To ask if anyone became a teacher for the holidays?

[DamnYeToHell]

Because I know two people who are planning on doing this. I've had to NC as my other posts make me identifiable and a lot of people know I use MN.

My MIL told me that SIL is planning on doing a PGCE as she has just had her first child and thinks becoming a teacher would solve future childcare issues. A friend of mine is planning on doing the same. Neither has much interest in their chosen subject nor any real desire to impart knowledge. They have admitted as much.

Yes I know it's none of my business. Am I being naive about the reasons people teach? My other SIL is a teacher and she loves it and works hard. She has said the holidays are a bonus now she is a mother but was not a reason in the first place.

I certainly remember a big difference between the teachers who genuinely wanted to be there and those who were, quite frankly, a bit shite.

I'm romanticising aren't I?

I'll get my own hard hat

I think that people assume that secondary pupils are far scarier than the actual reality. Many of us have teenage children , they are quite harmless and usually very pleasant.

I do science and maths tutoring to A-level. I get on really well with all the teenagers I tutor. I have heard too many scare stories about secondary schools on the TES forum. They might not all be true :)

The holidays were a factor for me, when I chose teaching.

That said, I don't think I would have survived the PGCE if holidays were the only reason I chose to teach.

I think that when we were kids, experienced teachers could coast - I certainly knew plenty who taught the exact same material to my younger brother, that they'd taught me, 3 years before! Nowadays, not so much - it's become more like the private sector, in that you have targets to achieve and one can't get away with doing the minimum amount of work.

I did also think that teaching would be good for a family life, but that's not always true, for all the reasons specified on this thread.

I don't think you have to love teaching (or children) to be good at it. It's nice if you do, but not essential. What is essential is having pride in your work and taking a professional approach to it, the same as in any other career. Lots of people don't love their jobs, but are still very good at them.

Words from a song our y6 are learning for their leavers' service

When some say that teachers have it easy,
You know what, I think I agree.
They get to spend cold playtimes sitting inside,
With biscuits and hot cups of tea.
While we're making do with a small piece of fruit,
They all munch on their kit-kats with glee
When some say that teachers have it easy
You know what I think I agree.

When some say that teachers have it easy
I reckon that this might be right,
They get to boss children about all day long
And make them do homework at night
Because we're not old, we must do as we're told
Which is such an insufferable plight
When some say that teachers have it easy,
I reckon that this might be right.

When some say that teachers have it easy
The nail has been hit on the head
They seem to have very long holidays
While others are working instead
I bet it's a breeze living life with such ease
Must be comfy as staying in bed
When some say that teachers have it easy
The nail has been hit on the head

When I have left school and have grown up
A teacher I think I shall be
I'll get up at 9,
by half three it's home time, but then again
hmmm....let me see.
Theres planning, assessing
Marking and testing
Curriculum knowledge, 4 years at college
Meetings, form filling, you have to show willing
When Mums want a conversation at morning registration
Phew!
When some say that teachers have it easy,
I'm sorry, but I just can't agree.

A big problem with the "vocation" idea is that it seems to bring with it the notion that because teachers are supposed to do it because of a vocation, it's unreasonable of them to expecto decent pay or conditions.

A lot of stories on this thread indicate that lots of people go into teaching because it suits them for various reasons - the holidays, the term-time working, the fact that it is a secure pensionable job, the creative possibilities, the fact that you can do it with a degree in any school subject.

And plenty of the people attracted to teaching for those reasons turn out to be talented teachers.

We erode the pay and conditions of teachers at our peril - the idea that people will stay teaching even if we fuck up their pensions, or bugger up their holidays is based on very little.

Teaching needs to be a good, interesting, fulfilling job that is reasonably well paid with good, solid benefits. Teachers should not be constantly prodded and poked and made to jump through various initiativitis hoops, but left to do their job in the way that best suits their own teaching style.

We need to make it a job that attracts people who will be good teachers. It's not always easy to know in advance who those people will be. But if we turn them off by making it into (even more of) a job with crushingly long hours, stultifying central edicts and uncertainty over pay and conditions, those people will choose different options.

Then we'll be left with people who enjoy box-ticking and haven't the critical faculties to call bullshit initiatives for the empty posturing they are, and who haven't got the option of a better remunerated position.

"it's become more like the private sector, in that you have targets to achieve"

That is emphatically NOT a good thing.

Targets are massively problematic even in the private sector.

Public sector targets are mostly utter bullshit that incentivise undesirable behaviour.

Targets in teaching are a terrible, terrible idea.

