aibu to think teachers should

[goodbyemrschips]

to think teachers should work like the rest of us.

Just have 5-6 weeks of a year and work 8-5 mon to fri.

If this happened then they would get all the time they needed to set up lessons and teacher train etc during the time the kids were on holiday.

[this is inspired by another thread]

[KatyH]

Can teachers claim over-time? (I can hear you laughing even before I've posted this!)

[scottishmummy]

have any teachers wife/husband perked up yet?to fight the good teachers corner.getting all how very dare you they work a gazillion hours a week for paltry sum,slap and no thanks

last debacle about teachers,someone (a teacher in fact) suggested only teachers can opine upon teachers.

it seems you have to work a mile in the teaching footglove before you can say owt out of turn

[mumtoabeautifulbabyboy]

KatyH
I don't do a 37 hour week though.
8am - setting up for day's lessons (noone does it for me!)
Full day teaching (lunchtime usually spent either setting up for afternoon lesson, taking detention, speaking tochildren who had trouble understanding tc. - do usually get time for 15 min break).
3:30 - 5 meeting parents, SEN liason meetings, joint planning with team, staff meetings.
5-7 home with family
7-9 marking and so assessing who has understood/exceeded the learning objectives for the day's lessons.
Then half a day at the weekend - usually a Sunday, changing the plans for the following week according to what the children have actually learnt the previous week.

This is not taking into account report writing, long/medium term planning (as opposed to the amending on Sunday's based on assessment of learning on a day to day basis), SATs prep, residentials, sorting out rooms/displays, co-ordinator stuff - all of which add to the number of hours required to do the job properly.

I think of my job as shift work. I do 50+ weeks during term time. 30 ish for most of the holidays then I take about 4/5 weeks off properly. I am not complaining because as I said before, I love my job and get a huge amount of time with my son in the 'non contact' 13 weeks a year I do my 30 hrs in the evenings/weekends when he is in bed or DH is with him).
It just grates that people who have no idea about what the job actually entails think that they are justified in their ridiculous opinions. I would not presume to have such an opinion on a job I had not myself done.

[LDNmummy]

AAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!! Its the dreaded Scottishmummy on a teaching thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everybody run I tell you! RRRRRRUUUUNNNNN!!!!!!!

[mumtoabeautifulbabyboy]

eek, lots of typos, sunday's stood out though :) oops

[scottishmummy]

what you on about ldn?oh let me guess you or the hard pushed dh are teachers and are here to regale us with the gazillion hours and endless slog

or you just like humphy faces and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jenstar21]

Yes, teachers work hard. No denying that. My OH is a secondary teacher and works hard/long hours/weekends. BUT so do I. I work in HE (research& teaching) and I work longer hours and still bring work home for evenings/weekends too. I also get considerably less holiday than him. We have both worked hard to get where we are, but crucially, we both want to do the best we can, and therefore put the hours/effort in. I actually earn more than OH, and he agrees I deserve it! ;) I'm in a promoted post, with a PhD - he isn't. We both love our jobs. It's all relative really.....

[KatyH]

I have a public sector job which is salaried for 37 hours a week with 6 weeks annual leave, but this in no way reflects the reality either (if only!) and I think the same can be said for lots of public sector jobs. DH (in the private sector) is also salaried for 37 hours and 5 weeks annual leave but does between 60-70 hours a week and has just had a week 'off' where the phone rang constantly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to compete on who has the hardest job, it just occurred to me that teachers seem to do the same but maybe as our contracts reflect reality more than teachers contracts do, no-one ever accuses us of having it easy. It just made me wonder if changing teachers' contracts to reflect more closely the work they do might help perceptions a little.

Just a thought!

[freerangeeggs]

I agree with sleepywombat - it depends on the teacher/school.

I teach English, which is a subject with a notoriously high level of marking. It's complicated somewhat at the moment by the fact that I'm teaching GCSE for the first time this year (previously taught another system) and I'm having to learn and prepare resources for both the old GCSE course and the new GCSE course which started this year. I'm hoping my workload will be lighter next year when things are a bit more settled.

I work very hard and I do worry a lot about my pupils. I often wake up suddenly in the middle of the night thinking "I FORGOT TO PHONE ELLA'S MUM!" or "CHRIS STILL HASN'T HANDED IN HIS LITERATURE COURSEWORK!" and I have lots of horrible dreams about losing coursework/missing deadlines etc. Targets are horrible things, and although other professions no doubt have similar target setting, I don't know if they engender the same emotional investment as ours. If my kids fail then they don't get into college. I also worry about more personal things, like what I'm sending some of my kids home to and what they're getting up to during the holidays. Not much I can do about it, but I suppose I'm just the type of person who thinks about these things.

