Is one of the problems with Teaching that people do the job for too long?

[NewFriday]

I said one of the problems. For me, having worked in a variety of schools, the biggest problem faced by teachers currently is behaviour. There seems to have been a complete breakdown since covid and that's on top of the already very stretching workloads.

However, what I do see among colleagues is people who have been doing the job for a really long time. They might have moved schools or taken management roles, but they've essentially done the same job since they left college. That's hard in any industry and usually not good for the staff member or the company.

I did 20 odd years in a completely different industry before starting in schools and I was done. I'd seen so many changes, many of which I didn't like, I was harking back to "the old days" and felt jaded and burnt out.

Obviously teachers leaving is a problem if you can't get new ones in, but maybe a career change is good for everyone? In the whole the very experienced teachers I work with are the ones who don't seem to like the children or their colleagues very much any more, resist change (they might be right, but it doesn't help running the school), begrudge a lot of what they're asked to do and are just waiting for the day they can leave. Not all, but many. A workforce like that is a problem.

It's not their fault, one career for life is what they were led to expect, but maybe it's not a good thing?

I retired as a 'very experienced teacher' and I still loved teaching, had great younger colleagues and embraced change. My colleagues who retired slightly earlier were also dedicated and committed teachers. There were one or two grumps but they were in the minority. So I disagree with your view that most of us didn't like anything about the job. I also applied for and got a secondment after twelve years teaching which rejuvenated my approaches to the job so I can see that would help. I never ever thought I had a job for life so I dispute that too. You make many assumptions about older experienced teachers so I can only assume you have been unlucky.

I think find somewhere for them to go and they’d be out like a shot tbh.

I worked in industry 10 years and teaching 26. You bet l was resistant to change. I could do the job with my eyes closed and didn’t want some 20 year old telling me how to do it in the latest ‘fashion’ when I’d been doing it when she was in nappies.

l lived the kids, but hated the shit. I was waiting for the day l could leave. Why not pay attention to what these ‘older’ teachers are saying?

When l left, the A level l’d built up for 12 years went from pass rate A-B 80% or above to 60%. It was always on the ‘red hot’ section of the Alpha scores.

Maybe these old set in their ways teachers have lots of knowledge and experience?

I think find somewhere for them to go and they’d be out like a shot tbh.

Isn't this it exactly? They need to try something different and usually it's the individual's job to manage their career.

I know there are some excellent experienced colleagues but who wants a scholarship staff by people who would be "out like a shot"?

It's also probably true that those who have managed better career variety, through secondments or periods in AP, for example, have more career longevity.

The problem isn’t the ‘older’ staff. The problem is the conditions they work under. Having to perform like 20 year olds.

Change the conditions and they’d be happy. It’s just ageism.

I think it was Biden as VP who said they needed to find ways to support bad teachers out of the profession. It's quite a hard job to leave and keep a similar salary once you've been in a few years, and three resignation dates a year doesn't help either. I am sure that there are many teachers who would leave tomorrow if the could see a way out. It would be help raise standards if government could come up with a scheme, but when they are worried about recruitment they won't do anything of the sort.

Hmm I think the question is the wrong way round.

At the moment whilst hemorrhaging teachers and so many schools are staffed with young inexperienced teachers what we should be doing is listening to those older teachers.

The way Education is going is completely killing the profession and really instead of 100 new initiatives it would be best to listen to experienced teachers. Learn why they want to leave, improve conditions both for the teachers and the children.

Complete madness to just dismiss them as "old".

Why are old teachers bad teachers? The get managed out anyway, so don’t need Biden’s input.

This thread is ageist.

I think you'll find all the second career teachers hate it too. Nqts quit, older teachers quit. Everyone is unhappy

Here's a novel thought , actually listen to why teachers say they hate it.

We had new SLT come in to tell us all how to teach. They decided that the head of history wasn't up to scratch. Dropped in on his lessons constantly, gave him feedback on how he should be doing it (none of SLT were history teachers). Anyway he carried on doing his thing, ended up being 'supported' by a member of SLT then was threatened with a support plan. Come August and GCSE and A level results released and his classes had done brilliantly. Did SLT back off? Did they apologise and agree that maybe he did know what he was doing after all? Of course not and so this teacher had a new job by Christmas. Meaning the next head of history had been teaching for all of two years Vs his 20+. But they did get excellent feedback from SLT.

Experienced teachers should be valued and listened to. It does get frustrating when a 'new' idea is dropped into a teacher training day and it's something that you have tried previously and know doesn't work but yet have to enthusiastically embrace it for fear of being seen as past it.

Here's a novel thought , actually listen to why teachers say they hate it

l loved teaching and still miss the kids 3 years later. As for the rest of the crap, l hated it. Take the crap out, and people will teach forever imo. I would have.

This thread is shocking. Older teachers are what hold teaching together.

Teachers don't stop saying what the problem is

If people don't want to listen or don't understand then perhaps they should just shut up about it. The sheer arrogance to keep pondering the problem when you've been bloody told a thousand times

OP’s post has remained me why l was glad to leave.

So sick of jumped up 20 somethings telling me how to do my job. Seriously what does a 25 year old know about teaching? Yet they are in positions of management. Why?

In my experience teaching can be unsustainable when you get older and your priorities shift as you might have children, care for parents, etc. I don't teach anymore thankfully but when I started I would get to school at 7am, put everything into supporting the children and work evenings, over the weekend and holidays. It's a shame because the older teachers often had amazing behaviour management and loads of experience but because they weren't prepared to put in the same hours they were seen as less hardworking or less open to change (doing things which inevitably added to workload).

I don't think that's quite it. In my industry people doing the same job for too long would be a bad thing but in teaching, age and experience don't seem to be a disadvantage (speaking back to my experience, it was the young ones who struggled) I think its more about the conditions, expectations and the fact that these expectations change every year with little warning.

Maybe this is just the poor school I taught at but to illustrate, when I was in high school in the late nineties to mid noughties, it was absolutely fine and acceptable in French for us to do a bit of repetition led by the teacher, copy vocab down from the overhead projector and then do some exercises from the book. Now you're expected to have an all singing all dancing powerpoint, differentiated 7 different ways for different learning styles and abilities and tick the student led and assessment for learning boxes every damn lesson. Kids are incredulous at being told they have to do work in their books. There will be teachers now who were teaching when I was a pupil and that's a huge difference to navigate.

I remember teaching in the 90’s. A whiteboard and marker pen were the height of sophistication!

It was fun then though!

Experience should have value. These days, it doesn’t.