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!

rollonthesummer I could also have written your post, word for word.

Yet the amount of fuss the parents make at my school about getting 'a jobshare'-it's total hysteria in some cases!

The parents who were so smug in July that their child had 'the full time teacher' are slightly less smug now that she has been signed off long-term with no clue when she's coming back and the class are covered by a series of different supplies. The jobshares are still going strong though....!

I was a teacher (primary level) for 5 years in total. I've also done a few other jobs.

I left teaching once and for all nearly 4 years ago and I'll never ever go back to it. The thought of going back to it makes me feel panicky.

In the other jobs I've had people say they're "stressed" and "busy" and I think WTAF????!!! Really???!! All other jobs I've had have been so incredibly easy (to the point of being boring in some instances) compared to teaching.

On the plus side, I got so used to having to produce massive amounts of work in a tiny amount of time as a teacher that in all my other jobs my bosses have been gobsmacked at the amount of work I get done. In other normal jobs, when you're asked to produce a piece of work you're given time and space to do it, as part of your everyday working schedule and you're given a somewhat reasonable deadline. In teaching you're required to produce literally hundreds of pieces of written work (often handwritten, in children's books) week as well as being on your feet for six hours a day, dealing with behaviour, logistics and, you know, teaching. Teaching is like 3 or 4 full time jobs rolled into one - in no other job have I come across anywhere near the same level of expectation in terms of how much a human can realistically produce in a given amount of time.

I am now an editor and I love it. I miss the children, I miss them horribly, I dream about being in a class and teaching and seeing all those faces looking up at me (there's absolutely nothing like it) but I can't face it ever again.

I am now well-paid, respected, given time to do my work, treated as a colleague. It doesn't outweigh the joy of teaching but certainly is a darn sight better than the stress and horror of the British education system!

That was such a lovely post to read! How did you become an editor, if you don't mind me being nosy?

yanbu I left after serving the average life sentence of 7 years. The grass was much greener for me, I was ups1 with a tlr2 and walked straight into an easier job with a 500 pound a year pay cut. People who've never been a teacher dont realise what its like.

I feel exactly the same, it's reassuring in some ways that there are so many others in the same position and not just me. I've worked in a variety of schools and while the pressures are different in different schools it's always been a hard job. As I get older I wonder how long I'll be able to manage for. I hope that I'll be able to get another job doing something else but with a poor reference from my last school (from a bullying headteacher who forced out several staff for no particular reason) I'm not sure how easy it will be. I think that things like lesson observations are too subjective a way of measuring performance and with an impossible workload it is easy for SMT to find something they can pick on if they don't like you.

I've moved to supply although it's only in one school at the moment.

I keep getting offered permanent positions at the school and I turn them down.

I think the staff turnover was about 30 last year. Classes of children are being taught by multiple teachers as staff are burned out and threatened by SMT.

The NQT who I cover was fresh faced and enthusiastic in September. Now she's in constant tears is observed almost every week and told she's not good enough. No one is good enough. I'll be surprised if she doesn't walk. It's making her ill. 5 people have left already since the new academic year. More will follow.

I won't go back into a permanent position. Whoever said that classes will be taught by supply and people under 10 years experience is most likely correct.

It's a sad state of affairs as it's the children that suffer.

Truly scary reading about all these committed and excellent teachers who are jumping ship.

The other thing which strikes me is the number of good teachers (almost all women) who accept that the only way they can deliver, is to work part time hours. It seems they are often still doing a full time job, so the school is getting all the benefits of a hard working member of staff, but the individual suffers by taking a vastly reduced salary and pension.

Really worrying that its almost accepted as normal in such a vital profession that 'coping' means taking a personal hit like this

Rollon - I sort of fell into the job by mistake, through my husband. I didn't think I had a hope in hell of getting it because I had no editing experience (although I do have a lot of writing experience, plus experience in research, plus I studied the field of research around which the writing is based) but I just went for it and got it. It started out as a very part time easy at-home job that any old idiot could do but given that I produce work in superfast time they've given me more and more responsibility and my role has expanded hugely. Plus the pedantry that teaching encourages - use your capital letters! no, it's 'there' not 'their'! - suits editing quite well :)

Teaching gives you a tonne of transferable skills IMO. If I were ever looking to hire someone I would always go for a former teacher - they tend to be organised, fast working, on the ball, able to be cheery in difficult circumstances, have a good gallows humour and just be competent, which is actually something that's in short supply out in the real world. I work with a lot with academics in my current job and they are such whingers - they complain if they have to produce 1200 words in two months. Eh, be a fucking teacher, control 30 unruly little uns for six hours, then write 1200 words in ten minutes or face the wrath of a HT! Get over yourself, lazy gits!!!

Needed that.

sounds like a nice school roundtable, nothing like a bit of bullying from incompetent managers. Have ofsted been?

I agree cailin re the transferable skills

I have to say, having taught for a while, I found it very odd to be in an environment where I was offered tea, was praised for my work, where my boss was concerned about overburdening me as I have two kids, where I was given a pay raise when I asked for it (as I deserved it - I was producing far more than they asked for), where I'm given simple kindness and respect. It made me see just how much you're treated like a naughty miscreant when you're a teacher. There is just no respect.

