Do you appreciate teachers more, or less now than in normal times?

[Bluewavescrashing]

Genuine question. I'm a full time infant school teacher. Our school is offering more than most in terms of online education, personalised learning, 1:1 zoom sessions etc. But I wonder how parents feel. Has lockdown showed you how much teachers give to your children through planning lessons, making resources, delivering lessons to cater for all levels of attainment? Do you find it easy to teach your child? When lockdown ends would you carry on with home learning and deregister as they have made more progress 1:1 with you or are you looking forward to sending them back to school?

Nb I have a large group of key worker children, up to 25 each day whom I teach in person in school - this is aimed at parents accessing home learning rather than key worker / vulnerable provision in school.

I wonder if there’s a difference in primary and secondary school @Pinkblueberry, most of the folk who went into teaching as a second career teach in high school usually after a career associated with their first degree while nearly all the primary teachers I know went straight into teaching having done their chest degree in primary teaching.

I think the “lack of life experience” thing gets levelled at many professions where folk don’t really understand the complexities of the job - I hear it levelled at teachers and social workers where folk wouldn’t question a doctor or nurse who went in straight from school.

@Anoisagusaris

I find it hard to teach my children as I’m not a qualified teacher. Similarly teachers would find my job difficult.

Many teachers also find teaching their own children tough. It's a clash of roles (especially in our case with ASD in the mix)

School is a purposeful, dedicated environment with limited distractions.
There is a chain of command and back up in the event of serious difficulties. There is respite through the school day of getting out with your peers at break and lunch.

For many children, learning at home blurs too many boundaries and makes it very difficult for their parents to be effective teachers regardless of their background.

Really? That's not your entire agenda on here at the moment - to keep schools, particularly secondary schools shut down until we reach zero Covid?

No. You’ll be hard pressed to find any posts where I argue that because there aren’t any.

I assumed you were a massively active member of the NEU

Not even a member.

I'm sorry if I've totally misunderstood

Apology accepted.

Sorry @Pinkblueberry I meant most of the people i know, not most of the teachers universally because I don’t know most of the teachers universally 😁

[quote Seriouslymole]@noblegiraffe - when do you actually teach? You seem to spend all your time on here shouting about ".teacher bashing". Most of the teachers I know are pretty busy most of the time and don't have time to be titting around on MN, particularly in the middle of the working day.[/quote]
If only I'd had that kind of work/ life balance, I'd be working up the upper pay scale by now.

Even part-time felt like regular full time hours. I only kept up the MN habit during the night feeds at that stage.

@Seriouslymole, Back to school for you, I think, for some basic comprehension work.

@Seriouslymole If you find some quotes from Noble about schools never going back, I'd be genuinely interested

If the comment by WhenSheWasBad re having to teach 180 children to use Teams is true and is repeated in other schools then it really does show lack of leadership in and across schools. There seems to be so much duplication of work. I appreciate that children are individuals and Ofsted want all this differentiation shown however surely someone could have said 'hang on, we're in a pandemic, we're going to go with the middle ground' to get something done. Rather than teachers all across the country spending hours and hours writing lesson plans that are basically very similar (talking about primary here obvs)

So please, if the children or parents couldn't work it out) tell me that a video was created for the children to watch so it could just be played on Youtube? rather than every teacher individually doing this to their class!

Many parents complain about getting generic videos, they want personal treatment from teachers

In any other sector, staff would be given 3 days' paid training on teams or zoom with a cushy lunch.

Do you really honestly think that? We have had a whole new IT system rolled out during lockdown, it has been a case of make it up as you go along and hope for the best.

Honestly, the constant cry of teacher bashing whenever anyone raises a concern is ridiculous, and actually does the profession no favours. I say that as a teacher, and one who was thoroughly sick of the sight of the horrifically overused fucking daffodils from last year.

I agree some of the behaviour is much like gaslighting. Sure, some of us are great, but some of us are not.

"Honestly, the constant cry of teacher bashing whenever anyone raises a concern is ridiculous,"

But it's not a "constant cry." Raising concerns is one thing and there have been countless occasions when teachers on here have given advice and made suggestions for posters to contact their schools to express valid concerns.

Then there's the shit like "when do you find time to teach if you're posting on here," as if that's relevant. Not to mention the more toxic stuff some of us have been subjected to.

@Anoisagusaris

I find it hard to teach my children as I’m not a qualified teacher. Similarly teachers would find my job difficult.

We will never know unless you tell us what you do.