However, someone earlier mentioned teachers who are 'martyrs to the cause' and I kind of recognise this. My holy grail is to develop a system that maximises my own efficiency, so that I can minimise my workload whilst at the same time enabling all the kids to progress at the rate they should. I'm looking into lots of ways to do this (ironically my progress has been hampered somewhat by a lack of time!) but many teachers don't seem interested in doing the same thing and I often wonder why they prefer to grumble and work ridiculous hours for small gains when they could be devising systems that benefit everyone.

It's always going to be a huge workload and, like all of the public sector, we're underfunded, and this means we inevitably get stretched. If that wasn't the case it would be the best job in the world and I can only imagine what spectacular resources I could create and lessons I could deliver :) But I think it's important not to let it take over your whole life - I have at least one day every week where I do no work at all (unless I want to - sometimes I quite enjoy fiddling with resources and websites, or reading articles and so on. It's a bit of a hobby too, I suppose).

I don't have any basis for comparison because teaching is my first 'proper' job, but I have lots of teaching friends who have come from other sectors, including banking and finance, IT, sales etc. They have all expressed shock at their workloads and stress levels.

This is long and rambly and I apologise for that. It's very late (early?) and I can't sleep. But to conclude: teaching = good, but more hours in the day needed please.

[freerangeeggs]

Sorry for hijacking the thread but I thought it might be useful to people for me to demonstrate what a typical day involves for a teacher. I had thought today would be a quiet one - unfortunately it wasn't, but it was a nice day so perhaps a good example.

8am: get into school, bit later than I'd like but today's going to be a lovely quiet day so it's alright (ha!). I tidy room, arrange some resources, start doing some planning for next week.

8:45am: Tutor group arrive. We do some admin stuff.

Period 1 & 2: Invigilating an exam. Yawn. I do get a fifteen minute break though. Nice to have a break from teaching Y10.

Break: spent gathering in exam papers and sorting through them.

Period 3: Y11 lesson

Period 4: Y7 lesson

Lunch: At the start of lunchtime some Y11s arrive for revision. We spend the whole of lunch together, though I run down and grab some soup and a roll to eat while we work.

Period 5: Y9 lesson

Period 6: Planning and preparation. A bit of marking. Make a new resource for poetry. Very pleased with my mad IT skillz. Pat self on the back.

3:15pm: More Y11 revision - the blighters stay til almost 5pm! Don't mind though, they are lovely.

Before I leave I tidy up, finish my planning and sort out my marking for the weekend. I've got about 60 mock exams and 22 essay questions which seems a bit ambitious :S I leave at about 5:15pm.

At home I update our class website and create a revision powerpoint for my Y11s. Then I conk out at 7pm and sleep til 11, missing a night out with my friends. :(

[HubbaHubbaBubba]

Nicely put lyneham :)

The thing that gets me is that I don't complain about the hours I work (I am a secondary school teacher and have worked as Head of Department and at Assistant Head level). I don't complain about my salary (although living in London, it doesn't stretch very far in terms of childcare, but that's not the fault of teaching, rather the situation where I live with costly childcare). I don't complain about the workload, although it is heavy and sometimes unpredictable (particularly when edicts come from 'above' as to what we need to do and when).

However, when there is a Teachers Have It So Easy thread, then I do feel the need to jump in and defend (good, hardworking) teachers. There are, of course, plenty of teachers who work the minimum hours they can and don't give their 'work' a moment's thought throughout August, but there are many, many more (IME) who give more than a shit (beautifully put, don't you think? :o) about the kids they teach, and therefore work hard to ensure lessons are fantastic (and that takes time!), work is marked scrupulously, reports are well written, parental/guardian contact is maintained, extra-curricular clubs are offered, trips are organised etc etc etc. And all of that is just a small part of the work that is done during 'non-contact' hours.

I could bleat on and on, but suffice it to say there are many of us who love our jobs in teaching despite the hours and pay, and who don't complain. But we do defend!! :o

[echt]

scottishmummy the bit about only teachers can opine about teachers was me. Except that I didn't put it that way and you are being mischievous.

The wording of the OP in the thread you refer to invited opinions from those who were shacked up with teachers. So it was quite logical that the opinions of those not so related were rather off the point. It was asking for a view of a shared experience.

Geddit?

[LadySharrow]

Hello, another slacker teacher here. I do hardly any work at all and get paid ridiculously well for it.

