Fed up of people saying this about me being a teacher

[tryingsomethingnew]

Sorry long title but didn't want it to be too vague.

Help me out here. This is somewhat lighthearted and I'd like a sassy answer to my issue.

I'm a teacher. My daughter (thinks) she wants to be a teacher. I live my job. I'm good at it. I work in a lovely school with lovely people. The children are great.

The issue I have, is that when we talk about jobs with family and friends, all of them say "Why do you want to do that job!" "Why not be a lawyer".

My answer to her is that she can do anything she wants, teaching is hard, but it allows me a wonderful job, and time with my family as I have the holidays. The money (for me) is decent. Yes it could be more, but we live well.

I'm so annoyed. This is also coming from kids too! Who I would understand might not like their own teachers, but I find it really rude and disrespectful.

So....what would you say to answer them?

Yesterday she answered with "well my mummy is here looking after all of us (playdate with friends) and some parents are at work today. I want to have a good job but still have time with my family". She obviously hears my answers and repeated that.

Come on! We need Laywers, teachers, city workers, but teachers are the least favourable.

Help me answer those critics!

Hee hee sorry is this a wind up????

I'm a teacher, part -time and still work long hours, which means I miss out on family time massively to the point that on a Sunday afternoon I start feeling teary because my kids are somewhere else with their dad while I try to catch up as I miss them.

Money ok if you're management or if your other half earns really well and you don't have to go into upper pay bands, but for the hours you work you'd be extremely well off if this was another job where what you got paid reflected hours and effort.

I try to discourage my children from going into teaching. They could do another professional job maybe with less pay but not have a massively stressful life.

Middle class is not necessarily about earnings, though. Like most of my colleagues in my work, I went to top universities and I have a PhD. Everyone I work with is in the same position - the majority went to Oxford/Cambridge, for example - and it’s similar amongst friends. The teachers amongst my friends are the highest paid. I’m in my 50s now. DH earns less than me -I earn about 35k -and he went to both a top public school and then Oxford. All this is quite typical.

I’m a teacher. Nice school, supportive SLT, good kids. Haven’t looked at any work yet this half term and have enjoyed time with the family.

Likewise, I have worked in horrendous conditions in a large academy chain.

My oldest son (16) wants to do Occupational Therapy, which isn’t particularly well paid and the youngest will more than likely do a trade.

My response would be, none of those professions that your friends and family are recommending would be possible without decent teachers…

It’s not just the salary though. It’s the fact that in any other professional job, after 20 years you’d be considered an expert in your field. Whereas in teaching, as a long-term teacher you’re regarded as a bit of a dinosaur, constantly checked up on rather than trusted to do your job, and constantly told how to do your job by people who haven’t been in a classroom for years (the number of times I’ve attended a training session by someone who says they taught for a couple of years…). And rather than be respected and valued for your experience, you’re in danger of being replaced by a teacher who’s just qualified because they’re so much cheaper.

You are constantly reinventing the wheel as a teacher. You get really good at teaching a particular specification then it changes; you make great progress with a class and then you get another one; you are constantly learning to implement new initiatives and adapting to new policies. I’m sure some of that applies to other jobs too, but experience seems to work against you in teaching in a way it doesn’t in most jobs.

(I should clarify too that teaching is a constantly evolving job and, increasingly, we need more training -for example, I teach many more children with complex needs now than I ever have in the past. But as the job becomes more demanding and we have to wear more and more
different hats, neither the pay, the conditions nor the respect for the profession have changed to reflect that.)

My mum told me 20 years ago not to go into teaching. I ignored her and did it anyway.

She. Was. Right. I enjoyed it for many years but now I am so jaded.

I also think there is an issue with your daughter thinking that going into teaching will give her lots of family time. I think this was a factor in my decision making, but little did I realise that actually, it does not really allow for a work-life balance at all, unless you do PPA cover like I do now. Not to mention that she is already choosing a career based on gender norms - how many little boys out there will be thinking that they should choose a career based on their future child-rearing commitments? Absolutely none, that's how many.

the problem is the combination of 1) systematic disvaluing of the profession in the UK, and 2) the thoroughly dysfunctional state structure imposed on schools. Compare with Germany--teaching is highly valued, well-paid, and a very competitive field. There is no need for the UK to focus on exam-based teaching that is counter-productive to genuine learning, developing a critical sensibility and wide skill sets needed for life. Why are education specialists who understand how to interpret comparative data (e.g, PISA studies of OECD) never made ministers of education? It's all bloody political and it is our children and society that suffer.

This reply literally disgusts me if it is sincere. I got excellent A Level grades and a bachelor’s joint honours degree from a Russell Group university, followed by a master’s degree from Oxford. I have now been teaching for 15 years and love it.
Do you genuinely believe that young people do not deserve to have intelligent people teaching them?

I think we shouldn't be putting much emphasis on what children want to ne when older. It's already too young to decide what a levels to take in order to get onto the 'right' university course at 15/16. I was no way ready at that age. Ex teacher here who most definitely tries to dissuade my children from becoming teachers. I'm really glad you're happy and obviously work in a lovely school where you're valued and paid your worth with no work over the holidays but I would be so sad if my children had to work in some of the teaching jobs and workload I've had.

How cool to hear some positive stuff about teaching. We need not to talk it down all the time.

