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.

Once I needed a blood test and the phlebotomist laid into me about my working hours as a teacher. "8-3!" and when I said "Well, I have to do preparation, marking etc on top..." she goes "Hah, yeah! Preparation(!)"

You know the l'esprit de l'escalier effect? It only struck me until I'd left that I should have claimed all her working hours were when the test clinic was open and didn't include any of the actual other shit she needed to do. But too late!

I love how non-teachers can get it into their heads that 'preparation' just means 'thinking about what topic to talk about' and maybe print out a couple of worksheets/find the relevant page of the textbook because that's how they were taught.

Each lesson takes place on a cycle. To be able to teach you need to plan. To be able to plan you need to assess. To be able to assess you need to teach. Reading, assessing and commenting on work takes hours. Calling both planning and assessment “preparation” means that some people get the idea that preparation is simply deciding what you are going to teach. Thinking “I’ll do Ohm’s Law” takes less than a minute. No wonder everyone thinks we do not need much time outside of teaching.

Even though I reproduce topics and lesson ideas, I have never entirely replicated a lesson plan. A class is not a homogenous mass waiting for me to drop some truth bombs. A class is a group of individuals. Some of them have problems learning new things, some of them have already learned what you intend to teach or will learn it straight away. Everyone needs to get something out of the lesson.

Preparation includes designing activities that will get your objectives over to where your students are right now. It includes figuring out how to assess them that lesson to see if they got it. It includes going back over old learning to keep memories strong.

Not that writing this will change minds, people who believe teachers are lazy scumbags refuse to listen to teachers.

Yabu. Teaching seems to drain you like no other job. I am not one - could definitely not hack it - but my family are. Dh and I lawyers however bad it gets don't think could be tougher than teaching day in day out. My father was a broken man after 35 years of it and he was rated "inspirational" and we are often accosted by misty eyed former pupils when out and about with him.

My DH is a teacher. It is not the most exhausting job he has ever done. He was much more tired, stressed and worked longer hours when he worked in the oil industry. However, I think he probably has the right personality for teaching - he is easy going and thick skinned. When I hear some teachers bleat it sounds like they really aren't cut out for the job - I think it is probably exhausting if you are in the wrong profession.

Personally I think carers have the hardest job, working with sick needy often ungrateful people, physically demanding, shit wages and shocking hours. DH's pay isn't great but it is OK and he gets long holidays, pension etc. Carers have it far tougher (there are a number of carers at his school, they sometines have to use physical restraint, are very skilled and are paid far far less then him)..

Nobody on this thread has said teaching isn't a hard job. I'm sure it is. I know I couldn't do it.

What people have said is that they get a bit fed up of hearing how hard it is.

And the response from teachers is to tell us all again how hard it is.

bitoutofpractice Some posters have said it's not a hard job. And one poster asked what I do in a day so I outlined it. I wouldn't have done so had I not been asked. It's not anybody else's fault that I became a teacher. I don't expect sympathy except from my nearest and dearest when I get called a fucking bitch or told to fucking kill myself (I love my school )

I'm a teacher- I teach mosaic making skills and art to people aged 8 to 100, including young people excluded from school and older people with dementia. I love my job. Teaching involves planning workshops which will take into account different learning speeds and styles and different physical abilities (some of the people I teach are arthritic, several are hearing and or sight impaired). I have been doing this work for several years. Preparing and planning take up a lot of thought and time- the workshops are the tip of an iceberg! Before each carefully planned workshop I feel a flutter of nerves and excitement- because each time is different, each individual student is different each time. Because each workshop involves stepping into the unknown. I send a prayer up each time, that I will have what it takes to ensure that everyone gets something out of the workshop and that no-one cuts themselves or eats the adhesive (it almost happened once to one of my frail older students).

Having worked previously in offices, in kitchens, in any number of roles in my life, I do think that working directly with people, when you really care for them, is uniquely satisfying. And uniquely exhausting. For all of the above reasons.

I've just gone back to a real job after spending 8 years teaching in different scenarios. My new colleagues keep saying they don't want to overload me. I am currently going through 900 lines of data and checking it is correct and filling gaps. I am being paid 3 times as much as I was.

Overloaded - I can't stop laughing! I used to run an alternative provision business, teaching kids who could not be placed with any other provider. We planned every activity to within an inch of it's life with breakouts and extensions and fully differentiated to avoid boredom which may result in a kickoff. We reported religiously, we behaviour managed and had to know exactly what was going on on every inch of site. The two of us were Directors, accountants, quality controls, teachers , safeguarders, dealing with every aspect from set up, sales, payroll, developing curriculum, developing resources, setting up the day, cooking and teaching two at a time how to make the group lunches, pack down, review, redesign for the next day with that day's issues in mind - it was relentless.