At the school where I teach, all the kids are 100% committed to their work, there are no problems with special needs, lack of motivation or bad behaviour. Only students who can easily achieve good grades are admitted to the school; and if they show themselves unwilling to concentrate or hand their work in on time, they are asked to leave.

The school has stubbornly ignored all changes to the education system over the last 20 years so I'm still able to use all the notes I prepared for my first year in teaching, meaning that my preparation time is virtually zero. Luckily the catchment area is entirely populated by people who have no interest in league tables, so my senior management are only interested in whether I keep my kids quiet, not whether they get above benchmark results in their exams.

After the kids leave at 3pm prompt, I drive home and put on the TV. This is because I get to do all my marking and other paperwork in my daily free period, when I go to my office and enjoy uninterrupted time to work. Students are forbidden from disturbing teachers in the staff room during lunch, so that's when I catch up on Facebook. Our school has a policy whereby if parents need to see us, they have to make an appointment between 8.45 and 9.00 am, and we hire supply teachers for all extra curricular events, holiday and Saturday sessions, and parents' evenings.

In the holidays, I chill out and go on budget trips abroad. Coursework marking is contracted out to teacher training students who need the extra money.

I'd invite anyone out there to join me - it's a breeze.

[wotnochocs]

Another thing about teachers.I can't think of any other job where their clients aren't formally asked for their opinions on how well they are performing.

[NinkyNonker]

No, exam results and Ofsted tend to do that as most children wouldn't have an answer bar liking or disliking.

[Goblinchild]

We are observed formally at least three times a year, and records kept. Parents of clients are entitled to see all paperwork relevant to their child, have a complaints policy to follow, can write unfounded wild accusations that are always investigated.
If a serious allegation is made by a client, the teacher is almost invariably suspended whilst investigations are carried out.
Pupil voice is increasingly important and is part of the OFSTED inspection.

[wotnochocs]

i think you do children a disservice.By 8 or 9 and certainly at secondary school they know how good a teacher is at teaching, keeping order and so on.

[sleepingsowell]

but all we as parents have is a form when ofsted come - we had one form in the three years DS was in infants. It's a general form about the school with statements to agree or disagree with (along the lines of 'my child feels safe at school" etc)

So yes while parents have the ability to complain there really isn't an on-going dialogue between parents/school at all.
I think it could be really, really helpful to all if at the end of a school year there was a questionnaire to return about specifics - did the curriculum match your child's abilities, what engaged them most, what did they enjoy least, what did they learn most from, was our field trip useful, was it a good place, did they have enough time to visit everything etc etc etc etc.

Surely this would inform teachers about how their year has been perceived by all. And would give the parents a chance to give feedback on specifics of how that school year affected their children, and them.

Both my parents were teachers and I have absolute 100% respect and admiration for teachers who mostly do the most fantastic job and who ARE over-inspected by ofsted and over-interfered with by politicians.

However that doesn't stop me thinking (after having DS in the school system for five years now) that schools and teachers do operate in a very insular way. In my previous posts I have HAD to send out a questionnaire to all clients at the end of my involvement with them, and HAD to take on their feedback and go over that with my managers and this has informed and improved service delivery. At the end of the day teachers are delivering a service and it DOES matter how the kids and their parents perceive it.

[maxybrown]

scottishmummy have you experience of being a teacher or married to one? A hard working one?

I can't comment on what it must be like to be married to a police officer for example or a doctor............

[LoopyLoopsNincompoop]

Pupil voice is massive in teaching today. In many schools, pupils will have a questionnaire covering points similar to sleeping's suggestions above for all subjects. I don't know about primary school, but I imagine there is usually something in place whereby the children assess the quality of their education regularly. Parents may not hear about it, though.

[sleepingsowell]

and that's partly my point, Loopy. Schools totally forget that the child is only half the picture - they are delivering a service to parents, too. We support our kids with their work, homework, we support them through all the trials and tribulations and basically get them through school - but there is NO parent voice.
Also, pupil voice at school is only half the truth I am sure. If you don't ask the parents, you only get half the story.

[LoopyLoopsNincompoop]

Just because as parents we support the children doesn't make us the service users. However, parents get parents evenings and reports (with reply forms) as well as interim assessments, also with reply forms. What more do you need?

[sleepingsowell]

well there you go - we ARE the service users as well as the children but your attitude there completely typifies why parents have no voice! pointless to go on.

[Goblinchild]

Parent voice is Governors. Or the PTA.
If you want to effect change at your school, get involved and put forwards proposals for the initiatives you would like to see.