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!

Teacher . As is my sister - she’s secondary . I’m primary . So yes, I get it .

I’m a teacher too. But what I am
saying is that there are many other professions that are relentless, gruelling and that wear that many hats.

They all exhausted in our school op. I help on school bus. We get every dose and bug going aswell. So yes you very tired when the break comes

@IstillloveKingThistle So why not just say that in the first place, then?

Did anyone say that there weren’t?

The scheme we are using is new with no resources. The point I’m making is I’ve had to create them all from scratch over my half term break.

The English and maths schemes we use have been updated from last year so I can’t just use last year’s resources. Some slides need tweaking as the dyslexia font being a different design takes up more space and knocks other content off the slide. Background change is much easier as I have a master slide to edit. Anything in Word (fact files and worksheets) needs checking so tab alignment works well with the dyslexia font.

If schemes didn’t change or update, I’d agree that once resources were dyslexia friendly they wouldn’t need to be changed each year.

I don’t begrudge doing it for the children to be able to access to the best of their ability. I do begrudge when the whole ‘but you get so much holiday’ is parroted out when anyone who works in a school will show that’s not the entire truth.

As for SEND, I’ll answer that separately.

@LottieMary
SEND

The school I work in is SEND heavy and it takes an emotional toll. I include in that SEND children with SEMH needs where we have to evacuate a class. Then there are those who are so anxious over learning that they are avoidant, either at the school gates or in class. Some pupils have significant cognitive issues, others have medical needs (eg allergy to nuts that requires staff to carry an EpiPen) or trauma that manifests them curling into a ball and sobbing in a corner of class when they can’t handle a friend arguing with them.

Supporting these children is what the job is as it’s more than just teaching, but it still affects staff emotionally.

I spent a week shadowing a primary school teacher . Came away with a new respect for teachers . It is intense . Constant talking, monitoring, remaining calm and empathetic , supervising everything from toileting to lunch to putting coats on . No one left until nearly two hours after kids , getting ready for the next day or correcting
You probably need the down time to recover mentally and as stated physically too.
Respect

I think teachers get people’s backs up because they continually assert their job is the hardest.

Everyone’s jobs have pros and cons.
Some people are “on all day”
Some people make life or death decisions
Some people get 13 weeks holiday
Some people get 4 weeks holiday
Some people have to work evenings and weekends to keep up with their workload
Some people work minimum wage.

Everyone has better and worse aspects to their packages but teachers are the only group who seek to constantly want to be affirmed as the worst off.

I would also suggest having your iron, b12, vit d etc levels checked and anything else that can lead to feelings of exhaustion. Just to rule it out.

Teachers get 4 weeks holiday.

The rest is unpaid whether you want it or not.

Yes I work full time in a pressured role, 20 days annual leave per year, my first week off is in April. I had 2 days at Christmas. Knackered but it is what it is.

No. Nope. Never been said. No teacher has ever said their job is the hardEST. Just that's it's hard. 1/10 for comprehension.

I guess my question is, in other full time roles, do you get to every period of annual leave and feel floored with exhaustion?

Yes and then, like many other working parents, annual leave is taken to cover the school holidays and involves looking after young children (and, in my case, elderly parents). Often DH has to take most of his annual leave separately to mine to cover the school holidays, so we don’t even get time together as a whole family.

For those in many jobs, it’s all a tiring time.

Out of 5 'holiday' days this half term, I've worked 3 of them. During Easter I'll be in school 5/10 days running revision clinics. 3 out of the remaining 5 I'll be on a school trip as staff member pulled out and if I don't go trip is cancelled.

Im done I'm afraid. One more year, to try and recruit some staff, but that's me out. It might mean no A level Chemistry at our school which will be sad.

On the planning question. I am teaching a new to my school Alevel, it is a small subject so there is not a lot of resources out there. There is a shared Google drive that some other teachers have set up that I can magpie out off.

