Teacher rage

[Mozismyhero]

AIBU to think that as a teacher I should be allowed a holiday and not be sat here, on a sunny Saturday working while my children have fun with Daddy in the park? Or that I shouldn't have had to stay up until midnight every night last week working? Yes, I get 6 weeks off but I want to actually have them off, not spend half the time working and planning for next year. I love the kids I work with but the volume of work I do at home is draining me.

In your shoes I'd just take a month holiday, then spend the last 1-2 weeks and do whatever it was possible to do in that time

I agree ExtraHotte - but I have noticed more intense scrutiny of results and discussions about "Why X only got a C" going on of late.

And usually "X" gets a C because that's the limit of their capability. Not because I sabotaged their chances of getting an A.

Agree that Scotland's system has many good points that should not be eradicated in a rush to be more like the - in some ways - worse English one.

Baba Your advice is sound. For me, personally, I would worry for the first weeks about the work and not be able to enjoy the holiday time fully. I'd prefer to know that the work was getting done and relax much more knowing that.

Also, our SMT works during the first month of the holiday and therefore emails us daily with stuff that "needs" to be read and responded to and sometimes also actioned. I could ignore it but there would be a black mark beside my name, as there has been for other staff, and no doubt it would impact on my bonus. Not perhaps fair, but I'm not brave enough to take a stand against it. Parents also email over the holiday and, I feel, deserve a response; again, this is just my opinion.

Lastly, some of the work we do over the holiday is in a chain, i.e. I do x, then give it to a so he can do y, he lets b know and they can then do z... So I'd be preventing everyone else from doing their bit if I leave it to the end of the holiday (and, the black mark would be made).

Essentially, teachers don't have much autonomy over the way we work and this can cause us to over work or feel anxious. I do appreciate that much of this is down to my own personality and I could do more to ignore it, if I wished and were less scared about upsetting SMT -which expects us to be robots churning out resources 24/7 365 and bullies anyone who isn't- .

This is a real question, not being goady.

I understand that primary school teachers need to differentiate for each class. Also secondary.

But what i don't properly understand is the teachers up thread who talk about having to remark exemplars against the new standard etc etc.

The whole of England has new standards for GCSEs. I get that.

New lesson plans are needed. I get that too. And I understand that teachers want their own bespoke lesson plans tailored to how they teach, their school, and their pupils.

But reworking / marking exemplar material? Is there not a TES consortium for teachers to all do a bit and then share? Surely every school in the country doesn't have to do their own? It seems very inefficient...

"I was a dht and I never worked at home. I made it a rule. It meant I'd work 7.30am (at my computer at work starting work) until 6pm regularly. Sometimes later, sometimes I'd leave as early as 5pm though. I'd work a week solid during the summer holidays, going in to work, then take the rest of the time off. "

I've been teaching for 18 years, and until recently I always had a similar policy: work hard term times, but weekends and holidays were mine.

But that's all changed the past couple of years. Combination of funding cuts (bigger classes = more marking and having more classes to teach per week as well) plus exam board changes has made that impossible.

Oh and mothermay... You cannot simply take a couple of case studies and extrapolate what this means for all teachers. For all we know the teachers you claim do nothing all holidays might be incompetent!
But that's not the point.

If you see my earlier post - I said the one of the major problems I and others have raised is caused by the significant changes. This will affect different teachers in different ways. So for example, if you only taught one major subject (say English) this reform would affect you for two years. Unfortunately, I teach minor subjects so a number of different A levels, so these reforms will affect me for 5 years.

Sympathy from me. Especially as our holidays are unpaid.

I work with children and I've never really understood ,apart from marking why so much time is needed for planning. History and geography don't change that much . Surely if you have week 1-39 planned for last year this can be used again and again , with a slight adaption ??

new

The syllabus changes. And the children change too. One size doesn't fit all.

What OFSTED are looking for changes too.

Teen and Tween,

Yes - some things can be shared. I'm on a number of subject specific Facebook groups and we do swap resources, ideas, plans etc where possible.

However, with regards to exemplar materials, my exam board does not specify exactly what needs to be taught - often it might state ideas, arguments or scholars. (Furthermore, no text book has yet been released), it only states key themes and I might teach ideas that I consider to be important. Another teacher in another school could teach the exact same topic but cover completely different material.

So I could use someone else's exemplar materials, but if it doesn't include the content I've chosen to teach my students, then it's about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

More often than not, it's easier just to do it yourself than adapt something that doesn't fit your needs.

Hope that explains.

It shouldn't take six entire weeks of solid work though.

Some work in the holidays - yes. No time to take your own children to the park - no.

