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!

Trouble is it is not just classroom teachers leaving, it is SLT as well. And without high quality SLT coming up through the ranks and into headship is it any wonder people moan about their management. Not for all the tea in China, no matter how large the salary is my view on headship now.

www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/23/teacher-training-shortfall-recruitment-coalition

Although this is about recruitment, not retention, many of the points raised in the comments sadly concur with much that has been posted here.

The sad thing is that these feelings are expressed everywhere and it is getting worse. When I started teaching people had the odd moan, but they were generally happy and saw it as a lifelong career.

I want to know where the unions are in all this. They seem to have no power or fight at all.

I remember when I first joined teaching about 18/19 years ago, there was no appraisal process because the unions had boycotted it. They do nothing as big as this these days. Just useless magazines

What's the answer? More strikes? That is so unpopular with the parents/government/press.

Trouble is it is not just classroom teachers leaving, it is SLT as well. And without high quality SLT coming up through the ranks and into headship is it any wonder people moan about their management. Not for all the tea in China, no matter how large the salary is my view on headship now.

That's a good point actually. I was just thinking SLT are the lucky ones that have escaped the rat race but ours are actually pretty crap really. Not that great when they were in the classroom and will never ever ever take a class to model how x y or z should be done so staff can watch-the onus is on them watching you. Management, not leadership.

Our local council website is full of deputy head jobs though-nobody wants them. They are struggling to fill headships too, loads of executive heads in charge of 3-4 schools.

Why can't the press be truthful and report some of these issues-people should know what's going on. Maybe it would make parents less likely to spit at me for losing their unnamed jumpers?

No, not more strikes. But they could do internal boycotts on lesson obs or lesson plans

Several Heads in my local area have walked out recently. I'm frankly astounded that some others haven't too. I do know that one asked an LA representative, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, if there was a queue of candidates to fill their shoes because if so, they'd be happy to let them and the LA person retreated sharpish. Very few people are wanting the job. Not only is it horrifically stressful and poorly paid for the responsibility that goes with it, but there is a marked lack of support from above when serious issues arise. The only thing the LA seems good at is having a go. A depressing number of Heads, if what I read on here is representative, respond by passing the pressure on down to their staff.

The only way I cope is by remaining part-time. I work 4 days a week and that's my maximum.

Having a HT who doesn't demand much paperwork is another bonus. And after 28 years in the business, I'm a past-master at multi-tasking, delegating and cutting corners that are OK to cut and not to the detriment of the kids. Having an excellent TA is another Godsend. My colleagues are also very supportive and we have a lot of fun still.

But ask me if I could still do the job at 67 and the answer is, NO WAY.

Really sorry to read this thread and totally agree witht the stress and pressure. I left primary school teaching years ago due to stress. i recently became a governor and the demands are even more now! I was reading through the criteria for an outstanding lesson and just had to say it was ludicrous! absolutely ludicrous!I don't know how anyone can teach now with those kind of impossible expectations. Dont get me wrong I have 4 children and am keen for them to have a good education with good teachers but these demands are not going to create good teachers they are going to break them! Its the burocracy that needs to go, paperwork removed and back to trusting teachers to get on with teaching and inspiring the children. Yes have lesson obsevrations, yes plan and assess the children but not to the detriment of fun, good quality learning. Sorry no help to you OP but I can only suggest you take time out and have a think about your next step

I actually do not see the obsession with lesson observations. I do not think they make me teach better and I don't think they make children learn better/more or faster.

If they achieve none of these things, what are they for?

By all means look at my planning, speak to the children and look at their results and work. Isn't that what's important?

I've been driving for 35 years. I am therefore quite experienced and know what I'm doing. If anyone were to insist that, before every single journey, I had to submit a detailed plan of my trip, outlining the route, back-up plan for if I hit traffic, a run-down of the type of car I was driving and its limitations, how I was going to move through the gears as I was going along, a list of actions I might take it I was low on petrol, a warning light came on or another vehicle pulled out suddenly in front of me and so forth, I would tell them to shove it. All those things I do automatically and do not need to write down for someone else's benefit. It would also take up an unacceptable amount of time.

I'm afraid I view lesson plans in much the same way. I suppose if I was attempting something new, or particularly complex, needing a lot of resources or a risk assessment, I might jot down a few notes, but beyond that? Just no.
And I defy anyone to tell me I'm not a good teacher.

Oh gosh clam that is a perfect analogy!

There are often threads where non-teachers just dont "get" the pointlessness of the paperwork ("we all have paperwork/targets/appraisals/whatever"). That is a really good analogy.

I guess continuing the theme - analysing the trip afterwards, berating yoruself if you realise that actually the A34 would have been quicker than the M3 due to traffic therefore you need to write another paragraph to the plan for next time, and actaully, yet again, it wasn't actually perfect. If you had travelled at 54 continually other than those patches at 50 you might have shaved a little more of the cost of fuel...

And as long as you arrive safely, on time, without killing anyone or writing off the car, then presumably it's good enough?

No, wait...

It's true through. I live the driving analogy.

