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'

I do appreciate it's hard work cardi, my mum is a teacher and I think it's a great profession - I hope I haven't given the impression I think otherwise.

I do think that it's more possible to have a work life balance as a teacher than in a corporate role, and I think many teachers are blind to that. My mum is constantly shocked at the hours I work. I'm not being a martyr - it's the norm for corporate jobs. I know teachers need to mark in the evening, but sometimes I need to be in the office until 10, 11 even later (thankfully not too frequently) - and I generally don't have the option of doing this work from home. For example, though teaching is hard work, the hours and the school holidays do make things like childcare easier than for those in corporate jobs, and there is a value attached to that.

Give it a rest kim

Oh yes. Helps the squintiness. Now, are they year 6 SATs? If so, you must be at my school. Have more wine.

In response to the OP I don't think it is possible. I think there are teachers who love it and don't resent all the extra time devoted to planning, assessing, resourcing, analysing data etc etc but I couldn't manage it.

I was exhausted every evening and stressed every weekend constantly thinking about work. I worried endlessly about all the things that I hadn't done or could have done better. But I could live with that because I wanted the best for my class.

The thing that pushed me out though was the feeling of being constantly judged and of having to prove myself and justify all my decisions. It felt like dictatorship. I don't know if I was just in a difficult school or if that is now the way that things are going.

Yes cardibach, there have been studies that show that over the course of the year, the hours a teacher works is comparable to other professionals in the UK. However, because teachers have the longer hours (when they do much less work), this means that they do more hours term time compared to other professionals. I have read the study, and it made interesting reading. I'm sure it's out there on google somewhere, but it is most definitely part of the problem :-)

No mine are Year 2 - Bl@@@y The Amazing Pebble story and Riddle.

Plebhasconsidered, get yourself a tape measure and count out the number of days left, hang it in your cupboard and cut one cm/inch off at the end of every day! It is very satisfying seeing it getting shorter.

I know its irritating when someone comes to a thread when it already has hundreds of posts, and I haven't read them all (sorry!), but I'm going to answer the OP anyway...

I have taught with small children, as a classroom teacher and then as HoD (core subject). Now I am evil SLT.

I think teaching is a fab job, and remains a fab job when you have children, particularly school age children. And it is the holidays that make it. Weekday and Sunday evenings (in term time) I spend working, and I cannot imagine making any plans for a school night, but holidays I maybe spend a couple of days working (perhaps more before exams), the rest I get to spend with my children. IMO, the holidays are the absolute selling point for a working parent.

My DH is MD of a small company. He works slightly shorter hours than me, although he works most evenings too. He has more flexibility, and therefore takes on more of the children's sickness absence. But he doesn't have the holidays.

The thing is Gennz that for many people, not all but many, work ends when they clock off at the end of the day or shift. That to me is a good work/life balance.

I think what winds most teachers up is being told by people who have never done the job how to do it. Like OFSTED, or Gove.

ha ha. if you want 12wks holiday a year and are prepared to do a years work in 40 weeks and only get paid for a fraction of it then go for it. maybe you can organise with your employer to get a 25% pay cut and do the same amount of work in less time for less money. go for it. or become a teacher if you like - it'll be a breeze for you no doubt and you can prove us all wrong

All these lessons took about 10 mins to write the plans, 10 mins to sort resources there is no way on earth that those lessons are sufficiently differentiated by objectives, tasks and outcomes and criteria for success for the classes you are delivering them to then. in ten minutes you can look at the class list, the targets, the levels being worked at and differentiate to those meaningfully, produce the resources, and write out the plan in 10minutes. ffs it takes more than 10mins to find the class list, remind yourself where they're up to, who is in the group and what sen there is to cover let alone get any deeper than that.

perhaps you are einstein, perhaps you are not actually acknowledging how much time is spent or perhaps your lessons just simply aren't efficient or all the work has been done for you to such an extent that you only have to write it up on your college pro forma.

I'm one of those who gave up in the first five years (after four, to be exact).

I've skimmed through the posts. Has anyone mentioned being ill? It's all very well saying you have to practise excellent time management. It works at the beginning of term. Get a nasty cold or a hacking cough which you still have to work through and things go wrong very quickly. Go off sick and you're still expected to send the work in and keep the children on target even if the supply decides to do their own thing and ignore your planning. Some colleagues will bitch about whether you're really ill enough to be off (if it inconveniences them) and then don't hesitate to stay off themselves if they sneeze. The Head bitches about the supply budget.

