AIBU to want to leave teaching?

[Timetochangeisnow]

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!

Honey - it does make one fear for the eduucation children are going to be getting doesn't it?

Honey, the only downside I've found on supply is the income drop.
I'd rather be poor and sane.

I am not sure if teaching part time is different at secondary to primary but I teach key stage 1 and we already have part time teachers in that particular key stage who say that planning and assessment is halved and it is down to savvy management of the timetable.
Each teacher does 3 days. One teacher will plan literacy, the other numeracy. One will plan and teach big read whereas the other will plan and teach big write. But because big write is intensive marking, they swap this every half term so each teacher does equal writing and reading assessments. They each teach guided reading on their two full days on their own (PPA cover does the third day - wednesday) and they switch groups every half term. Phonics is taught for four afternoons (not Wednesday's as it is their PPA) and each will teach games or PE and a topic day each. On a Wednesday afternoon the PPA cover will do, as said, guided reading for one group, RE and computing. One Wednesday morning, both teachers are in class supporting each other. So the planning works well. They assess together but when it comes to filling in data, each teacher has a key group of children (half the class each) that they take overall responsibility of when it comes to ensuring data is put into the school system.
The only things they said is that marking HAS to be up to date but when both are in on a Wednesday, they find it pretty easy.
Obviously this isn't the case in all schools and we have one class with a teacher who works 3 days and the other 2 days. They had to plan the entire year in September and resort to texts, emails, Lester writing and phone calls to pass don information. Luckily, they work well together and are friends also so don't find it an issue.

it is different yes as it's all one year group and one class being shared.

when you have 7 different year groups all following different curriculum with say 8 classes in each year group of whom you may be teaching each with their own sen and differentiation needs and then factor in the number of teachers you may be sharing groups with (and how each of those teachers will be teaching tons of groups so won't know any one group particularly well) then it's very different than sharing one group with one set of differentiation needs and one other teacher to communicate and split planning with.

sharing one group (re the same 30 pupils who you are reasonably familiar with and understand how to cater for, know their ILPs etc) with one member of staff (who you actually know and can communicate with and ideally is a qualified teacher rather than some random they've gotten in to fill a few slots on the timetable even though their english is barely comprehensible and their lack of training or engagement makes them less effective than your average LSA) can logically halve your work.

part time in secondary probably works best if you can narrow down your time table to at least one key stage and if you share your groups with one other member of staff predominantly and you and that member of staff know each other and have a cross over free period somewhere in the week.

Oh honey that sounds so familiar.

sadly part time tends to be used to plug gaps rather than sensibly having a job share between two people who have the means to communicate and plan together.

i remember some poor sod at one of my first schools who had a part time timetable with four different subjects on it even before you got to year groups. he was immeasurably worse off than a supply teacher because he was responsible for all of the paperwork side and he wasn't even qualified so was getting paid peanuts.

i know littlerobots. ithink it's hard for people outside to understand the sheer fucking mayhem and lack of joined up thinking.

i imagine the ship has been sinking since before i started teaching so there is just endless sticking fingers in holes without any ability to strip back and fix things holistically.

ime in this county you didn't even have a confirmed timetable let alone classlists let alone sen details till half term. it was markedly better in the first region i worked in but this one here can't be the only one that is drowning.

I nearly applied for a .4 job a couple of weeks ago. However when I rang up I found out it was a 2 week timetable and I'd be required to be in 4 days week A and 3 days week B. As well as having full responsibility for my subject (so I would need to attend all meetings and all parents evenings etc). If I was in on an almost daily basis I suspect the job would soon morph way beyond .4 wouldn't it...

not in the pay packet no but in terms of work done yes, absolutely.

realistically that should have been part time mainscale with full responsibility points for the subject area management and extra frees for doing it.

in practice it was a 0.75 contract on 0.4 pay

mine was 3 days a week so 0.6 but all of the meetings and parents evenings and twilight session cpd were scheduled on those three days as well as whole school meeting early starts and i was expected to the same whole school contributions as full time members of staff. that plus 7 different year groups (with 4 of those year groups being exam groups) and some alternative education off curriculum groups and responsibility for as and a2 planning and exam board communications and it was taking the piss to say the least.

also on the days i was in there was no head of dept and i was the only specialist qualified member of the dept on site with several members on maternity leave or long term sick so i was also ending up responsible for coordinating and supporting supply with zero support myself and never having had an induction. it was actually ridiculous to be honest.

As a parent without much knowledge of the education system, this thread makes me feel sad. I am only up to Y1 with my daughter (2 teachers) but both are wonderful and she has blossomed since starting school.

What can we, as parents do to make things a tiny bit better and show our appreciation? I do offer my help on a regular basis (not sure how helpful it is though).

Don't ever go in and have a go at the teacher because your child has lost their jumper!

Don't come on MN and whinge about INSET days.

That'd be a good start.

Make it bloody obvious to your MP (& other hopefuls) when (s)he calls knocking for your vote that education is high on your priority list & you are very very concerned, as a parent, about education generally & especially the crisis in teacher recruitment & retention .

This fish is rotting from the head - we need a decent Ed Sec to sort things out properly. Not just more fingers plugging ever more holes...

