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.

The warm, shit wine is legendary. (And drunk in disproportionately great quantitly)

We get one glass!

My sister is a teacher and she moans about this too. People who don't know teachers personally think they have it really easy. People don't understand the volume of work you do in your own time. Unpaid! She goes to work at 7pm and comes home at 5. She spends some time with dc's and then it's lesson planning and marking etc till about 10pm! During the holidays in may she spent an unpaid 4 day residential with year the 9s instead of spending it with her own dc's. She also had to pay for childcare during this time.
We both wanted to be teachers when we were at university. I chose a different career path after my first year and she stuck with teaching. She often wishes shed done the same when she had the chance. But now she's trapped and doesn't know how she can leave teaching.

Back to your op. She has a week off at the start if the summer holidays then works solid for the next 3 weeks then she has 2 weeks off at the end.

Curious, how come whenever someone starts a support thread for work, there's mostly lots of sympathy (always a few suck it up posters, but the majority) but if it's a teacher having a vent there are quite a few posters who say 'suck it up' and compare to other jobs, sometimes quite rudely.

So rambling aside, why do people do all the comparing?

OP has disappeared. To the park with her family, I hope.

I am also a teacher. I work around 60 hours a week term time and take three full weeks off in the summer and at least a week at Christmas, as well as having the flexibility that the other 8 or so weeks of holiday provide. I don't have to pay for holiday care for my daughter. I consider myself fairly well paid, certainly on the higher end of the spectrum of people my age that I know. Term time weeks are intense, stressful and holiday weeks are needed but I don't resent planning etc in the holidays. Teaching isn't easy but nor are other jobs. If you need a break, take one. The best thing I have done is learn to actively relax and switch off. The work will always be there!

I'm another clean breaker once the summer holidays arrive. 2-3 weeks solid off then get back to it in the evenings after the DC are in bed.

I'm also doing distance learning training in a specific learning difficulty as I know I have a young lad coming into our unit next year with it.

And then redundancy awaits in January. PRUs are no longer needed in our area apparently.

Thanks lockedout, I did have a day out today! I've got loads done over the last week and yesterday and have just a few bits left so can relax a bit now.

Felt so sorry for myself yesterday. Need to count my blessings a bit more. Thanks to all who offered support.

Today is the first time in 12 years that I have worked in August. It has been a balancing act working out childcare for the 6 weeks, but I still don't regret leaving teaching.

I've got a 6 and a 3 year old to look after all holidays so I wouldn't be able to spend long days working even if I wanted to.

However, I plan to do pretty much bog all school work for the next few weeks. I'll need to do a few hours here and there, setting up my planner etc.

I work from 8 till 11/12 most nights in term time (and I'm part time 0.6) which is pretty awful, so if I had to work in the holidays too I'd just quit. The holidays are when I get to be a human.

Really, Grundys ? That is awful.

Will those children have to stay in mainstream education then? Or have tutors?

Not a teacher anymore thank fuck.
And the more I see of old colleagues and the more I speak to parents and the more I see of my children's school the more I thank all that is holy that I got the fuck out of dodge.
OP. Stop. Put down the pen/keyboard/whatever and go to the park. Seriously. Go to the park. Put your children, health and wellbeing first. Teaching has become the sort of job where the 'things to do' pile will never get smaller.

We are too expensive for ms schools to buy a place with us (that'll be the academic and therapeutic interventions and small group teaching we give them).

They say they'll be able to provide what we do in house at a lower price. As a teacher I'll be interested to see how it goes. As a parent whose children attend local state schools, I'm horrified.

Who is 'they'? If there were the training and resources to keep these kids in ms then they would be in ms, not sent to a PRU. PRUs are needed because ms schools can't cope.

'They' are the team who manage us: governors, consultants, staff from the academy trust and, amongst others, the hts of those schools.

We will exist but only for a very very few children and in a much reduced form. Hence the swathe of redundancies.

I've worked in las where the model they are proposing has been employed and the results (and I mean that in the widest sense) for the excluded were not great. But it saves a lot of money.

I've just resigned and am having a great time! It hangs over you in a way that's hard to describe, never ending not enough and settling on working hours and hours mainly to wing it. I've had a number of other jobs and switching off was far easier.

(and no I wasn't failing, I was outstanding year on year. And yes, I love working with children and teaching)

lemondrizzle- 7-5 is better than what I was doing!!! More 7-6.30 out the door plus governors meetings, plays, parents eve, fetes, phonics eve, new teacher eve, maths eve, new start to school eve, first steps eve, yr 6 party, mothers day prep, pta meetings, sub commitee governor meetings, late nights for ofsted/ dioscean inspection/ sen prep for meetings..... 1/2 a week it was hitting, sometimes in at 10