For a 50min lesson it takes between 1.5 - 2 hours to plan and resource, check that I am covering the spec sufficiently and build in core skills.

Now I can mostly use this next year, with tweaks (not everything worked well and I’m not convinced the order was right!) so it is down to 10 minutes per lesson, check videos still play (some stop being available) I remember the answers etc… Times that by the number of lessons a week and it adds up.

I think teachers get people’s backs up because they continually assert their job is the hardest.

They don't though. They talk about their job being hard, and then everyone seems to think they mean that teaching is the only job which is that hard. Sometimes there are threads by people finding their work in retail or healthcare hard (understandably!). Nobody seems to assume that they mean that nobody else's job is hard. I have no idea why.

I doubt it. I'm not teaching exactly the same stuff as I was teaching 2 years ago, never mind 25. Syllabuses change, exam formats change, school policies about teaching, learning and assessment methods change, resources need updating. Just because you might be teaching roughly the same topics, that doesn't necessarily mean you can keep on teaching them the same way or with the same resources for years.

I’ve just finished working in schools for the last 5 years and returned to the nhs . My observation is this . Teachers work hard but they also have heads of year for support, some support staff lots of holidays and lesser childcare costs ( crippling for many families and also emotionally hard ). Another issue I saw was this looking forward to holidays every six weeks , where there was a culture of “ I’ve got 6 weeks then another holiday “ which I think was not good, as the work was thought of in segments of weeks only . Ive seen these jobs are stressful at times but nothing like that I’ve seen in the nhs or in fact other jobs I’ve had

People are still breaking the same bones and suffering from the same illnesses as 25 years ago. Doctors and nurses should stop complaining about workload 😉

It's not a competition to who has it worst ??? My DD is a doctor and her hours are brutal and her working conditions are Dickensian.

That does not mean that teaching is not hard work, made more so due to parents thinking we are also social workers, nurses, parents ! Wish I got a holiday every 6 weeks. Wish it wasn't so tough as we just can't recruit. Your children will be v unlikely to be taught by subject specialists if in state. Which makes me v sad.

That genuinely does vary though. Whilst there may be slight differences, the work my second child is being taught is very similar to that of my first daughter. Down to them competing the same worksheets (it's a very worksheet heavy school). The same homeworks, and when we look at their books, it's the same. That doesn't mean there is zero tinkering for the cohort but the bones haven't changed.

It's useful at least in that if my child is off school but well (ie following a one off vomit), I can fill in the gaps for that day because it's literally that predictable, not just down to the topics, but how they deliver it, the work that they do etc.

Perhaps in other better schools it's different. I'm not saying that people should reinvent the wheel, and resources are helpful and must make the job more manageable. But not all teachers are as dedicated as the ones on here, and like in any jobs, many do coast. Done very well, I can see how it would be very labour intensive though.

Sorry - I wasn’t making it a competition, if that’s how it came across. I was, perhaps a bit clumsily, highlighting the ridiculousness of what a pp had said about curriculum. I have utmost respect for medical professionals, and couldn’t do the hours or cope with the trauma.

@MayasJamascurriculum changes happen every 5-10 years, sometimes more often . New courses are also introduced (we now offer ELC and A level Applied Science) which take time to embed. And every class is different so it would be a bad teacher who used the same stuff for every lesson. The level of SEN in mainstream schools has made this much harder, as every child should be differentiated for.

@mumsneedwine I know, I’m agreeing with you 😊 I’m a teacher, and I was pointing out that claiming teachers don’t have planning to do because topics haven’t changed in x years, is like saying that medics workload must be reduced by the fact that people have the same ailments as they did x years ago. ie completely absurd. I’ve spent half term planning lessons on the same GCSE text for 2 massively different Y11 groups (one LA, one HA) who need entirely different pedagogy, scaffolding and resources, and planning a new ELC curriculum. We are singing from the same hymn sheet!