To think that all these threads relating to teachers having 'time off'....

[Bridezilla3521]

Shows exactly why some children grow up so disrespectful?!

I have seen a lot of people say how unimpressed etc they are with teachers having all this time off and inset days etc, saying they don't deserve holidays and don't do any work. This, in most cases, I bet is spoken in front of their DCs which in turn makes the most of them disrespectful, disruptive etc to teachers at school. And, let's throw it out there, makes their behaviour worse for their future.

The inset day thread is a perfect example of this.

Behaviour breeds behaviour!

I'm not a teacher by the way..

You are absolutely right, OP. Children have bad attitudes because their parents have bad attitudes.

Sometimes teachers do get things wrong though, and then if you try to discuss things you are often brushed off as being a troublesome parent, or are too worried about being brandished as a troublesome parent that you are put off going in to discuss things. I am not sure that that is a healthy attitude to pass onto children either, than you can never challenge someone in authority, you have to just keep your head down and not make a fuss. There has to be a middle way where people don't slag off teachers for the slightest things, but that genuine issues are dealt with. IMO a lot of stonewalling goes on if you complain to a school. Respect needed on both sides.

I don't understand teacher bashing either. A good friend's wife is in a senior position in a private school locally and my god does she work hard. She really is super woman and manages to be a beautiful human being to boot. I have nothing but admiration for the work she puts into her job.

I was training to be a teacher at the time the infamous 'Baker Days' (5 days of training a year) came in.

So I can put this one right.

Those 5 days of INSET training were taken from our holidays. Unpaid. How many other jobs would you lose a week's holiday because of some ignorant government minister making an arbitrary decision on the fly?

The children did not lose 5 days of school. We lost 5 days of holiday. No compensation or extra pay.

I doubt that has been reversed in all the years since and people coming into the profession now would have no way of knowing that in fact the INSET is time they used to have off school.

BTW, dunno about other teachers here (I left the profession years ago) but when I taught in the 1990s and early 2000s, in-service training was bloody appalling. Days on Classroom Management led by Birmingham LEA office clerks who had never set foot in a classroom and would shit themselves if they had to do the job for five minutes...

Once, they showed us a video of How To Be A Lollipop Lady. Because they had made that training film then run out of money. So in fact several hours of my inservice training, as a qualified, experienced teacher with a Russell Group university degree and PGCE... was having to watch and then discuss an amateur film about being a lollipop lady. Now to my mind, that time would be best spent cleaning out cupboards in my classroom or... well maybe at a wholesalers, buying pens and pencils and chalk so my kids could learn at all as the LEA didn't see fit to provide anything.

On the plus side, the place they did the training had a bar. And those of us with half a brain skipped the afternoons to prop it up.

YANBU OP, my dp is a teacher and spent the first and last week of his holidays in school every day planning. He also only had 5 weeks off, because the council decided to take a week from the summer holidays and give them 2 weeks off in October instead. However, last oct this hadn't kicked in so he had one week off, essentially working an extra week this year! Hope that makes sense

He is also verbally abused by the children at his school on a daily basis, and physically attacked about once a week on average.

Joffrey & Cailin - what did you move into from teaching?

Malice - nice use of disablist language there. I've reported your post.

I agree OP it would be crap having "time off" dictated to you as well.

Henrietta How is my post disablist? I think you really need to get a grip instead of looking for some imagined offence

I sincerely hope that you're not a teacher; or that if you are, you're considering doing something else.

If you are a teacher, you've sort of illustrated my point beautifully.

I think the core problem is the current generation if parents were educated in the 70s/80s when reaching standards were very low and that affects people's perception.

Did that inset thread of last night get deleted then?

It did clam the MNHQ message explaining said they thought the op on that thread was a troll.

If the Op on that thread worked the hours claimed, they wouldn't have had time to come on here. I resisted troll feeding!

Parental attitudes to education have a massive impact on the attitudes of the children.

Malice, we (grown-ups and even children for fucks sake) know better than to call something or someone retarded. Hope you teach your children better

Teachers fit 12 months of work into 9months of school. It's relentless. Never have a group of people earned their holidays more.

As a teacher, I love this thread. I only work 3 days a week now as the sheer relentlessness and volume of full time teaching was affecting my health, my marriage and my relationship with my own dcs ( ie I never saw them and when I was at home, I was working).

We might not be able to afford foreign holidays and new cars but my health and sanity are so much better now.

Constant teacher bashing really rips my knitting. I'd never tell a hairdresser/banker/pilot to do their job but Jaysus, everyone has their opinion on how I should do mine. You'd think we all chose our career because we were a) lazy and b) hate children

Tillie, did going 3 days make a big difference? I am having similar thoughts at the moment. (Actually 2 days would be great!)

Witchcraft, thank you for your comment! I will always call people on disablist language: and racist/sexist language too. Not entirely sure whether that's relevant to my profession; more relevant to my humanity.

Working 3 days is brilliant and means I have 4 day weekends . I get the housework/shopping/any schoolwork done in those days meaning my weekends are weekends, not dragging myself home on Friday nights and working from Sunday lunchtime onwards whilst being snappy and resentful. My kids are happier, my marriage is better and my sanity is almost intact

Henrietta, I didn't choose to leave teaching but unfortunately my second son was disabled so I stayed home to be his carer. I continued to work occasionally daily supply for some time, when I could, but in an ideal world would have continued teaching. I gave up a permanent contract to go and do a Masters in Early Childhood Education in the US, but returned to the UK after by which time it was evident my second son was autistic.