As for your friends and family pushing ‘lawyer’, I wonder if they know anything about it? It’s an incredibly varied profession. In my field of law, yes, I’ve had times that I wouldn’t swap for anything and I’m very proud I did it and it was socially very meaningful. But ultimately I was very miserable and underpaid. Tell them that!

Firstly, thank you for choosing, and sticking with, being a teacher. Stating the blindingly obvious but without teachers, there would literally be no lawyers, bankers etc etc - anyone successful in any career usually has a good education to thank for a large part of it. So thank you for the foundation you are giving countless children. Secondly, my (Lower 6th) daughter wants to become a teacher too - and a lot of it because she has been inspired by her teachers, both at primary and secondary. We are supporting her in that ambition, and the only suggestion we have made is that she does a BA (not BEd) degree in a subject she really loves, and then if in 4 years time she still wants to teach, we'll support her through PGCE. Just so she has choices in the future. She goes to a grammar school and yes on paper could do something else, but I know how incredibly hard the job is (I've been a school governor) and I have no compunction in saying we would be proud as punch if she chooses Education as her career. Ignore the ignorance and arrogance of anyone who suggests it is anything other than a vital career, and good luck to both you and your daughter.

I'm the daughter and mother of teachers, so I've always thought highly of the profession. I've only taught in higher education myself, which is in many ways an easier option than school teaching, so I have no personal experience of schools. What I do hear and read about the realities of current teaching, though, makes me respect committed teachers like my son and you even more. Be proud of what you do. We need teachers like you.

I have friends who are teachers, they don't have children but every holiday they get they go abroad, so I guess they earn good wages they never complain about their wages.

Yes, not having children really improves how far your wages go.

I loved my career as a Primary and Special Needs teacher. Yes it has changed but I would still encourage my children to go into this important and rewarding job. Great pension too!

In Ireland, getting onto the primary teaching degree isn't much less difficult than getting into medicine and around the same as law.
Teaching is still for the most part a highly sought after and respected profession. And better paid than their UK counterparts, from what I understand.

The talk of crowd control and threads of violence are a completely alien concept in my DC's school. Not to say it doesn't go on (reading the 2019 ofsted report for The East Manchester Academy I can well believe, truly shocking) but I don't think it's everywhere.

Is it just because teachers generally moan a lot about their jobs (working hours, pay, resources, school funding etc etc)? I often think when I see or hear teachers moaning that they could do another job instead, so maybe people are just expressing that feeling? I was talking to a lovely teacher friend the other day who said that actually the pay is decent for the length of time teachers train for (in comparison to say my job which requires a PhD plus experience so looking at 7 years+), working hours are good despite being higher in term time and almost non-existent in school hols, very little out of school prep needed once you have been going a few years as lesson plans etc barely change year to year, and it's great to fit in with having school age children. She is passionate about teaching even after 20 years in the job and very positive about it as a career, and i could suddenly see why it is an attractive job. I get there are issues, but I think it's become an undesirable career due to all the negative talk associated with it.

But if we don't encourage at least some people into teaching then there will end up being no teachers. And then who will, you know teach the next generations.

I get there are issues, but I think it's become an undesirable career due to all the negative talk associated with it.

Oh yes, it's the negative talk, not the negative working conditions that's the real issue.

Rocky. Very little out of school prep. Erm not in my experience. Secondary school. Constant change of an exam syllabus or rewriting schemes. Then there is all the marking and reporting and sorting out how to adjust a lesson plan to a particular student’s needs.
Teaching has long had a bad rep. Because many people don’t have a clue how much effort goes into each class. How much work there is to do each day. How stressful the job can be and how little support there often is from parents, managers etc.

Teaching is what you make of it. I feel like if you go in on the defensive you are fighting a losing battle. Feck what others think.

I went into teaching after studying something completely different. Ended up travelling all over the world in different schools and loved it. It can be very well paid, if that’s what’s important and it can be a brilliant move that fits in with family. It can also be demoralising, undervalued etc etc and bloody hard but the only way of proving people wrong is going after it and proving people wrong, not trying to get one over in an argument.

When I decided to do my pgce I was in a pub with some friends from uni. One of them commented ‘well, those who can’t’ . As completely petty as it is, I look up what he is doing now and he is still in the same shite position he was in after leaving uni (he was going to be a film director but is still a runner - great first job but we are talking 20 years ago). I have a great Ed-tech job and love where my career has taken me.

take the high (and long term petty 😂) road. Staying quiet and smiling says much more.

Maybe it varies more by subject but in science I am constantly creating new resources to accommodate changes in specifications.

To address the point that if we don’t like teaching why don’t we do something else - the thing is that lots of us do in fact really love teaching, it’s just that the actual teaching is a tiny fraction of what we do. Some teachers are genuinely brilliant at relating to young people, some really and truly love their subject and transfer that love to their pupils, all of us - I think - have some kind of talent that we are using to help other people. It’s just a shame that so many of us find the other aspects of the job so draining.

In a lot of universities the grades to do a B Ed are much higher than law.

I'm a teacher, science (physics) and love it. 20 yrs in.

I do think it's a job a lot of people feel stuck in and don't like, but I'd rather they left. It'd be a horrible job to do if you didn't like it.

Ignore it and think about the stupidity of the remark. If we had no teachers and everyone was a lawyer? Mmmmm, think we'd be in a bit of a pickle. No nurses and everyone wants to be a doc....mmmmm, yep, still a right old pickle. It's a stupid comment to make to someone who is happy in their choice of work and has not asked for advice.