AIBU to want to leave teaching?

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AIBU to want to leave teaching?

I'm a Primary School teacher. I love working with children, it's incredibly rewarding and no two days are the same. What I don't love however, is the mounting pressure and constant paperwork and pressure. There is barely time for anything outside of teaching and evenings and weekends are taken over with marking, planning, analysing pupil progress etc. the job in the classroom is increasingly difficult too and I think I need to leave before I have a breakdown.
I am finding I am enjoying the things I used to love less and less. I'm even having dreams about school so can't even escape at night.
I think it's particularly pronounced this year and I have some very difficult children that make every single day a battle.
I think I want out of the classroom now but would still like to remain either in a school or in education.

if the pay was better I'd be a TA no question

I'd consider retraining or studying again but I'm the main breadwinner and we have to renew our mortgage next summer!

Has anyone done similar? I don't know what's out there etc and haven't found anything online the last few months.

If anyone can point me I the right direction or has felt similar and stayed in teaching after feeling like this would be good to know!

As a parent of a primary aged child, I find this really depressing..... I hate to think of our pretty great teachers having to cope with this. Don't the unions lobby for better conditions for you? Would it be any better under Labour - or was that where the craziness started? I'm genuinely interested. Seen many similar threads, and because I always wanted to teach I can't help feeling sorry for friends who have gone on to be teachers... I've also worked in really hard going jobs and had a dramatic and poverty inducing career change after a near breakdown... But I was helping rich people to get richer - not educating children. Bit different. Sorry this is a ramble... Wish as parents we could do something to help.

Unions? Ha! Spineless toothless kowtowing fuckers. Only worth the membership for the legal cover when you're falsely accused by a kid of thumping them.

My BIL was in Iraq flying helicopters in a fucking warzone in 50C for a couple of tours, and even he couldn't last a year in a fee-paying school as a teacher.

This thread has got to be the most depressing thing I have ever read on mn.

I can't pretend to know where everyone is coming from because I teach in a private school and, for me, teaching is a dream job.

For the first time this year I've experienced a strong desire to leave. But that's not the job, it's me wanting more time for activities outside of school and getting greedy - basically wanting things and leisure time without having to work for the money to pay for them!!

Seriously, if you're struggling but don't want a career change - go private!

I have a long term plan and daily lesson notes - that's it!
I have to do one observation a term and be observed once a term.
My largest class is 18. My smallest class is 11.
I mark my books once a week.
I am trusted to differentiate and adapt my own lessons in my own head, I don't have to prove it. Ditto AFL etc.
I choose my own curriculum and teach what I want to teach up to age 11. The senior curriculum is very broad and I have free rein within it.
I have almost 18 weeks of holiday a year and probably only work for about 5 weeks of them - not continuously either, just a steady 2-3 hours on days I'm not busy doing other things.
Several of my colleagues are past retirement age and continuing to work because they want to or need to financially. They aren't burned out.
At 31, I am still very much at the younger end of our staff room.
I get paid over £40000 and I'm not SMT (middle management, head of 2 depts.)
I work very long hours but about half my hours (at least really) are spent on extra curricular activities and are a genuine pleasure, not work at all.
I am free from the majority of government dictats
I work in a beautiful setting and live in subsidised accommodation a few minutes walk from the school - just the journey in puts a smile on my face on nice days.

The things I hate are that I have to work 2 nights a week, Saturday mornings and 2 whole weekends a term due to it being a boarding school. But there are plenty of day private schools with no Saturday school.
I'm also very frightened of the parents who of course expect perfection and whatever they ask for because they're paying. But that's a learning curve and I'm getting more assertive.
I also hate the new push towards everything ICT and techno-whizzy.

It's a small list of hates really.

what's interesting is there have always been threads on here with teachers complaining about how things are going, non- teachers replying saying, 'just leave then, if you hate it' but teachers saying they love it really-the children make it worthwhile. In the last six months/year-the tone of the posts has really changed, with teachers either ill with stress, actively applying for other jobs, or long gone.

Teaching is the only thing that sounds worse than my profession but the grass is not greener somewhere else ... not in the public sector anyway
I work long hours. I am personally accountable for anything that goes wrong .. even if it is something completely outside my control. I face very difficult decisions, no resources, unsupportive management and reduced pay and conditions.. and that is if someone does not outsources or make us redundant.. Our department has been through three re-organisations in the past five years.

Go teach privately it sounds jammy.. or there is also private tuition, that can be lucrative especially English and maths. Just don`t stay somewhere that makes you unhappy .. life is too short for that

I don't know if private teaching is much better really. My sister teaches in a private school and she seems permanently stressed. There are plus sides of course, like smaller classes, really long holidays, don't have to be so strict in following the national curriculum but she says the parents are far more demanding, she has to write a lot more reports, she earns less than her state school peers and certainly can't afford to send her own children there despite the discount (maybe that's unique to her school though). I know parents are one of the main stresses as they seem to be up the school every 5 minutes and there are a lot more parents' evenings. She also has to do playground duty at lunchtime (something that dinner ladies would do in state schools, at least they do in the state schools her teacher friends are in) so rarely has a proper lunch break, she said she's lucky if she gets 10 minutes to eat her lunch in. She also has to be in charge of breakfast clubs and after-school clubs (her friends who teach in state schools don't seem to do this, it's people from outside). They can be quite funny about people working part-time as well - they were not at all impressed when a few of their staff got pregnant. One applied to work part-time and they said no, it had to be full-time or nothing. So she left.

