To think that YES, you can have reasonable hours and a good work/life balance as a teacher

[WistfulForTravel]

I'm 22, a 3rd year Primary Education BEd student, I love my degree and every assignment and placement cements the fact that teaching is my vocation and is what I want to do as a career.

However, I've been getting a lot of negative comments from my aunties and neighbors about how I'll never have a life again, how most of my waking hours will be consumed with thoughts of work, how I'll never even have one day to truly relax during the 13 weeks off, how it'll be a 7am - 9 pm job, etc.

I know teaching is more full on than some jobs, but is it really this intense? I am friends with a few teachers and they seem to have a healthy work/life balance (time for guys/sports/hobbies, at least one full weekend day off, out 1-3 nights a week) They have no kids though. I imagine it would be very different when you have kids.

Is it possible to practice effective time management + work very hard during the week so you can have the weekend off?

As much as I've enjoyed my course and look forward to my first class in September (eek!) my philosophy is more a 'Work to Live' not 'Live to Work'

No it does not. It shows an understanding of the very real system of holding schools, departments and individual teachers to account for the results at the end of an academic year. You really ought to realise that.

The fault lies with the government - take away the league tables and the pressure goes, to a large extent. However, until that time, the paper trail needs to be there. It is no different to other industries, where evidence has to be kept to justify decisions.

To be blunt, LePamplemousse, if I were mentoring you as an NQT, you'd be writing detailed lesson plans & submitting them to me.

You may of course come across very differently in real life, but here, you give rather an impression of slapdash arrogance & playing to the gallery - I'd imagine that every experienced teacher on this thread has at some point worked with a talented colleague who could pull a good lesson out of the bag for observation, but couldn't really be arsed to prepare properly the rest of the time...it doesn't end well.

So, that's inexperienced teachers, & teachers who can't quite be trusted, who need their planning kept an eye on.

Then, of course, there are those who are actually struggling & need support.

& at that point, it becomes somewhat tricky for SLG to say 'right, we're going to keep an eye on the newbies, the chancers & the hapless, but if you don't happen to fall into any of those categories, carry on doing it on the back of an envelope...'

Hence the common requirement for some sort of planning scrutiny for all teaching staff.

My SLT also ask, weekly, for books to be given in for scrutiny, they do learning walks and each dept head submits a termly MER. Nothing to do with lack of trust

I think, EvilTwins, that you are just determined now to disagree with anything I may say, however innocuous. The fault may indeed lie with the government. I didn't say otherwise. I just said it shows a lack of faith in teachers which I do think is a shame.

Your assessment of my character, raven, is entirely inaccurate.

I would be happy for any of my class's books to be handed in on any given day as I'm happy with the quality of my marking but I do think it's a bit much for SLT to be scrutinising your books weekly.

Apologies for my lack of ability to use the apostrophe correctly on my phone. Wish you could edit posts!

We officially don't get paid for most of those holidays, though, Life, whereas the rest of the country get paid for their working hours and all their holidays.

I have a School Direct PGCE student at the moment. She is good but so she should be. She is on a 70 % timetable, I haven't given her any really grotty classes, I'm always in the room or just outside the door so she benefits from my reputation with the classes. She talks her plans through with me in our mentor sessions and I suggest alternatives where I can see a disaster looming.

Her uni insists on a 9 page lesson plan for every lesson. My school does not insist on a lesson plan for every lesson from qualified teachers, but for a PGCE student it is vital. I do expect all of her lessons to be good or outstanding on her second placement, as do her uni. If she get a 3 (which is requires improvement, not satisfactory) she goes on probation and her tutor comes in for an extra observation. Two 3s and the placement is extended. If I had a PGCE student who was marking books in lessons I'd be very unhappy indeed.

Having PGCE students in the department can be great, they often have fantastic ideas and they are a useful extra pair of hands. You get the odd one who thinks they can wing it, as we have seen on this thread, and they are the ones you dread getting.

I suppose i am lucky that I am trusted now, and have been since February, to be left alone with my classes without my mentor hovering. In fact she encourages me to 'work less' in my lessons and was pleased I had got the behaviour with that group sorted to the extent that I was able to let them work independently.
I have, as I've said, had consistently good feedback bar the usual teething problems with behaviour management back in March.
I am not winging it. I work hard. I just don't work constantly.