Can anyone name a single other profession that has more negative posts on MN than teaching? Or one that comes anywhere near?

www.independent.co.uk/voices/teacher-coronavirus-school-safety-b1795126.html

IndecentFeminist
Honestly, the constant cry of teacher bashing whenever anyone raises a concern is ridiculous,

As a teacher surely your comprehension skills are better than this.

and actually does the profession no favours.

Well its an opinion

I say that as a teacher,

and one who was thoroughly sick of the sight of the horrifically overused fucking daffodils from last year.

Seems that standing up for yourself (or profession) annoys you.
Being passive aggressive annoys you
And you just want teachers to stand there and take the shit.

Not going to happen. Some posters on here pushed to far and now some teachers are pushing back and calling out the shit.

@ineedaholidaynow excellent post. You've summed up perfectly how it is right now in the profession.

Today my Yr 5 dd has spent the day colouring-in and cutting out hearts in school ( I'm a keyworker).
Her classmates working at home have received actual work- set to a timetable and have had their work looked at and marked by the teacher.
I don't know what to think.

Spied do you know if the teachers are working at home and it's just TAs in school? That is happening in some schools. If that's the case - it will be a decision by senior leaders, not the teachers themselves. Obviously you can query it with the school. Where I work, the teachers are teaching the children online at the same time as the children in school during part of the morning. The children in school are getting more teaching than those at home, but that's because all staff are in school all day every day.

‘But it's not a "constant cry." Raising concerns is one thing and there have been countless occasions when teachers on here have given advice and made suggestions for posters to contact their schools to express valid concerns.’

It IS a constant cry. Regardless of how much good, positive advice someone is given, there has NEVER been a teacher/education/school thread in MN where the usual suspects haven’t thrown out the teacher bashing card or rolled out the ridiculous daffodils. Teachers who have the guts to stand up and admit that not all teachers are perfect are systematically told that they’re ‘pretending’ to be teachers. It’s crazy.

@chocolateisavegetable
The Yr5 teacher is in school full-time as is dd's usual teaching assistant.
6 dc in the class. Very different abilities/ behaviours.

I’ll start off by saying I am a college tutor so I’ve taught for a few years and have a few close relatives including my Mum and Grandma who are/were primary school teachers. So I’d never actively slate a teacher because I know how difficult and exhausting it can be.

HOWEVER, I do think as with any job some people are better at it than others. I have three primary aged DC so experience with three different teachers and their online teaching methods. My youngest DC’s teacher is amazing, truly can’t knock her at all. She uploads the timetable and the worksheets the night before so I can print them off and have everything ready for the morning. She also always sets a decent amount of thought provoking work and she sets it all herself, she doesn’t rely on TA’s to do the legwork for her.

Older two’s (year 5 and 6) are completely different. Some days we have been left waiting until 10am for worksheets and most days they seem to get by with providing as little work as possible. They have relied on a teacher from another year and two teaching assistants to upload a lot of the work and honestly, the work they do set tends to be ridiculously easy and definitely never equates to the mandatory 4 hours of daily work. I have contacted them a couple of times to ask for extra work and basically have been ignored. I’m always battling to keep them occupied and educated to a decent standard. I’m lucky DH and I are educated and have enough resources to do this, many children will be massively falling behind right now and I do feel for them.

Today they asked them to write a recipe for a magical potion for English (this took both of them 15 minutes), provided a print out maths sheet (took eldest 10 minutes, younger one 20 minutes), got the TA to upload an RE video and she didn’t have any written work so they just had to watch the 5 minute video and they asked them to go on the times table app which they do every day anyway. They always read and practise spellings but this is basically what they get away with setting every day and it just isn’t enough.

I’ve been making my own worksheets for them because I really don’t want them sitting around for weeks losing out on a decent education.

Teachers who have the guts to stand up and admit that not all teachers are perfect are systematically told that they’re ‘pretending’ to be teachers.

Lie.

I had a whole thread about unacceptable patchy lockdown provision and no one said I wasn’t a teacher on it.

@Spied unless it's a one-off, that doesn't sound right then and I would imagine worth querying it with the school

@Doublefaced

‘But it's not a "constant cry." Raising concerns is one thing and there have been countless occasions when teachers on here have given advice and made suggestions for posters to contact their schools to express valid concerns.’

It IS a constant cry. Regardless of how much good, positive advice someone is given, there has NEVER been a teacher/education/school thread in MN where the usual suspects haven’t thrown out the teacher bashing card or rolled out the ridiculous daffodils. Teachers who have the guts to stand up and admit that not all teachers are perfect are systematically told that they’re ‘pretending’ to be teachers. It’s crazy.

Totally not true. There have indeed been teacher/education/school threads on MN where no one has mentioned teacher bashing or daffodils. I just checked. You're welcome.