To be mildly irritated by most tiring job ever?

[brasty]

A friend who is a teacher has been saying how exhausted she is, and that only other teachers would understand. She is not joking. AIBU to be mildly irritated by this? Yes teachers do a hard job, but there are other jobs that are also exhausting.

I knew plenty of people from my profession who left to retrain as teachers. Found is less stressful and better holidays.

I have never known a single teacher retrain for my profession. They probably wouldnt pass the professional exams.

My husband will be up at 3.30am to fly to Germany the first of his 5, 15 hour days he has not had a day off in 6 months, this is the reality of senior management jobs in the real world, I have a stressful Job 2 kids and neither of us ever complain as we appreciate how lucky we are, I'am related to a teacher he complains constantly but is home 3x a week by 4.30 pm, let's all agree to disagree.

UserWhatever

So what do you do then?

They probably wouldnt pass the professional exams.

They probably are sanctimonious enough.

Jussa1347
My husband will be up at 3.30am to fly to Germany the first of his 5, 15 hour days he has not had a day off in 6 months, this is the reality of senior management jobs in the real world,

Its not the reality of the "real world" its part of what your DH does as senior management. plenty of senior management don't.

Jussa I suspect your DH earns several times the average teachers salary though.

SIL constantly complains that (I and other) teachers have long holidays. She and DB think I have it easy. She had to prepare and deliver a half hour presentation for new recruits recently and spent several days preparing for it and told me it had been absolutely exhausting. She shut her silly mouth quickly when I reminded her that I did on average 4 hour long presentations a day...

Someone needs to tell MrsC that her brother is in fact a gigolo.

Boundaries my personal experience of being a pupil in classes of 40+ all-ability children from exclusively working class backgrounds.

Have you seen any of those tv shows where present-day pupils are given a taster of school discipline before the 1970s? They aren't fiction. I can only see benefits for teachers and pupils in dialling down the mayhem.

I have never known a single teacher retrain for my profession. They probably wouldnt pass the professional exams.

How rude.

He does science and maths secondary and A level (school is 11-18), he is teaching, and he's not the only teacher I know. I have friends and ex collegues who left the profession I'm in to teach and without a doubt they are happier and less stressed now. Sure they don't all say it's a walk in the park, but they appear more fulfilled in their current role , which in itself must leave you feeling less stressed, surely?! If it doesn't they do a good impression of making it appear so. Also, he's not the only member of my family to be a teacher (but only one of my siblings). He is super content with his life. He feels like he makes a difference and that his vocation is worthwhile and he is not remotely stressed. I'm sure there are lots of stressed teachers, but the ones I know aren't.

To be fair elodie2000 you can't really compare a one off presentation to teaching. I find presentations terrifying and preparing for them really takes a long time. Presumably since you spend a lot of time doing presentation toe work you don't have that fear and lack of confidence that your sil probably had to prepare to overcome.

Anyway I find competitive exhaustiveness pointless. No one has done all the jobs so can only speak from their own experience. I'm a mental health nurse working in forensics. I have teacher friends, I couldn't do what they do in the same way they say they couldn't do what I do. I think we all get exhausted in different ways.

jussa the difference is that if he said he was worn out he would (quite rightly) get some sympathy. The only people who might moan about him/his line of work would be the people directly involved. You don't constantly see threads on here about senior managers.

Flipper I would suggest that simply observing the work of a teacher shows you how busy or otherwise they are, but it doesn't mean you experience the responsibility they feel being in charge of the class, pressures from parents or above etc. And the best teachers probably make it look easy.

user1471545174

If schools did revert to pre 1970s schooling how long do you think it would be before the first parent came in to complain or sued a school for assaulting their child?

If we take your example further, all of the badly behaved children would be removed as would all of the children with any form of learning difficulty or any form of SEND.

The top 20% of pupils would be in a grammar school, and those with little or no academic ability would either leave at 14 (to do exactly what is uncertain) or stay on till 16 at a technology school or possibly do a lower end exam.

then there is the complete non-accountability of schooling and teachers pre-1988.

It isn't as simple as lining desks up and threatening children with the cane.

user is making a 'hilarious' joke.

A TA doesn't merely 'observe' a teacher for goodness sakes !! I've had to teach the class on numerous occasions. Yes, the teacher provides his plans but I'm expected to jump in (on much less pay I might add) to take the class. Still nowhere near as tiring or stressful as looking after 28 patients/relatives/Consultants/physios/etc!!
Just my humble opinion

Fruit Cider There are no guidelines covering non-directed time. You are just expected to get things done that need to be done, including marking, planning, assessments and data and all the accompanying paperwork,making programmes for the Christmas play etc etc. You just get it's done. You can't say, "well I've done my 8.4 hours directed time so I'll just leave the rest of the books unmarked". I don't feel like I ever have everything completed. There's always an extra resource that I could make that would be useful, or I could spend time making my geography lesson more exciting or improving a display. But that way madness lies, so mostly you learn to prioritise the essentials and fit the other bits in whenever possible. It took me a couple of years to learn that though!

It is no more rude than you saying your job is incomparable in terms of stress to everyone else's.

UserWhatever
It is no more rude than you saying your job is incomparable in terms of stress to everyone else's.

The only people saying that are those saying that teachers say that.

You still haven't said what your job is.

User- it is far ruder.

Boney, if you'd read my previous post, it excluded the possibility of corporal punishment and that is not how discipline was maintained in any event. So no parents would need to storm in and no children would be threatened with the cane.

There was a different attitude towards children and polite behaviour was expected from them and was normally achieved without much coercion.

I'm not purporting to address every issue on the educational and behavioural bell curve, only teachers' exhaustion. Crowd control should not be part of the job, it's just become the norm over time. It doesn't have to be that way.

user1471545174

So how do you expect the major shift in attitudes from parents and pupils to the same attitudes as back in the good old days?

As teachers we work long hours, but those of the '9-3pm' opinion don't see it.

We are required (in state schools) to be available to work 195 days a week, 190 of which should be teaching days. 1265 hours a year are 'directed time' which is usually worked out to be 32.5 hours a week. However, our terms of employment also require us to work any extra hours that are reasonable to effectively discharge our professional duties.

But the 32.5 are the hours that are recognised in terms of pay.
And the times that children are in school are the times that non teachers have in their heads as our core hours of employment.

Ha ha noble giraffe. I'm pretty sure he's not a sex worker! But thanks for the giggle.

Here's a little clue that there might be something wrong with a job: despite it being a job that has obvious inherent value, a high proportion of people doing it are complaining about it, it is proving impossible to find enough people willing to train to do it, increasing numbers of people already doing it are choosing to leave, and expectations as to results are not being met (I seem to remember, for example, that the original governmental expectation was for 85% of children in the country to meet age related expectations in the new ks2 tests in 2016, whereas the reality was 55% - a clear sign of ludicrous targets, confused and confusing communication to teachers of expectations, low morale and all sorts of other undesirable factors that are highly likely to make the career seem unappealing).