Any other teachers crippled with exhaustion every holiday?

[Bobblebasket]

It’s half term, I’m a primary teacher with various areas of subject leadership. Im absolutely exhausted, so much so I feel I’m wasting my time feeling like a zombie. Met a colleague in passing today who assured me it’s totally normal to feel so tired at half term and it’ll be fine because we will all be fresh ready to return next week.

I guess my question is, in other full time roles, do you get to every period of annual leave and feel floored with exhaustion? This definitely isn’t a ‘my job is harder’ type thread, I enjoy teaching, I don’t want to leave the profession but I would like some energy! I have two children myself, both at junior school. I have been a teacher for many years and have always felt bone tired by the time holidays come around, I would like it to change!

Teaching is a special kind of exhausting. You make thousands of decisions per day, you’re on your feet all day, you’re masking/acting all day, and then you’ve got all the admin. It’s two jobs in one, really.

I challenge anyone not to spend half term napping after six weeks of teaching in January/February!

Half Terms/holidays used to be something you could relax in (with maybe a day or so to recover/get a cold!) but for the last couple of years, I have felt totally floored and really unwell for days, and then once I’d got to about Thursday, the dread of the next half term would have already set in!

I have left teaching now and have normal holidays where I just am not at work!

Ive been teaching for 30 years , you are not wrong , its exhausting. Im broken when terms end .
For the sake of your children and your sanity drop a day , work 4 days. Its the only way I managed when my children were school age.
I could see other working mums around me struggling too .
Its not fair on anyone .
The extra day off meant I could get the balance right ....Just about
.

I'm a 62 year old secondary teacher and feel exactly the same!
I've learned to prioritise myself during holidays and plan 'horizontal days' on every other day of the holidays to give myself a chance to rest and recover.

I bought some nice food to enjoy and will see friends, but not at home when I would feel the need to clean my house and then spend hours cooking.

I hope you can enjoy your half-term.
You've earned it!

Yes, im 55 with teens at home. I felt ill with exhaustion Saturday and Sunday. Thinking about going long-term sick. It's awful. I hate the job,

I’m not a teacher but my best friend is and she is work into the ground with the job. She really cares about the children and she teaches in a challenging school plus has two children herself. When she tells me about her daily routine I don’t know how she does it. What strikes me regarding teachers is that like a previous poster said you are effectively masking all day. You have to have your age far on for the children and the parents, you can’t sit at a desk with a coffee answering emails - in essence there is nowhere to hide at all.

I have a desk job and can WFH, I appreciate how much less demanding my job is on a day to day basis.

YANBU. My teacher husband started half term like this, completely exhausted and unwell instantly.

I left once I had my first child, when I taught full time pre-children I was constantly run down, constant colds, sinusitis, sore throats. I didn’t realise how detrimental for my overall health the job was until I was out of it.

I hope you get some time to rest and recuperate, I genuinely know and understand how you feel and how hard you work. 💐

I don’t think it’s any harder than nursing, ward doctors, surgeons, dentists, care workers etc. It’s not special, just an exhausting career as it involves caring for the public, and it’s hard because taxes are spent on these services. The benefits are great - generous sick pay, maternity and pension, automatic pay rises.

I think it’s harder in some ways than the healthcare workers - a teacher has to stand and present to a large number of children for a huge part of the day. That requires physical stamina and energy, plus managing the behaviour of the children, targets, planning, marking. You have no choice but to be “on” in lessons. If you want some quiet time you can’t have it. Very hard.

Maternity pay for a teacher is 4 weeks full pay, 2 weeks 90% and 12 weeks half pay. I don't think that this considered generous? @Specialagentblond
The OP specifically said this isn't a thread about my job is harder than yours. OP is asking if people in other jobs are floored with exhaustion in their holidays.

And the answer is yes @Bobblebasket napping in the day and sleeping 10 hours at night too.

I spent most of Saturday on the sofa with a streaming nose. Pretty normal for the first day of the holidays.

NHS. Yes, wiped out every time I have a break.

Are you a teacher?

Show me a doctor or dentist that gets 30 patients to behave at once and I’ll believe you.

You could choose to work for minimum wage without the benefits of generous leave?

Keeping control of 30 kids (who'll often push against it) every minute of the working day is exhausting in itself, and what makes teaching different from most other jobs, I think. It's that having to be on high alert all the time to keep discipline that very few other roles need.

I'm talking with a friend who has just done six 14 hour days working on a huge contract with massive responsibility*, so mine isn't a 'teaching is harder than anything else' post. But I think it's an aspect that's often not understood by those in other jobs.

*He gets paid handsomely for it, mind!

Yes - I’m not a teacher but I am EXHAUSTED when my annual leave comes round, and I get 20 days a year.

I spent most of Sunday feeling exhausted. Today has been better. It’s the constant juggling of tasks/responsibilities etc and the ridiculous amount of unpaid hours we have to do to get the job done which doesn’t help either.

Teacher threads almost always go this way, and I kind of understand why. I can see how they come across as moany.

But if retail staff or cleaners or anyone else had a similar thread about the stressful or tiring (or just plain annoying) parts of their jobs, they'd be unlikely to get these spiky posts.

Have you ever spent a day in a classroom? Teaching 30 kids of different abilities is a bit more involved than "caring for the public".

Yes NHS and always exhausted by the time I’m on leave. Unfortunately it doesn’t come round every 6 weeks and often don’t have a week off for 3-4 months

Lots of teachers have victim complexes

There are not automatic pay rises (and I wouldn't agree any of the other conditions are 'generous' comparatively), but even if you knew what you were talking about, how does that change the level of exhaustion?

Teachers arrive before school starts, work after the day ends and do as many additional hours as necessary to prepare and follow up the core hours. Even with other salaried professions, I don't see a clause that says as many additional hours as necessary to discharge duties.

This half term in an average secondary school has entailed teaching 132 lessons separate lessons, which all needed planning, each kid (so about 150 per teacher for a core subject) needing at least three pieces of written feedback plus a marked assessment, before a full suite of mock exams marked, moderated, data entered, judgements made and grades forecasted, followed by meetings with parents and carers scheduled in the evenings.

Today was the first day since returning for the new year that I didn't need to work to keep on top of/catch up slightly with the demands, and that's without the fact that a full day without even a break without a duty is full on. There's no sitting and taking your time on a computer or having a chat through things with a colleague. It's meet the kids, get them started, teach them something, explain simply but clearly, manage their behaviour, check what they remember, show them something new, talk them through how, do it with them, let them try and watch like a hawk, deal with the fact they're children and don't want to be there, assess what they know, show them how again, put up with their rudeness, interruptions, and inability to pay attention or be around other people for hours straight.

I worked in other jobs before I took on teaching. Some of these other jobs were in pressurised situations, working til late to get deals done to tight deadlines with clients and company partners that acted like divas. And it was well paid with large bonuses and perks. DH still works in the environment.

Working in a school is much more emotionally intense and therefore much more emotionally exhausting. In that way, it takes its toll and I find it much harder to switch off from, both in the evening and in holidays.

That's because they're so heavily and publicly criticised, I think. By everyone from government, to parents. Everyone seems to know how they should do their jobs. It doesn't occur to me to think that I know how to do my friends' jobs better than they do.

But yes, I believe that there's a staff room branch on Mumsnet which would be a better place for this kind of thread.

The trouble is that virtually every OP in the staffroom branch gets zero responses

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_staffroom