Sorry, I meant teething problems back in January when I started the placement.

I sit in the atrium area between two classrooms unless I am observing.

Legally a PGCE student shouldn't be alone - if something goes wrong in the classroom, the class teacher is responsible.

'JennyCalendar - if you are constantly confronted by writers/texts to teach for public examinations that you haven't heard of, something (not necessarily you) is not right.'

Bonsoir,

1. I said 'increasingly frequently', not 'constantly'.
2. In my school we are working to become fully 'internationally-minded', meaning that our curriculum is not just based on Shakespeare, Dickens, Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men thrown in for a bit of wider culture. Up until now, my experience at GCSE, A Level and degree have focused on literature from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Defoe, Burney, Austen, Dickens etc.

Unless it was someone's specialist interest, most teachers I know hadn't read/heard of 'Nervous Conditions' by Tsitsi Dangarembga or 'Fasting, Feasting' by Anita Desai that popped up on our exam syllabus a couple of years ago.

1. I think our students' experiences are broadened by being introduced to texts from around the world rather than the usual narrow selection (we of course still do the 'classics' alongside' ). I enjoy teaching these new texts and broadening my literary experience too.

True Andreas but anecdotally, according to friends on the course and tutors, a huge number of class teachers do leave PGCE students alone.

Gennz, ime you do not get sick leave if it is your child, not you, who is sick. And it is not easy to find child care for vomiting child. And vomiting child is very unhappy about going to someone else.

Totally agree with you Jenny. Your curriculum sounds brilliant.

As I said, I sit outside, but my student benefits from my presence with regards to behaviour management.

To be perfectly honest, LePamplemousse, if you presented yourself in my department with the same attitude that you do on here I'd be thinking 'another know-it all student' and we'd be logging your pronouncements to have a laugh over at end of term drinks.

We don't get paid if our own children are ill with common complaints, eg chickenpox, sickness, throat infections. If it's serious, eg they are hospitalised, it goes to the governors and you may be granted compassionate leave.

I may well be totally out in my impression of you LePamplemousse - I'm only basing it on your posts on here!

But the point stands. Some - probably very few - teachers do need their lesson planning monitored, because they are learning the ropes, or they are quietly coasting whenever no-one's actually watching them, or because they are, well, crap.

when I started teaching 15 years ago, no-one dreamed of looking at your planning unless there was actually a riot in progress in your classroom, or until your GCSE class failed spectacularly - by which point it was a bit late, at least for the GCSE class.

I definitely think there comes a point with planning scrutiny when everyone's too busy pasting any old guff into 73 separate boxes on an approved lesson plan to actually spare any time or energy for new ideas.

But equally, it's disingenuous to suggest that an SLG acknowledging that somebody somewhere on a teaching body of 50+ might not be doing their job effectively = having no faith/confidence in teachers as a whole.

Firstly Andreas your department sounds like a nasty, bitchy place to work then. Secondly I can assure you I keep my opinions at school firmly to myself but this is a forum for sharing opinions.

I'm pleased to hear that you know enough not to tell people how to do their jobs at your placement school.

Raven, I'm sorry but I do think it suggests a huge lack of faith in your team if SLT forces everyone to submit lesson plans for every lesson rather than just SOWs or medium term plans. It just seems so ridiculously excessive and becomes a box ticking exercise, surely?

Being a student and being a teacher is completely different. I think you are being very ignorant if you think you are doing everything a teacher is doing. I'm a teacher with 2 young children and it is very difficult to get a good work life balance. Working in a large school with a good team always helps but a small school usually means more work.

LePamplemousse it may look like that to you, but have you considered that it might also be a way of SLT covering the backs of their staff (and their own) by providing a paper trail for whichever inspector/government official decides to come in and tell the school that they are not doing xyz?

I'm not saying I think truckloads of paperwork is fun or leads to good work/life balance etc, but I think you are being a bit narrowminded.

Your attitude is extremely worrying Andreas. Are you really telling me that as a student and NQT you never learned from staff about how things shouldn't be done as well as how they should? There's nothing wrong with having an opinion that deviates slightly from that of the powers that be. What a dystopian vision of teaching that would be, if we were to all think in exactly the same way. I don't see why it is arrogant to have a private opinion.