My cousin is a teacher and her head's latest bright idea is to video her teachers using some new technology (I forget it's name) and then watch themselves back in teams after school, 'unpicking' what went wrong.

Of all the stupid f£ckwitted waste of time ideas...!

Does anyone think that lesson observation improves their practice or helps their children learn?

What these nitwits in the upper echelons of education don't realise is that you won't effect any improvement whatsoever in the children's progress by monitoring, documenting, filling in endless forms, setting 'targets', observing teachers, changing the curriculum on a whim etc etc. They only do it to justify their existence.
Children are living human beings and need a teacher who is spontaneous, fun, inspiring and can teach on impulse when a child is suddenly starting to 'get' something. Not a machine programmed to deliver a 20 minute period of 'Literacy' or explain The Depression to poor little eight year-olds, who would be far more thrilled to be acting out Victorian servants or making a collage of knights at a joust.
I was always thinking of Dickens' book 'Hard Times', with Mr Gradgrind. "A horse is an animal with four legs and a tail..." And 'Dead Poets' Society' , that brilliant teacher who inspired his pupils with the most amazing methods of appreciating poetry, but was sent packing for not adhering to the rules.
I have never felt such utter despair as that during my last couple of years before I sank down to my knees, defeated. I had completed thirty years of dedicated service, yet had to acquiesce with these soul-destroying, stultifying changes while fighting sheer exhaustion and mental burn-out. I have to say, I am still bitter. And don't feel the need to apologise for my opinion that I honestly knew better than Them how to teach.

Oh rollon that makes me really scared to return to teaching.

I feel bitter that what I've studied for, trained for, and am good at is not something I feel I can do.

It also nags away at me about who will be left teaching? Presumably those coming in now will go through the system thinking excessive form filling is just their "normal". I want my children to be taught by teachers like me/ my former colleagues with fun and excitement. Not by exhausted depressed worn out teachers or form-filling managers.

Pleas forgive the typos-it's/live= its/love. I can write!

A teacher who has been bullied, over worked and made to feel worthless is not going to be the best person teaching anyone's child yet in classrooms up and down the country that's what's is going to happen tomorrow

that needs saying again.

A teacher who has been bullied, over worked and made to feel worthless is not going to be the best person teaching anyone's child yet in classrooms up and down the country that's what's is going to happen tomorrow

Yes, well said.

I am thinking of just leaving now and doing tutoring and supply. To those who just do supply; are you with an agency? If not, can I ask how you went about getting work? Did you distribute your cv to schools you liked the look of?

I left, three years after returning.

I'd been out for thirteen years.

The job is unrecognisable. It was always tough, but I loved it. Thrived on it.

Now, that feeling of mistrust, the pressure on everyone to be outstanding, the fear...it's unsustainable.

I ended up being signed off with work induced anxiety after admitting to my GP that I regularly woke up crying and would hope for a car accident/fall down the stairs in order to get some respite from the relentlessness of teaching.

I'm still on anti-anxiety meds, but I can feel flashes of the old me coming back.

I still work in a school, but as a librarian. It's like a different world - one in which I get to go home and watch TV/eat dinner/have a bath/do chores/go to bed early without the nagging guilt eating away at me.

My salary has halved and I'll probably have to sell my house in order to keep this job, but it's still worth it. I'll do whatever it takes to avoid returning to the hell that is modern teaching.

Teaching was my vocation - all I ever wanted to do, and the sole reason I worked hard to pass my exams. I was the first member of my family to go to University, and I entered teaching even though a large windfall at 21 meant I didn't have to work for a few years.

I adored the job, and I believed in it, but that job doesn't exist any more, sadly.

In response to the question of why so many still want to be teachers tilliebob said nobody believes how bad it really is until you're in there, trained and doing the job.

Much like motherhood.

I have recently become a school governor and I must say that I was shocked by the sheer volume of paperwork; targets, lesson plans etc.
A friend of mine teaches in a grammar school and told me that they were having trouble recruiting teachers. Furthermore, she told me that many teachers were leaving the profession. Tbh, I don't blame them.

Another ex-teacher here. It made me very ill. I took a big pay cut and am now working in charities education where I am very well regarded. The state education system stopped me teaching as well as I could.

My dh is a school cleaner in a High School. He works from 3.30pm until 7pm. He says the teachers whose rooms he cleans are often still there toiling away, looking exhausted and fed-up. They often chat to him while he cleans, and two in particular sound as if they're on the verge of a breakdown. One lady of about 50 was actually in tears at her desk. He didn't quite know what to say, but he felt very sorry for her.

I'm finishing at Christmas after twenty four years. The pressure has become too much. It's unrelenting. I've witnessed a close friend of mine, a wonderful teacher, have a breakdown. I'm sure she was targeted, probably because she is older and more expensive. Incidentally, there is a disproportionate number of older teachers on capability - I suspect because they're expensive and heads want rid. I've made the decision to go now before I get targeted too. It would destroy me to end my career in Capability. I want to finish now while everything is still ok. Looking forward to reclaiming my life.