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!

Honeybadger you said it better than I possibly could.
A secondary I have regular work in - 'Outstanding' and, to be fair, better than others I see.
One class I am 'taming' - have seen them several time in different subjects, so now know their names, strength and weaknesses etc, they now know me and behaviour vastly improved.
Today happened by chance to meet in the staff room their form tutor - as Supply had not previously know who he was.
He is sick to death of them, because all those report they are on, that I duly comment on etc when I teach them - he has to generate them, monitor them, phone home, put in interventions etc, on top of his other teaching job, and everything else. he is utterly fed up.
I am not gonna do NQT - will do supply until I find another job, outside teaching.

are you sure? if you could get through that one year it's banked for life. i know, i know but? how old are you? what are the chancing of you wanting to travel, live overseas? etc.

i'm glad i have it banked even if i don't use it itms.

you're probably right and i'm probably talking conservatively from the ooh can't waste qualification position but then again it's also the thought of having gone through pgce for nothing if you don't do nqt.

the good thing with you doing supply is that you get to know schools and staff and management and could maybe find the school you think you could survive in for a year to get your nqt. and if you have a good rep with them as a supply teacher you may have some negotiation power as to what you get on your timetable etc as they know what they're getting rather than gambling on someone straight out of pgce.

Honey ( if I may be so familiar ), I am quite old and had many years in a another career, so a 'career' in teaching won't happen. I like supply, and would probably happily continue with it, except that there are rules about not doing supply for more than five years ( I think ???).
My original game-plan was to use supply to find a great school to do NQT in, which may still happen (hence my fending off primary offers form desperate agencies and now only accepting secondary gigs - of which there is availability every day.) At the moment all bets are off, but I will not willingly get into a crazy workload situation. Life (and more so at my advanced age ) is too short...

Sorry x-posted - yes HB that was the game plan and may still be if the negotiation thing can work.

lapsedtwentysomething. Do you get 6 periods of non contact time per week? . We get 4 periods out of a 25 hour timetable...

i suspect she meant per half term orange. 4 out of 25 is 1.5 more than i ever got (not playing competitive hardship honest).

oh sod it then dontgo! i was thinking maybe you're in your 20's and may regret it iyswim.

I would love to know what happened to the young male teacher who won one of the early teacher of the year awards. The award ceremony showed his winning interactive ICT lesson which was about 45 mins. He said in the interview that it took him about 3 hours to prepare.
I wonder how long he stayed in teaching......

I'd like to know what happened to all the teachers in the Teach First TV program they showed earlier on in the year, too.

www.teachfirst.org.uk/news/tough-young-teachers-%E2%80%93-where-are-they-now

This says where they were in February, but I'd really like to know what they're doing now!

also what meds they're taking.

Hi
Is anyone still about on this thread? I have taken great comfort from reading this as I am in the exact same position and have the same thoughts on teaching these days....even down to contemplating a minor injury so I could have some time off! I've ended up going off with stress, three weeks in to it now. I won't go in to details about all the whys and wherefores but wondered did any of you who have left do so after being off with stress? i think I have pretty much decided that I need to leave while I have some shred of sanity left but am terrified that if I try to move in to another job the employer would find out I'd been off with stress via referencing and I wouldn't stand a chance. There is somewhat of a stigma attached isn't there even though there shouldn't be!

I left teaching on stress related grounds and my headteacher wouldn't even give me a reference.
I managed to re enter employment and I've been in my current job 11 years this month.
I hope you are able to secure employment after teaching too. Good luck.

Oh thank you! That's good to hear! It's just so worrying because if I can't get another job, my DH and I will be in pretty dire straits financially. I wish I had the strength to carry on but I don't think I can... I've lost a lot of confidence I'm just hoping my spark will return enough to motivate myself to make a go of something else. Feel like I'm a different person these days. I used to have really high self esteem and feel I could tackle anything...

Hi thank you for this thread it’s really encouraging. I just wanted to say to anyone going into do supply-make sure you are with a union, my partner recently did supply in between retraining (we met while teaching and both want to leave!) and the children accused him of hitting one of them. As he’d just gone into supply after teaching abroad he wasn’t with a union, the school gave him an extremely badly behaved class with no other adult in the room and now his case is being ‘escalated’ despite him doing nothing wrong. I’ve seen him teach and he’s the gentlest person ever so know it is untrue!