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'

An English literature curriculum doesn't need to move on fast at all. On the contrary.

What? Of course it does.

You can't ignore everything written since 1990 just in case the teachers haven't already read it.

No, but it should be a tiny part of the curriculum.

It depends how you're defining the 'English' part of 'English Literature'. It refers to texts that were originally written in English, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they all have to originate from England (or USA).

Part of the aim of the course is to enable students to critically engage with a wide range of texts from time periods, genre and topic. The modern texts always need updating alongside the traditional - it's how the curriculum remains relevant and engaging to students.

I think that the aim of the course might be a bit broad, to be honest. I would rather my DC had a proper grounding in the literature of their own culture (which for my DD means a proper grounding in French literature - which she will definitely get - and in English literature) as I think it is very important to have a good deep grasp of one's own culture. This is not, I know, a particularly popular concept in England. I also think that teachers ought to be used efficiently - and one way of doing that is by asking them to teach the things they know about...

Don't be daft, Bonsoir.

It's really not beyond my capabilities to discover a shiny new text, study it, & teach it. Most years I have to quickly assimilate a work new to me in order to examine GCSE Eng Lit, in fact.

If that was the most 'uber-onerous' part of my job, I'd find very little to grumble about. It's the fun bit. well, one of them.

I should probably also say that I am feeling very at present about the teaching of Dickens and Victorian children's literature to my DD by her Kiwi English teacher which is just a b*y joke. I'm not sure that it is so incredibly mind broadening to be taught literature by someone who doesn't understand its underlying culture...

ravenAK - if it's one text a year, fair enough - that sounds fine (two or three would be fine). I was very down the thread with descriptions of lots of reading of new texts by teachers.

Hi OP, sorry, have only read part of the ft! I've been teaching for 17 years. I absolutely love it, I work in an amazing school with great kids and an incredibly supportive team. It can be an incredibly joyful, stimulating job. It can also be exhausting, frustrating, and stressful.

For me the first year or two were extremely tough. I'm not saying you don't get any time off at all but it takes a while to pace yourself and you do feel very, very tired alot of the time. You do, of course, have time to yourself in the longer holidays but you have to get used to having alot of work to do in the evenings and for at least one of the days at the weekend. The Sunday night before a half term or holiday is one of the most blissful feelings you can imagine because most Sundays you will be planning and fretting about what you're doing the next week! You learn to pace yourself and it does get easier.

I went part time several years ago (3 days per week) and think this has preserved my love of teaching. ALL of the teachers besides the HT in our small school are now PT. They all love their jobs but they just felt as if they had no life when working FT. I would do virtually anything to avoid teaching full time again!

And I don't know any teachers at all that have 3 nights out a week but maybe my friends and I are just lazy and dull!

Haven't rtft but:

I teach a fairly niche subject in a private secondary school. I work 8-5.30 in the week and occasionally mark a set of books/write reports/plan a lesson. I don't work more than a day during half term; over the Easter holidays I'll probably do two days; during the summer I will spend some time reading around my subject and effectively start work (10-4) a week before the beginning of term.

I'm aware that I'm very lucky: I am a good teacher and get excellent results, but I know that my experience is not representative of most teachers'. However, I just wanted to say that it is possible to have a good work-life balance; you need to choose your subject and school very carefully, though!

I mean I occasionally mark/plan on Sunday, not in general! Obviously I do habitually plan my lessons!

Agree, the choice of school is very important. I did 18 months supply after my first teaching post and it was so helpful in showing me the schools that I definitely didin't want to work in!

didn't even!

erm kiwi english teacher or english teacher from inner city london both have an equal chance of understanding the underlying culture of dickens time and culture. being 'english' doesn't give you genetic access to the culture of every era, social class and sub culture that ever existed in your country of origin.

I usually manage to read & understand quite a few more than two or three books a year, Bonsoir .

It's not the teachers getting their heads round an unfamiliar text that takes the time, it's the writing of Schemes of Learning & developing resources. I reckon that a new unit takes me roughly as many weeks to prepare as it does to teach.

Unfortunately, every new Government likes to have a little tweak of the English curriculum; since an 11-16 school will probably have 30 half-termly units in play, there's constantly an awful lot of pointless shuffling about of texts & resources to satisfy the latest diktat...

notice how everyone feels the need to say they are a good teacher or an ok teacher or ....?

any other jobs where you work most evenings and one day a weekend for just 20 odd thousand and feel the need to justify that you're 'good' at it and to feel lucky for only needing to work 6 days a week? notice the people who actually have semi decent working conditions and only do an extra half day a week feel the need to stress how lucky they are and how they're not representative?

we're really conditioned to this stuff.

40% of NQTs leave in the first five years....... There are a lot of is who thought it was our vocation. If you are single or have kids +(very) supportive partner, maybe. I'm not trying to be deliberately negative but lots of potentially good teachers do not stay. About 1/3 of my PGCE course mates are doing other things. Listen to what people are saying and pick your NQT post really carefully!

I agree, Raven, that having a shiny new text to read and plan for is the best sort of planning! I love the new texts we've had.

'I would rather my DC had a proper grounding in the literature of their own culture (which for my DD means a proper grounding in French literature - which she will definitely get - and in English literature) as I think it is very important to have a good deep grasp of one's own culture.'

Again, how are you defining culture, particularly with the modern text element?

Does it count if it's a British expat who is living in and has set their book in Lusaka?

Or what about someone from Canada who is living in and written a poem about London?

Or do you mean there should only be English authors writing about England on the syllabus?

The horrendous work-life balance I read about on here vis--vis teachers always shocks me.

My mum was a teacher (took early retirement 2 years ago) and was always home by 4:30 and never worked over weekends, except when doing her chartered teacher qualification. My friends with teacher parents say exactly the same.

I asked DM about this and she said that, after the first few years you get into the swing of it and don't need to put in so many extra hours. But things have changed, by the sound of it. I feel awful for teachers these days, with the ridiculous amount of admin and box ticking they do.

My parents were both teachers. Dad never seemed to do much after hours (secondary Maths) but Mum always had boxes of books to mark (primary) She seemed to spend hours sticking worksheets into exercise books and her planning seemed arduous as well - it was all on massive pieces of paper.

Thank you for your agreement on that issue cardibach, the impression I'd received previously from uni tutors was that being asked to hand in detailed lesson plans as a qualified teacher is unacceptable so I was surprised to see so much support of this on here.

I think it varies a great deal by school. I teach a niche subject in the sixth form of a grammar; my friend teaches a core subject 11-16 in an all-ability school. I would estimate she has half as much again of workload than me (and I have plenty), however, what really uses up her time is masses of managing behaviour and phoning parents - aspects that are obviously part of my job, but to a much lesser extent.

I really agree with the posters who are saying that to get manageable full time hours, you need to teach part time - I'm managing a .8 FTE on about 50 hours a week in term time, but the workload is intense -- I can manage an activity that I do for fun maybe one night every couple of weeks, and a day off at the weekend. I don't think there are many part time teaching opportunities in primary, though.

Having said all that OP, I would ignore the doom and gloom merchants on here and in your family - it's your life and you can always change career later if you don't like it. Teaching is my third. The hours were longer in the other jobs, actually, but the pace was less relentless and there was no expectation of working every evening and weekend. Nor were you expected to volunteer to do lots of extra stuff on top of the core job.