How do you create a target that comes even close to measuring anything worth doing?

I'm shocked at a teacher who is proud to have the proud public service of teaching debased by "private sector" targets bollocksology.

Teachers need to be free to teach without being forced to obey the latest untried initiative.

I had some great teachers who somehow inspired me without success criteria, learning objectives, mini -plenaries, APP, peer assessment, group assessment, WALT, WILF, WAGOLL, targets, levels etc etc.

We are forced and expected to follow all this dogma. Any teacher who wants to use their own initiative - such as letting the children figure out what they are learning or maybe - God forbid - recapping and revising stuff is not deemed to be "onside".

I am free to teach as I wish, I use my own initiative constantly . I am not a box ticker.

I do not know what WAGOLL is.

What a good one looks like (WAGOLL)

You put an example of a good piece of work on a whiteboard (scanned in or a snapshot from your visualiser). The class then explain - in their talk partners using mini whiteboards - why this is a good piece of work :)

You know all of those are on their way out now, right?

See here

Not to say they won't be replaced by something equally bonkers.

Oh, I do modelling a good answer.

I think that's a great way of teaching to the test improving exam technique.

I doubt they'll get through the first teaching pracice :)
It is one job that is hell on earth if you dont love it-in 30 odd years I saw a few come and go.Its a bit like marriage,it takes love to make it work-honestly.

"There will be a focus on spelling ? for instance, there will be a list of words that all children should be able to spell by the end of primary school. There is currently no such list in the National Curriculum."

Ooh goody - a spelling list to learn by the end of KS2 :)

I wonder how that will be used - by the Government, OFSTED and certain mums on here :)

Yes, holidays were a large part of why I chose teaching.

I had my first child at university as a single parent so I planned my career entirely around my daughter.

I chose to teach in a private boarding school for the following reasons:

1. Long holidays (even longer than most teachers) so that a) I don't have to worry about childcare and b) we can spend out summers in South America as my children are half Brazilian.
2. 90% fee reduction for my children
3. My children can come to school with me at 8 and leave with me however late I have to stay. If I'm on a late duty or doing a late club they can go to clubs or play with the boarders till 8.30pm. I pay no childcare costs at all.
4. I get accomodation in the same village as the school. Small and basic accomodation but way more than I could afford otherwise.

So my choices were absolutely nothing to do with the attraction of teaching as a career. As it happens I adore it and sometimes can't believe I get paid to have so much fun every day. But, even if I hated every minute of it, I'd still do it because it works well for my children.

I don't believe it's necessary to enjoy what you do to be good at it.

Holidays are an amazing bonus, but like PPs have said, I went into teaching because I love kids.

I'm just about finished my second year post PGDE. Had my probation year 2010-2011, this year has been a mix of short- and long-term supply. I've worked bloody hard, I really have. No prospect of a permanent job though - it's very, very depressing to love what you do and not be able to do it 'properly'. Not to mention uncertainty money wise.

Jobs are hard to come by. Do they realise the extent of the problem?

God alone knows.

I particularly like the bit in Gove's letter where he says "there should be a direct relationship between what children are taught and what is assessed."

What does he think we do now?

For all my A Level classes I write a top level answer and then reveal it to them when they are wondering why they received 15/45 for one side of Historian A said, Historian B said. We then whip out the highlighters and try to find the SEXY parts of the essay. I started doing it when I first taught A Level and got work in of such a poor standard I thought I must have hallucinated teaching the content.

Good posts enimmead.
If they are in it for the holidays they are in for a rude awakening!

When we do that now, FallenMadonna, that's called 'teaching to the test' and it is wrong. God knows what he's on about.

"Education Secretary Michael Gove also announced today that the current system of levels and level descriptors ? which is confusing for parents and bureaucratic for teachers ? will be removed and not replaced."

That's going to bad for the school gates :)

How will we know how well the children are doing without levels? How will the school know if we are making the accelerated progress of 2 sublevels per year?
What will this mean for progress / value added / KS2 SATs?

It's all mad, mad I tell you - I am so glad I'm not a full time teacher at the moment. But a part of me really wants her own class again. Despite all the crap.

"I have considered carefully the panel?s suggestion that, in primary schools, all pupils should be expected to have grasped core content before the class moves on. The international evidence which you provided on this issue is indeed both interesting and important."

Does he agree that children need to have grasped core content or is it just interesting?

How does this tie with all lessons must build on the last rather than recapping stuff already taught?

Nope. Singapore and Massachusetts apparently.

I think it means that he is waiting to see how that will play with the voters...