I agree.

I taught for 23 years. I enjoyed most of it and was good at it. My last school and the Sea in it broke me and I ended up committed to a psychiatric ward.
I love my current job and feel privileged to have been able to rebuild my career. I agree that my teaching background has enabled me to be resilient and cope with a tough workload. I feel valued where I am and look forward to work every day, and manage self employment on top.
Teaching isn't worth risking your health for and I hope the OP manages to leave before she becomes ill.

SMT not Sea. Though I would have welcomed it being flooded out.

Toby, they are classified as a 'good' school and are trying to get to outstanding.

It's not the first school that I've witnessed this. Ofsted don't care as long as the data looks good.

I was offered a deputy headship at one school. I turned it down. I can't be part of a system that bullies and belittles its employees and it's seen as the normal. Where schools with sympathetic and supportive SMT are spoken about with amazement as it's so uncommon.

Ex staff have complained to the LA. Nothing happens. I think the rot has set in now.

Editing sounds brilliant. I've done a lot of 11+ tuition and have a great love of punctuation; I think I might enjoy that!

I think it's the lack of trust in teachers that really gets me down at the moment. Not just from the government but from SMT. There is an assumption that good teaching will grind to a halt if they stop observing us/doing book scrutinies etc There is the assumption that we are lazy and won't work if just left to our own devices. I find it insulting but also very sad :(

Are there any SMT members here? What do you think?

Bumping...

Unfortunately, SMT are under the same pressure if not worse.

As a UPS teacher, I am responsible for ensuing that I can prove how I have moved the whole school on to at a least good progress. Not just my class. If not, capability.

The pressure of that can cause people to micro manage and make excessive demands to ensure it's not their head on the chopping block imo.

I am UPS and we don't have that pressure in my school; that's one positive, I suppose!

I think our management know they are being unreasonable but are just very pleased it's not them facing RI. Can put of class managers get RI?!

No end of daft buggers would say to me, "Oh you lucky thing! Nine to three-thirty and all those holidays! And a good pension...dah dah..."
Having chopped their heads off with a sharp axe (just fantasising) I would offer to give them the contact address for forms to apply to University and the address of a Teacher Training College (my routes to a teaching qualification) Funnily enough they'd back away or change the subject...

I also felt a bit like Cinderella standing in a huge playground in an icy wind with 400 Primary School children (it was a very very big school, 4 classes in each year group) screaming all around me during 'playground duty' clutching a mug of rapidly cooling coffee and wondering if I'd have time for a quick wee before the bell went. And I also did 'lunchtime duty' in the dining room for 30mins to support the kitchen staff. And 'gate duty' before and after school....

During the only OFSTED inspection I suffered, a bored-looking inspector (about a dozen landed on us) stood in the playground watching me to see if I 'interacted' with the children, and how I dealt with squabbles/injuries. She solemnly wrote on her clipboard every minute or so. I wonder what I scored for 'playground competence' or some such idiotic category.
Totally and utterly bonkers.

But I truly loved my pupils and enjoyed every minute of our lessons together.
The fun we had... and the wonderful breakthroughs when a hesitant reader managed a whole page, or a little lad got 10/10 for his 'sums'. It wasn't the children that drove me out of the profession, it was the terrible, relentless stress and pressure, applied by 'Them' and their bloody forms and assessments. I honestly think that if I hadn't taken Early Retirement I'd have been dead in a year, from a stroke or coronary thrombosis, or suicide.

Almost all white-collar jobs are easier than teaching. Whenever I come across people who have changed career to go into teaching, or left teaching to go into another job, they always say the other job was easier. No exceptions.

People are leaving the teaching profession in droves for exactly the reasons you state.

The good thing is that the skills you use in teaching are transferable - organisation, commanding the attention of a group of people, explaining ideas in a simple way. You just need to find the right thing for you.

Can I just say that Yanbu but it's very crap at higher ed/universities too.

Huge, phenomenally huge pressure to produce research because that's how we get funding and go up the rankings that people are obsessed about, but very little interest in teaching (from the promotions committee and such like). So the message for academic staff at all levels is to not bother with teaching (even updating slides would be too much hassle). Or pastoral care. We need to get grants, papers etc.

But plenty of us do enjoy the teaching, the curriculum development, innovative teaching, interactions with students etc. but no, no one really gets rewarded for this sort of stuff. Most universities can not demonstrate that they've got a same track promotion list for those who are great teachers, compared to those who are great researchers. At a guess, I would say 90% of academic staff get promoted through research.

Thank you all!

I have had a horrible weekend, all tears and tantrums - mine!

DH came home an hour ago and told me to hand in my notice. Enough is enough, I am already broken and need to leave.

So that is it! I shall go in and chat to HoD and SMT, notice in for Christmas, out of there at Easter.

2 weeks at Christmas, 1 week in Feb, 3 weeks at Easter, if I take the lot that means I have 5 months to go, with 6 weeks of those as holiday - I have enough days to take the lot!

158 days to go...

Great, a good decision Nomama. You will find something else. No job is worth the stress.