I ignored a number of health issues because I simply didn't have time to get the referrals to hospital in motion. Since I left teaching a couple of years ago I have had a number of hospital admissions for investigations, minor surgery and recently, major surgery which I'm still recovering from.

I could go on - especially about colleagues who will sell each other down the river to keep their jobs in this inspection-driven climate - but that's a whole other thread.

My department works from schemes of work that we have already written (there's the holiday work!), with differentiated lesson plans and resources available. Sometimes we have to adjust our resources further, but then those resources are also available to everyone else. So often my lesson planning does simply consist of seeing what's there and matching it to the needs of my students. I don't plan every lesson from scratch.

if the average teacher is at school from 8-4.30 and working through breaks (unavoidable with detentions, packing away, setting up - there's only a 40min lunch break at my school anyway) that's 42.5hrs a week and there'll be at least one day a week with at least an hour extra for a meeting that's 43.5hrs a week IN school.

then if even the 'i'm lucky i only do an hour or so each evening and half a day at weekends during quiet times are doing at least 53.5hrs a week. then try adding in parents evenings where you're there till 9pm at least 3 times a year and the inevitable much longer hours spent marking assessments, writing reports etc at peak times. let's be really conservative and say that it averages out at 55hrs pw in term time. before even looking at work done in holidays. they get paid for 1265 hours a year. the wage is for those 1265hrs and if we actually did those the pay wouldn't be bad but given we've worked out we're at around 2200 even before factoring in the work done in holidays (which yes are unpaid, we're paid pro rata effectively) and you begin to see the problem.

the problem is that the hours teachers are meant to work and are paid for bear no resemblence to the actual number of hours needed to be worked. then there's two options - you sort it out so teachers only need to work 1265hrs a year (if you as a teacher just thought fuck this and did that you'd be fired by the way because you would be majorly underperforming if you only put in those hours) OR you face that the salary needs near doubling and the contract needs rewriting wrt to hours. personally i'd prefer the former. the former would be wonderful.

Pipbin, that's so true... Or those who have got a mother or friend who teaches, so they know exactly what it's like.

Well, I've got a few friends who are pilots, so I know exactly what it's like to fly a plane. And I'm going to tell them how to do it better .

That one always gets my goat!

basically the expectations have increased exponentially whilst the alleged number of hours we're meant to work have stayed the same and we're all spending as much time in the classroom. short of cloning yourself it doesn't add up.

incidentally learning assistants and dinner ladies get paid pro rata but over the 12 months too - how would you feel about them doing tons of extra hours every week and working unpaid through holidays? outraged no doubt as they only get paid peanuts. but a teacher starting out on £20k, having had to do at least one degree and for secondary more in order to qualify and unlikely to ever make it to hrt bracket should just suck it up and stop moaning?

I don't think life should be like that. If you have to spend your working week planning / marking in the evening and at the weekend, you have no work life balance.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I think having extra hours to do in any profession is fine when there's something big happening - tax year end, a conference to organise, a school inspection for example - but it shouldn't be a daily thing.

I write this having spent 3 hours today working, but I have no intention of doing evening work for the rest of the week!

I would like to sound positive, but I think you need to expect to work the equivalent of about 50 hours a week every week amortised over the year, unless you get a part time job.

I was super efficient when I was a teacher, really good at admin and prioritising, but worked long hours. The demands have increased since then.

I am really amazed how many teachers on here declare the current level of scrutiny of planning and marking , and the detail demanded in planning and marking, to be a necessity. I thought this was the issue the unions were standing up against?

I admit to thinking about work a lot when I am not at work, but partly that's because I am completely absorbed by what I do. I don't see work as separate to my life in any analysis of work/life balance. I have certainly found it more satisfying as I've moved on in my career. I spend more time thinking about strategic stuff like what courses students should do, how we should assess etc than what I am going to do with individual classes, and I like that. I find the big picture of education hugely interesting (and frustrating of course!). I'm not sure I would be as fulfilled any more if I wasn't in a leadership role. However, some of my colleagues have stepped down from their promoted roles and are rekindling their love of teaching in the classroom, so I wouldn't be surprised to change direction again at some point in the future.

A recent survey identified 60 hour working weeks

They're always changing the topic subjects in primary. Just when you have a nice amount of experience teaching, say, Vikings, and have a lot of great activities across the curriculum to tie in with it and make things really interesting for the children, someone comes along and announces that Vikings are out of favour and Everyone Is Doing China These Days. Off you go again, researching China in the school holidays and writing yet another set of plans. I've got four years of planning and resources in my attic - can't bear to part with it yet as I worked so bloody hard to produce it - and I may as well burn it. No use to anyone now.