Go be a gardener. If you must have a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" experience, don't do it in a sector which is already deeply overstretched and where you WILL negatively impact both colleagues and students.

I'm still tackling the issues caused by the last "free spirit" who decided that teaching would be a good way to travel the world.

I would seriously consider tutoring.

I did my CELTA and tutored during my MA and PhD and through to the end of my first temporary contract as a lecturer. It’s flexible, interesting, and parents of boys especially are crying out for male role models in English.

Please keep well clear of a PGCE. Ofsted etc have created a culture of blame and negativity. How would you handle being told you hadn't reached the expected standard in one of the many observations you will undertake during PGCE? You have to be highly resilient to get through a PGCE with constant scrutiny and feedback. From your last few posts it doesn't sound like you are in a place where you could handle that scrutiny and criticism.

My life is a failed one and I'm unfit to survive

I’m feeling increasingly sorry for you-you sound desperate and with some deep issues, alongside big struggles with your mental health. I don’t think you would last the first term out feeling like that. I think turning down the course is a wise move.

I am so tickled by the idea that teaching is the "French foreign legion".

Go in a TOTALLY different direction. Speak to a careers advisor, apply for graduate schemes. Management in aldi!

Teaching, and I say this kindly, is not for you. I have had a number of trainees who sound similar (including the many years' ESL experience and the slightly odd philosophical turn of phrase) and none of them lasted more than 2 years.

You've said that you don't like super early morning starts. As a Learning Designer in a university, my colleagues have start times between 7:30-10:00. They chose their own start times.

It may be possible to secure a role based on your previous experience (but an ID certificate would help).

You mentioned needing to 'align with corporate people'. I don't. Corporate ID pays more, but working in a Uni gives me greater flexibility, autonomy and annual leave. I've worked on a wide range of fascinating projects and do a small amount of teaching (mainly workshops).

If you leave near a Uni, why not ask if you can do some work shadowing for a week?

• I’m the third generation of teachers in my family, never mind all the aunts and cousins also in teaching.

What does that even mean? That somehow, despite the fact that your personality as you describe it makes you unlikely to be suitable for this career you’re going to do it anyway because other people might see it differently?
Lineage? What?
I’m sorry the third generation of my family to be teachers. My father was an excellent head teacher. Does this somehow make me magically good at my job? No. I’m good at my job because I work hard, I’m passionate about my kids and providing the best for them I can. I’m a good communicator with lots of patience, humour and flexibility.
You write as though somehow the world ‘owes’ you a certain level of career. Any career. That’s not really how it works.

“Experiences and lineage”

No, sorry ,teaching is not in the least like being born into the royal family, or being called Murdoch or Johnson. It’s quite often the opposite, teacher’s children see what it entails and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction.

Still, look on the bright side, I was having misgivings about your posts, but was giving you the benefit of the doubt. I feel relieved now that I can ignore them .

Aah! Teaching is not something you do just because you can’t think of anything else to do with yourself!
Have some respect for those of us who work in the profession. Teaching is bloody hard enough without a half-arsed colleague who is fundamentally unsuitable for the job and has no real interest in doing it in the first place.
A weak colleague who you are constantly covering for and carrying has been the last straw for many excellent teachers.
Never mind the fact that the children deserve better!

You remind me of a student I had many years ago. She had managed to work through several failed career trajectories ( she started with medicine if I recall, and had worked though Civil Service placement and librarianship) before her very influential family wangled her a place at the Institute of education and she ended up in my classroom as a first placement. After a week or so I spoke to her tutor and asked what I was supposed to do to support her as she couldn’t/ wouldn’t engage with me, the children, the TA, and I suspect the tutor. She just stood. The tutor shrugged, implying I think that she would fall victim to natural wastage in her next placement where she would be expected to be more proactive. Which is what happened. I was quite angry, as places at the Institute were competitive and she had taken one from someone else.

Teaching is a profession that despite the desperate attempts by successive governments to turn it into painting by numbers if it’s Tuesday it must be SPAG tick box is still dependant on relationships, the relationships between teachers and children, teachers and colleagues, it needs people who can be honest, who can accept constructive criticism from others and recognise their own shortcomings, who can work collaboratively with peers, who can both support colleagues and accept support from them.

If you aren’t able or prepared to recognise this then please, keep out of the classroom, there are enough problems in education without inflicting yourself on future colleagues who will have to carry you when you don’t contribute , don’t see yourself as a team member and see the job as something you are doing because you can’t think of anything else that sounds as though it halfway matches what you think you should be doing.

Think outside the box. How about horticulture?

I truly hope teaching works out for you OP but you did ask what the PCSE and by default teaching is like and people like myself who've been in education for 30 years are simply giving you an honest reply.