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

Teaching isnt jus from 9am to 3pm. Its 8 -5pm. The children have a lot of holidays and days off but teachers dont.
I do think u hav to like your job (or children at least) to become a teacher.
A lot of work goes in to being a teacher. I dont think it is as easy and straight forward as a lot of people think.

8-5 !!

(laughs manically)

I am in school longer than 8- 5, never mind the work I do at home. I wish!

Teaching may not be a vocation for everyone but that does not mean the idea is crap.

I do genuinely love my job, I think I am very very lucky . I have a rule that if I ever feel negative about my job for more than 5 days running I would leave. I do not think I have ever got past a day or so with one exception. In that case I handed in my notice and worked some where more suited to me. I do have high expectations both of myself but in terms of what I want from my job.

*It is true that teaching has completely changed in the last 25 years though. When I started teaching my mentor said that when she started teaching, you didnt even need lesson plans! No learning objectives, success criteria or any of that. You just decided where you wanted the kids to be by the end of the year and got them there.

Now, you are supposed to be able to show that every child has made progress in a single lesson The paperwork involved now (planning, reams of assessment data, SEFs, subject policies, blah blah blah) in unbelievable.*

Ouch.

My decision to work in independent may have been entirely childcare and holiday orientated but if I ever needed a career reason then this was definitely it. I cannot stand the rigid adherence to lesson planning, objectives and the national curriculum.

I don't have to have daily lesson plans, just a termly one divided into weeks (3 sheets of A4 max). It may be 2012 but I still "just decide where I want the kids to be by the end of the year and get them there" (well, technically my HoD decides)

And every child doesn't make progress every single lesson. I have some lessons where none of them get it and we do it again the next lesson.

I don't even know what a SEF is!

Teaching doesn't have to be the hard slog so many people seem to experience and I wouldn't necessarily discourage your friends/family (sorry, I've forgotten!) from going into it for the holidays. They might love it anyway!

It's not a short hours job that's for sure (I estimate I do between 60 and 90 hours a week on the school premises) but I don't spend large amounts of time on paperwork and once I'm home I'm home, I do everything at school.

I'm quite tempted to look at Independent schools when I return to teaching...

I work in a state school and do not recognise many of the descriptions of teaching on here, you don't need to escape to the independent sector. I don't do very much paperwork. I don't have daily lesson plans just detailed schemes if work and a few lines in my planner. I don't have to have a three part lesson etc .

One acquaintance will try and kid on that his entry into the teaching profession was a stunning act of altruism and self sacrifice and it had nothing to do with the holidays, the opportunities for promotion, secure employment and decent and regular pay.

He is always wanging on about the sacrifices he has made to be a teacher and about how he would be a high flyer in the civil service (entrance exam failed) or have undertaken a string of further degrees in his chosen subject (amazingly his low 2:1 from a mediocre plateglass University didn't have Harvard and Yale sending him begging letters) if only he'd been less charitably minded. The pompus arse.

However he's the exception to the rule, as the offspring of teachers and as someone who has friends who are teachers, then yes it was one of the things that attracted them to the profession.

It was by no means the only 'pull' factor, most of them also enjoy working with kids and teaching their subject (or at least started off that way) but like any adults they weighed up the costs and benefits of pursuing a particular occupation and this was certainly one of the benefits.

Why is it teachers who get a hard time for having long holidays, and not other people who choose term-time only employment e.g. teaching assistants, janitors, school office staff, catering staff?

Because they are generally on term-time only contracts. Those who moan about teachers get huffy about the (perception) that teachers are paid for doing nothing. (I know this isn't the case before a swarm of crabby teachers descend upon me like a plague of locusts)

Sorry didn't make it clear teachers do get paid for the holidays - they are the exception though and other school based staff aren't paid for the school holidays.

The admin/support staff tend to be on an 'x number of week per year contract' rather than a year round one.