The headteacher of my sister's school is also a bully who is terrified of the parents complaining, and shouts at the staff to make sure they're up to scratch. He's very clever though, he makes sure no-one else is around before making horrible comments to my sister. It seems like a lot of the problems are down to bullying headteachers and management.

The headteacher sounds like the main problem there Pandora!

Yes, the parents are far more demanding - many individual meetings and feedback reports whenever asked for and lots of reports and parents evenings. But I think that is all mirrored by similar but different work in the state sector.

Lunch and break duties - yes, of course. But I had to do this in the state schools I did teaching practice in too as did all the teachers, they didn't just make the students do it!). Is it not the norm?

Clubs are a huge thing - I usually have something on at break, lunchtime and after school. But when you're enjoying it and know you're never far from a holiday it's not a bad thing. And again, clubs are (I think) expected in the state sector too.

Part time is very dependent on the individual school I expect. We have quite a few at ours. They're a pain in the backside really (joking of course, but they are actually never around right at that moment when you need them! :p) but it's their right.

Good for you, islandmama

Possibly you can move beyond your blissed-out state and offer some more concrete advice than,...er.. be someone else. Because that's all you've offered; teaching as style/inclination/cast of mind/attitude.

Islandmama, don't you live in Bermuda?
Teaching in a completely different system?
That sounds like some of the suggestions that have already been made, move out of the English state system and find a sane place to teach.

You sure don't live in UK, islandmama!

Some of the stories on here are terrible. Is primary worse than secondary?

I teach in an Ofsted outstanding school. I am thinking that the outstanding is coming from the people who steer the school as well as the staff.

We don't produce lesson plans, we have a person who does all display. The kids mark there own work a lot, and we have lessons 1/2 way through every scheme which allow for this. I only mark at the end of a project or GCSE and A level. We are QA,d once every 2 years, and only have pm obs apart from that.

It's still bloody hard work, and stressful, but not having to do all the above makes it much easier. We've just been surveyed by SMT to ask what they can do to reduce workload.

Pandora, your sister doesn't teach in Buckinghamshire, does she?! That sounds exactly like my last experience of the private sector (and i was the one who left when they wouldn't consider part time...).

It's a pretty easy job for those who love it and those who can do it. Those who have had enough or who cannot handle a class or the paperwork involved should do everyone else a favour and find something else to do. Nobody likes a martyr
I wish you some of the experiences I've had. Then you will understand.

Those who have had enough or who cannot handle a class or the paperwork involved should do everyone else a favour and find something else to do. Nobody likes a martyr

We're all going, don't worry!

Islandmama, sounds like the education system in the UK needs you to come and help! Maybe you could get a job swap for a year or so with one of these burned out teachers on this thread?

wow! Just read the whole thread and I'm feeling a bit down :( I've just signed up for a return to teaching course, I've been out of teaching for 13 years as a SAHM and I wonder what lies ahead. I'm only planning on working pt so hopefully I'll be able to cope with it all. OP, if you're that unhappy maybe plan your exit?

We're all going, don't worry and some of us have already gone...
martymoomoo, i always think that if you are going in 'fresh', you learn the system as it is, and it isn't so shocking. after a thirteen year break it will be new to you, and as long as you have a full life outside of work, and don't let it take over, you should be ok. remember us, though, and be ready to leave when it gets you down.

Islandmama-tell us a little bit more about yourself? When did you qualify? Where do you teach? In what type of school? How many children are there in your class?

manic, that was the same experience as my children's father who teaches in the private sector and would never go back. Did have a lot of evenings etc (head of music) but so so much better than the state sector he would never go back.

Yes there are lots of clubs to be taken, sometimes even before school and at breaks and after but overall he found it much better.
One couple we knew with 3 chidlren just paid 15% fees at the prep school the husband taught at, same again for the leading boarding school the wife taught at and had free accommodation at the boarding school for all of them. Those perks alone could be worth £130k a year after tax for the 15 years their children were at the 2 schools from age 3 - 18. Use of olympic size swimming pools and grounds at weekends were also a perk we enjoyed for many happy years.

There have always been unhappy teachers, but you are wrong in stating that there were as many then as there are now islandmama. But of course, you're right, it is just a state of mind thing. So much so that my completely laid back, previously sound of mind partner who is a teacher is having a nervous breakdown. And two teachers at my school have dropped down dead before they've made it 50... At least they can't moan anymore.

When did you last teach in the UK, islandmama? You appear to be very out of touch.

I think that over-reliance on data and the introduction of performance related pay are largely to blame for the current mess. How can anyone be happy in their work when they're being judged for not meeting data-based targets that were never achievable in the first place?!