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!

Oh nomama well done! I am very envious.....

Let the countdown begin, you must feel exhilarated!!

Yay!! What caused your DH's change of heart?

I loved the pupils (most of em anyway), loved teaching, loved finding new things to fire their imaginations and develop their understanding. Was regularly rated "excellent" in classroom inspections. Hated practically everything else about the job. In the end the exhaustion and lack of time and the intrusion and lack of trust won over the love.

I can't really see who can last long-term in teaching any more, which is extraordinarily sad for the children. Most of your children's teachers are amazing people, taking unjustified flak every single day for things that are beyond their control, and not complaining about it because the working environment is basically designed to rest most of the load on the teachers. Historically, pupils were expected to pull their weight in the learning equation, and parents were expected to ensure their children were in the right frame of mind to make sure they could learn. Now, the baseline expectation in some schools is that the children have terrible home lives, spend hours every day on playstations or are kicked out into the streets, come to school unfed, because so many do, especially at secondary level. And it's not always the ones you'd think who are being subtly neglected either.

He's been telling me to just do it for a couple of years. Unfortunately he works in a weird industry and he has been made redundant twice and had time out for surgery.

He has promised that he won't make his current employer go broke until I have got my leaving date and am beyond the point of no return

well done nomama. you won't regret it. The school may well let you go sooner if you add ask. easter is hard for recruitment. go at Christmas and you'll get loads of supply in January's and February. ...peak illness season. sorry for typos am on rubbishy phone.

You can't do a job feeling like that! Not surprised your DH realised it.
All very true duchesse
Now that I am retired I work with children for free, the others are mainly retired teachers and we loved the classroom and the children. Not one of us would want to go back and be paid. The sad thing is that not one of us would recommend it as a career.
We do a good job, get good feedback from schools. We know the subject. Pop along a bit early and set up. Differentiate according to who turns up. We have a lesson plan, no one uses it-we present the information in our own way and we are all very different. We tidy away and go home! We have fun while we do it and we don't have to write anything down.
It is not the job it was when I started. There were things wrong with it but they seem to have thrown the baby out with the bath water!! Chatting to another retired teacher we thought that if you tested a yr 6 child now with one when we started teaching there would be very little difference except that the earlier one might show more initiative.

Usually have to give a term's notice in schools Quenna practically indentured servitude. Unlikely head would allow shorter notice as potential replacement staff have to give a term's notice as well.

Oops, I thought it was the OP whose DH has told to resign!

I won't get out early. They may let me out at the end of March at best.

But that's OK.

OP, I am sorry to have stolen part of your thread. Good luck with your decision!

Sorry-I thought it was OP giving up.

That's why I apologised - and will do so again!

The thread was a timely one for me and I didn't think before leaping in and stealing OPs support.

OP, again, I am sorry for hijacking your thread. I hope you find a resolution you can enjoy.

Interesting one for everyone-hope OP found it useful.

I'm out. Finished officially on 31 August this year, but off sick etc since February.

There are things in life that are better than leaving teaching, but not many.

Last night I was thinking, I'll get up early, there's a bus into the city at 7.55, I used to catch it. Why did I do that, I thought? Oh, to go to work. On Sundays. I must have been mad.

Well, kind of. I was a teacher. Upthread there's a lady using her part-time days off for her schoolwork, and she 'doesn't mind'. We are all mad. They train us to be mad during the gruelling pgce/now in-house training.

Leave teaching! You will not regret it!

I know two types of teacher.

One lot are attempting to build gliders to get the fuck out of Colditz.

Sadly, the rest of us are hiding in our little tunnels & trying not to notice that the roof's caving in.

This year, our smallish secondary has racked up one stroke, one suicide, & two indefinite LOAs due to stress. That's about 5% of the workforce actually dead or incapacitated (none of them over 50), & doesn't even mention the rate of colleagues simply quitting the profession whilst they can still walk out of the door rather than being carried out.

I've always loved teaching, but this year I've come to hate being a teacher.

I've always loved teaching, but this year I've come to hate being a teacher.

This. Except for me it started last year :(

I am also part time simply to cope with the workload. Half of the rest of my big dept are the same. I'm prepared to do it as the salary is still good and I get holidays off. It means I don't have to work at weekends.

"Historically, pupils were expected to pull their weight in the learning equation, and parents were expected to ensure their children were in the right frame of mind to make sure they could learn."

Yes, and now, pupils don't pull their weight, and they, their parents, management teams and Ofsted all expect us to get the same results regardless. Everything has become our fault. All society's ills can be put onto schools to fix. And if we can't, or don't, then just send in Ofsted to fail us.

Teachers ill and overworked? Tough shit. There are always some poor unsuspecting cheap NQTs to come along and fill the gap. Get 5 years out of them before they too realise the deal and quit.

I'm SO glad my own children are just about through the system. And very grateful to the wonderful, dedicated teachers they were very lucky to be taught by.

ravenAK, I thought you were going to say 'I know two types of teacher, one lot who can't cut it and get out, and the rest of us - who are really committed - who go on beating all the odds to improve the lives of our pupils'. There used to be a lot of that attitude about, but not in the last couple of years.

What you actually said was very moving. Ten years or so ago, the school I worked in had a similar toll - two dropped dead, etc etc.

I expected to die in the classroom, or hang myself off the bannisters on the landing outside my teaching room. I can't tell you what a difference it makes to wake up in the morning and not wish I'd died in the night.

Leave teaching, while you still have breath!

I left a high stress job. Not teaching but had enormous workload, short staff and enormous decisions making every day that I used to worry about. I stuck it for 4 years and against advice, I asked for a demotion and worked for a less prestigious role.

I am super happy now and skip into work.

I am trying my best when I go in on supply to be a rebel and..... Make sure that the little ones have fun! Sometimes I pretend I didn't find the plan until the end of the day and do my own thing based loosely on their current topic. We sing, dance, have lots of stories and make up songs to their topics.
Funnily enough, the children are always pleased to see me. They don't seem to have suffered by my failure to "follow the plan, discuss targets, review what they could have done better, peer mark against LO " etc.

Sometimes I pretend I didn't find the plan until the end of the day and do my own thing
My heart sank when I read that! There must be something of the teacher left in me, after all

Aaaaaagh! Bloody Lesson Plans!! They started to demand those for every sodding lesson, to be handed to the Head at the end of the month. I'd been teaching for nearly 30 years, and 'They' wanted a plan from me showing 'aims' 'apparatus' etc as if I were a student back in my PGCE days. It took me about four hours each month to type the things up, and in my own time too.
Our excellent Head had to plough through eighteen of these and sign them.

And nobody has yet mentioned the National Curriculum. Some here may remember those halcyon days before its inception. They carved ten subjects into slices and delivered a slice to each Year Group. My little yr 4 pupils were supposed to study The Abdication and The Depression. Bloody Depression all right. Idiots.

I am blessed at the moment in that our HT doesn't "do" unnecessary paperwork. She says if we want to waste spend time writing detailed lesson plans, that's up to us, but she's sure as hell not going to read them. Our medium-term and weekly plans show her what we're intending to do; how we do it, as in the fine detail, is up to us.

Hallelujah!