Teachers - you're 'avvin a laugh aintcha?

[mholdall]

Kids recently had a week off - half term. They were back this week then, guess what - teacher training day. Seriously, what I want to know is this: is there ANY other job in the country where you get:

• 13 paid weeks holiday a year
• Good pay
• Good pension (believe me, you do compared to people who do proper jobs in private sector - if you dont believe me, try it)
• And yet you still need these extra days to do some training. Training for what, exactly? Seriously, for what???? And how am I, as a parent, supposed to factor childcare in here.
• Oh, and you still do nothing but moan about pay, pensions etc
• Rant over

Yay!!!!!!!!!!! Got my first deletion! 4.5 years I've worked for that!

But back to the subject in hand...
"parents would be more supportive of teachers if these were arranged at times that place parents in less difficulty"

There's a big assumption there that tacking them on to the beginning/end of holidays suits everyone. It doesn't. Many parents prefer them spread out throughout the year so many schools try both. Can't please everyone.

MoreBeta, I applaud your attempts to bring teachers' working conditions into line with those of 95% of the working population.

However, you appear to have accidentally deleted half of your proposals. I assume that as already typed your scheme included

• No one in non-teaching jobs to be allowed to take any vacation time except in the designated two-week "holiday" periods outside term time (the normality of how working life is for teachers -- we are synchronising the two, after all)

• All parent-teacher discussions school plays, sports days and concerts to be held within the normal 9-5 school day (as you have abolished evening working for teachers). Of course, as working parents won't be able to take any vacation time on those days, they won't be particularly well-attended.

• If a teacher hasn't managed to mark all the day's work plus plan all the next day's lessons plus do any required training plus attend any staff meetings there may be plus have any necessary discussions with parents who have managed to make it into school before 5pm to talk to them in the two hours between 3pm and 5pm then they can just stop at 5pm and parents won't mind (admittedly, under your system all lessons for all classes nationwide will be centrally planned, presumably using the "bit" of extra resource you are allocating).

Interesting you bring up university lecturers -- IME the one thing they do have is a fair bit of leeway over exactly where (and, to an extent, when) they spend their non-contact hours (although I expect that this varies with discipline). I imagine that you'll be abolishing that, too?

Also, of course, there is the point that currently teachers' pay has been very explicitly calculated on the basis of working 195 days/year, pro rated over 12 months, and you are planning to increase that to around 227 days/year with no increase in pay, while remarking that it is "odd" that they don't like the idea.

Teachers can be parents as well shocker - who need childcare to cover INSET days and other days when they work until 5pm

This thread is mildly amusing and obviously started to cause a ruck - but as the daughter of 2 teachers, graddaughter of 1 I didn't go into the profession because I didn;t want a job where I was working till 9pm most nights (marking, report writing etc) and spending most of my holidays lesson planning - teaching is hard work - and it's not free childcare

Sorry, meant to add to MoreBeta

If teachers had to be working 'in person' at the school site for half of these holidays, many would waste hours getting there when they could do the exact same work on their computer at home. Also, if everyone left at the same time traffic jams would be worse than they currently are and for more weeks of the year than they currently are too.

Seems like a total waste of time, petrol etc to me - and not just for the teachers but for everyone who is stuck there. I thought there was a drive to encourage employees to work from home when possible? For teachers it obviously isn't possible during school time, but I fail to see how me working at 7pm from home - fed, relaxed and comfy - is going to be less productive than staying on 'til 5. Or how making me fight my way in through rush hour to end up gossiping with my collegues to work rather than start that hour earlier at home and get more done and more thoroughly because I have that extra time and don't have to 'finish' in 10 mins will help.

Just because it isn't seen, doesn't mean it isn't happening. Just because some parents don't understand, doesn't mean we should bend over backwards to 'be seen to be seen' and end up doing less well for our students, ourselves and our families.

I'm a teacher. I don't moan about pay or conditions. I love my job. I am EXTREMELY happy with my holiday situation, would be churlish not to be.

A couple of points for you though OP.

1. Are you really serious with your "what are they training for?"!!!!
2. I get to work for 7.30am, I leave at about 6. Once I've got DD to bed etc I work on my school work till about 11pm. I am not moaning, just telling you.
3. IMHO teaching is the BEST job in the world- and I have done lots of different jobs but it is also by FAR the most exhausting.

Does that mean teachers can have flexi time as well, to go along with this working 9 to 5 business?

How much notice would we have to give parents? A week?

under your system all lessons for all classes nationwide will be centrally planned

This is such a shit idea that only a non-teacher could have come up with it.

I taught Y8 top set last year. I'm teaching Y8 top set again this year. But there is no way in hell that I could teach them the same lessons as my last top set. They are a completely different class, and strangely enough, much weaker. On Wednesday I planned to teach them adding and subtracting basic fractions and then on Friday do the same with mixed numbers. But they just didn't get it quickly enough on Wednesday so we did more practice on Friday and I'll now be doing mixed numbers on Monday. If I'd rigidly planned all my lessons in the holidays or was working from a central bank of lesson plans what would I have done? Carried on chugging through the prescribed scheme of work leaving a slew of confused kids in my wake?