I am inspected by ofsted and have 3 changes of legislation in the last 4 years . Keeping up with it and planning technique have enabled me to be outstanding for 8 yrs .

I just don't get it!

What OFSTED are looking for changes too.

Hell yes! A few years ago I had to write into all my SoW how I was meeting the every child matters agenda, then I had to take out ECM and put in employability. Last year I had to write in how I was meeting the respect agenda. This year, the govt requires me to address how I'm developing my students maths and English skills. English I can do, but maths is when most of my students have better maths skills than I do!

altik Thanks. That makes sense.

History and geography don't change that much

Really? Is time standing still then? Is the planet not continuing to change?

Also, the curriculum changes all the time. Teachers get moved around. Teachers leave the school, new ones arrive. Lesson plans can't just be static.

You have my respect. I wouldn't do your job for any amount of money. Feel sad at the horrible feelings towards teachers on some threads.

Teen & Tween - the govt. also pretty much insists that every teacher in every school does every single thing themselves. I haven't taught in the UK since 2008 and I know it's got worse, but even back then, there would be things we HAD to do - like get sent out examples of work. Each teacher had to grade & annotate according to certain criteria. Then hand in what they'd done to the HOD, then have a meeting to discuss the grades. Then the HOD had to submit the grades, then the school got checked up on etc.

If there are new teachers, or a new exam then there has to be a pre-meeting to go over that stuff even before anyone reads the material and does the grading. A fairly conservative estimate is about 10 hours per teacher to complete the full process. That is for ONE change in syllabus/exam etc, and each teacher could be teaching at KS3, KS4 (maybe 2 subjects) and KS5 (again, possibly 2 subjects).

If a school doesn't do this and document it properly, then (worst case scenario) they could face having ALL of their GCSE and A Level results pulled down a grade, or even be banned from entering students for exams.

That's just one small part of what goes on.

To those saying that we should just try to tell ourselves that that we get 5 weeks of holiday - whenever pay is brought up, teachers are told by gov. that we effectively earn more than we do, but it is pro-rata-ed down because of the extra holidays. If we were paid comparable amounts for the levels of education, training and responsibility that we hold, then no gov. could afford to run schools. So, we're told to accept lower pay because we get more holidays. Then we're told to work through those holidays.

I currently live in the US, but whenever I think about returning to the UK, I say there's no way I'll return to teaching there. And I'm a 'tough cookie' in the teaching world, who often advised trainees to think carefully if they weren't up to the challenge.

What's your job newshoes ?

Try being self-employed. I'm working today. I had to do several hours emergency work for my clients when we were away on holiday last week.

I don't get sick pay or holiday pay.

And in school holidays have to juggle work around ferrying kids about, getting them lunch etc.

newshoes - if you are using the same plans from last year you are not developing as a teacher.

And as someone pointed out up thread all classes are different and have to be planned for in a different way.

I teach two wildly different S3 (Y9 in England I think?) and they are covering the same content but I can't use the same resources for each class as one is ahem challenging.

Think you chose the wrong job.

What do your unions say about all this?

The unions are utterly utterly spineless and crap.

sat here
are you really a teacher? If so, you would be sitting here

I flew home from holiday yesterday and spent today writing powerpoints and planning! I always want my lessons to be the best they can be and as interesting as possible so I revisit every year to make sure they've not gone stale or out of date. I am a one man department and so all the planning/differentiation/marking etc falls to me. I completely love my job and the actual teaching part (I enjoy the planning too, good planning makes a good lesson) but I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with the needless paperwork and number crunching that takes up valuable time where I could be planning good lessons to help students make progress rather than constantly analysing their progress when sometimes they haven't even had time to make any! Rant over, sorry!!

GrumpyOldBag You have my sympathy and respect. My husband's self employed and works SO hard; my hours in teaching are consistently fewer than his.

TeenandTween reworking / marking exemplar material? Is there not a TES consortium for teachers to all do a bit and then share? Surely every school in the country doesn't have to do their own? It seems very inefficient. Yes, it is inefficient. Yours is a valid point.

If the changes had been introduced with a longer lead in time then, yes, we could have shared materials to some extent but at the moment everyone is rushing to be ready for September or as soon as they can.

Also, as other posters have said, individual students and classes need differentiated materials, as do different syllabus content (e.g. there are a whole range of set texts for English Literature IGCSE, AS and A Level for each exam. board and whilst I can probably look at an example essay on Othello and see how it meets the assessment criteria, my Year 10 and 11 students will struggle to use it as a basis for their own work on, say, An Inspector Calls or Death of a Salesman). And each school works differently too, again, as other posters have said, including someone who said that tweaking another teacher's materials can actually take longer than just making one's own.

But I do agree with you that more standardised and shared resources would be no bad thing.