That sounds really ungrateful re: your regular offers of help, which is not AT ALL what I mean - but it's the whole mess of PRP, unqualified teachers, the institutionalising of management bullying in academies, Ofsted being the tail that wags the dog...it really needs someone to step in at the top & say 'RIGHT. Let's have a proper look at what teachers need in order to teach.'.

Agreed, Raven. Just imagine if the Ed Sec arranged to meet with ACTUAL TEACHERS and listened to what they had to say. And acted on it.

Im a wierd position where I have done my pgce but not my nqt year. I am now working as a Lsa which I love, mainly because it is a walk in the park compared to teaching and my sanity was suffering.
The money is shit but I can relax in the evenings .
Tbh I dont know if my mental health can withstand the nqt year.

I also love the fact that I get to work with kids who really need it. Am I mad to forget th nqt? My pgce nearly finished me off and I get bullied in teaching jobs. :-(

NQT year is tough, but the following year can be tougher as you lose the extra time out of class, often have to take on a curriculum responsibility and in many schools, you'd be expected to run a club too.

Another one here who did PGCE, (career changer after years in business)but actively decided not - yet - to do NQT year, as I had seen NQTs bullied, overworked, failed on a whim. (Secondary). I am currently a supply teacher, enjoy being in the classroom, get repeat bookings and good feedback, And for the secondary work - supply is great, I love being in the classroom and leave at the end of the day, minimal marking, no planning. However I often get suckered asked to do primary as there is a massive shortage of primary teachers. The shortage does not surprise me. Where I have been (outstanding schools) the expectation is that every piece of written work js to be deep-marked www/ebi, colour coding highlighters etc and detailed menu of correction types. A few weeks ago I was in school, and the class teacher anxiously reminded me, several times before she left, that every piece of my marking should also have my initials and 'supply' just so she didn't get blamed if my marking was crap grin. She also how me how lucky I was as there was PE that day which reduced the marking load... There were four pieces per child to be marked in this way - 28x4=112 pieces, and so I also had to write my initials 112 times, and the word 'supply' 112 times - the latter waste of my timeannotations are in no way required to help the child progress.
The school gave me fantastic feedback and asked the agency for me to go back long-term - ha - no way! Have told agency I won't go back, shame because the kids are really lovely, so is the school and the staff, but the insane marking policy is unacceptable.
Have also told the agency I will no longer do primary work - I can get enough days in secondary where although the daily rate is the same, because of the crazy primary expectations, the hourly equivalent rate make primary not worthwhile.
So... if you leave primary to do primary supply - beware of the marking...

Ah yes, and some schools mark in red, others in green, yet others in blue and some write positives in pink and growth points in green. If anyone needs a pen, I'm your woman.
I use stamps too, which cuts down on all the writing.

yes, i have never seen a supply teacher expected to do marking in secondary - assume it's different on long term placements but to expect that for a casual in for the day supply teacher seems insane! especially one not even trained in primary years

the joy with supply i'd imagine is that even if you get a hellish group with way too many angry/abusive/confrontational youngsters crowded into one space and tipping it over into the 'forget it' zone for teaching and learning you can just look at the clock and know you'll never have to see them again within an hours time. when they're on your timetable for the rest of the year and no amount of reporting, asking for support/intervention etc is going to make a blind bit of difference it's different.

have a few of those classes on your timetable and that's every day blighted with dreading them, coping with them, then recovering from them. and at the end of the day when you'd like to be getting on with your planning, marking etc following up with long pointless behaviour reports for the same kids you've been writing them for every lesson this term and trying to call home, trying to grab someone whose supposed to be following up on the last lessons incidents and you haven't heard back from them yet and generally sitting in a room exhausted, dehydrated and starving having not even gotten to the work you need to do yet because not only have you been verbally abused and threatened by the same lads again you're also being punished for it again by having an extra hours work as a result of that abuse. [scream emoticon would be good]

you can tell i enjoyed my last dalliance with secondary school teaching can't you? i particularly love the way that when you're about to walk out smt and all sympathise and agree that your timetable is unworkable and groups x, y and z are dire and something needs to be done, and it WILL be done, and they'll sort out a b and c for next week (basically tell you anything because they're terrified that you too are going to go off sick or walk out without notice) - then come monday everyone has magically forgotten all about it and all the things they were going to do to sort it.

oh what fun

I wonder if I blew my chances of surviving in that school when, after a particularly bad incident to which SLT did not respond effectively, I told them I would 'Sue their fucking arses off?'
On reflection, that might have something to do with it....
TheHoneyBadger, I've had hypnotherapy to block out all that stuff. Your post reminded me.

After the 'sue' threat, the head offered me a lift home. As if. I did accept his offer of a school-funded taxi, though.

humblepie - hypnotherapy sounds great

I have taken great pleasure today in ignoring an email from the head asking if someone in the dept is willing to run a weekly after school revision session.

Actually what I'd like to reply is: I'm afraid I don't have time to run a revision session. We are given the absolute minimum PPA time, six periods of which are taken from us to teach poorly behaved classes for a whole 'skills' day. We are timetabled to do learning support during our gained time, so have to mark all exams and controlled assessments over our Christmas holidays. Please don't ask for any more of my time.