If you are so jealous of our situation then train to be a teacher, you will then also have the holidays...you'll need them too!

Ha ha ha. Yes we are having a laugh. We are lazy feckers. Just like all the officer workers who do nothing but gossip around the water cooler/take endless fag breaks, and then expect to get paid each month. Or so I should imagine. Or doctors who sit on their arses all day, writing out prescriptions and earn in excess of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a day. Even though not a single one of them will make a home visit. I expect. Probably. And don't get me started on firemen... idle wasters who spend most of the shift playing at sliding down that pole like Bridget Jones. Driving a big, shiny fire engine should be payment enough in my very reasonable opinion. I haven't actually done ALL of the above jobs, but I expect I am correct in my assertions.

Good point FirstVix - why should teachers have to prove themselves in such a way? Some people don't seem to have the imagination to deduce that teachers do a lot more than what goes on in the classroom during school hours

herd - Lots of us work extra hours unpaid outside 9-5. Many of us have restrictions - sometimes severe - on when we can take leave.

Have a friend who is a university lecturer and she works very long hours. It is true that non contact hours can be done fairly flexibly, so time off for an appointment during the day is normally fairly easy.

Lesley, Herd was just answering Morebeta's rather optimistic idea that teachers should work 9-5 so that they don't take work home.

I think Herd is just pointing out that that is not realistic - as other jobs do not fit neatly into a 9-5 schedule without extra hours.

Personally I want well trained, motivated professional, enthusiastic teachers, who do their job well and are valued by children and parents

dd's teachers so far (yr2) have been excellent I could never do their job, I help at school and I make sure I thank them for the fantastic work they do

If its so great than teaching should be a career hard to get into, shouldn't it?!

But they advertise teacher training on telly! And of those who train many leave the profession within 5 years.

Your rant doesn't add up, does it.

I'm a 1:1 aide and we have a training on Monday to make sure we're all up to date on handling bodily fluids. Would you like to do that? Make about 7 pounds an hour to mop up others' diarrhea, urine, snot, and menstrual blood? And for what it's worth, all of my holidays are unpaid.

But as far as teachers go, YABVVVVVU and you should know that.

I am a teacher - part time, 3 days per week. In half term last week, I was at school for 3 days - catching up on paper work, classroom organisation, planning, assessing. So, effectively, didn't actually have any time off. I work on my days off and at the weekend. My job consumes me. But, you know what...?

I LOVE my job - there is no job in the world like it. I have been teaching for 14 years now and am yet to come across a colleague who is in it 'for the money, pensions and holiday.'
OP you are insulting - tell me what job do you do? Is it one that makes a difference to someone? Teachers heavily impact on children's lives and can turn a child's life chances around and they do it in the face of much adversity - including shocking parenting from all walks of life. People who moan about teachers have no clue of what the job entails.
Hear hear Snape shifter - I echo the words of your Year 9 (can I add an additional fuck though?!)

In most professions employees go on training courses to enhance professional development and to keep up to date. Why not teachers?

I find it very curious that people bandy around "good teacher" and "crap teacher" so freely. One size does not fit all.

My DS was at a selective, independent boarding school. We only got one chance in five years to meet subject teachers (as opposed to Housemaster / academic tutor etc) so I was intrigued to meet his teachers just as he started his A/S year. We were to meet 8 teachers. DS told us in advance that he did not know 3 of them, 2 were OK (and got good results) and 3 were "legends".

Legend One was mid-50s, donnish with a sardonic turn of phrase. A PhD. A world expert in some obscure part of his subject. Published. Not interested at all in the pastoral side of teaching. Extra-curricular stuff was behind the scenes - Library Chairman etc. Top set boys were in awe of his erudition and loved his lessons.

Legend Two. Late 30's woman. Feisty. Feminist. Again, not particularly interested in teenagers per se. Passionate about teaching her subject. Really lively, stimulating lessons.

"Legend Three. Early 30's man. Joined the City after university. Made a million or two by 27. Re-trained as a teacher. Ambitious. Interested in the wider issues of developing teenage boys. Good at the pastoral stuff. Will end up a Headmaster. Lessons OK but the man was a legend as a games coach. Charismatic and hard taskmaster.

Are Legends One and Two "crap teachers" because they have limited interest in their pupils beyond extending their brains? Is Legend Three a "good teacher" because he is an all-round educator (despite being only OK in the classroom)?

Just read your post again whateveryousaymustberight - it's genius.

That is your your and your DS's impression of those teachers, but do you know how well they do with all other kids, e.g. girls, lower abilities, SEN?

gabid, that is my point really.

Do "good" teachers have to be all-rounders? Do they have to appeal to every kind of child? Is there room for "niche" teachers?

I'm not giving any answers - just questioning the rather lazy use of "good" and "crap".

Thank you Mrs Craig!

thanks Whateveryousaymustberight for saying everything I'd like to say (in a much wittier way.....) :)