I may well go back to it at one point, but right now is not the time.

Try being a nurse and working 12 hour shifts with no breaks! That's exhausting! Love my job though

I think the teachers who complain are those who went into teaching because they believed everyone else who said it would be an easy job with loads of holidays
More fool them for not doing proper research

Very few nurses are on MN moaning about how hard their job is.

Maybe not, but are there many posts on here from people saying nurses are lazy, or they didn't do x, y or z etc etc

There have been some really unpleasant posts about teachers on here lately.

I think perhaps expectations on teachers have changed in the past 20 years. I went to a pretty bad school, but my majority of my teachers did not work hard, did not do marking, did not plan lessons.

Maths - we'd work our way individually through a textbookat our own pace. Every few lessons the teacher would demonstrate something from the book to the class, otherwise, you just read the book, and if stuck asked the teacher for an explanation. Books were checked every couple of months (hed mark in lesson when we were doing our books)

There was more planning insome subjects - science, geography stand out, but even then it was mostly just working our way through books. one maths class did crosstitch rather than lessons!!

History- blackadder was out on, we could watch it if we wanted, or equally quietly chat.

English - usually reading through a book as a class or an ongoing project. I used to nap in English lessons (Gcse year)

French - would just do excercises from a textbook and swap with classmates to mark, so the teacher didn't have to.

I'd assume things have changed a lot since then (I hope they have), but teachers that I know go out every single evening, go out weekends etc work less than a 40 hour week, and still do well at their job.

Like any job, it can expand to fill the time available, but that isn't necessarily better.

I'm an NQT.

In work at 730, an hour's planning/prep/marking/tidying/admin for the day. Teach a full day- if I have a free (I get 4 a week) it is spent on more work. Every minute filled, there is always a ton to do, most of it to be done within six hours or else). Supposed to be a break for 15m in the morning but that is spent clearing up the mess from the previous lessons and setting up for the next two.
Lunch is 40m but again you can knock off 15min for general tidying up/prep, and if a kid needs help (pastoral/academic/behaviour) you can't tell them to go away while you eat. So effectively you might count on 15min peace on a good day. At least three of my department don't eat lunch as a rule because they just find it easier not to.

School finishes at 3, after which you can expect to have a meeting for on reason or another (some go on til 5, usually it's more like an hour) or a detention- no you can't just ignore the naughty kid, they have to be worked with or whatever problem they have wont change.

More planning/marking/admin/tidying/prep ready for the next day.

I make it a rule to try to leave by 5, so as to be able to see my kids for bedtime. Yesterday it was 6 because I want to go out on Monday night for a staff night out (my first since August).

Depending on how the day has gone I usually do a bit at home once the kids are asleep. If a kid kicks off, for example, that's an hour taken up with dealing with them, recording what's happened for posterity, phoning their parents.....which puts us behind on prep for the next day's plans.

I doubt I'll be doing it next year.

Lots of jobs are tiring, relentless and poorly paid. If those jobs are essential to smooth running and success of a nation then they should be adapted to be more flexible and better paid in order to attract and retain the best people to do them. Nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers etc. need to be the best they can be as we all rely onto them to do a good job, sometimes as individuals but always as a society. Working people to the bone for a relatively poor salary is not going to bring the best out of them or their charges. A race to the bottom is one that I don't particularly want to win.

Bluesky You're a perfect example of what frustrates teachers - 'I went to school so I know what teachers do!'. Your school doesn't just sound bad, it sounds appalling, but I also think your memory is playing some tricks on you. Sorry but I just don't believe that you watched Blackadder in every single history lesson or that in French you 'just did exercises from a textbook' (did every single person in your year fail their oral exam, then?).

I'm not a teacher but my husband is. He would never say he has the hardest job in the world: he does work hard, and his job has both good and bad bits. 'Hard' is such a subjective thing, anyway. He used to be a management consultant before he was a teacher, and he found that harder not because of the hours or the stress, but because doing something he found so pointless surrounded by people he loathed drove him into a pretty deep depression.

i get annoyed by comments like this to from family / friends who are teachers. Anyone would think they have the monopoly on tough jobs - hello, real world here. Over the years I have had to work evenings, travel away from home, deal with distressing situations but not a peep out of any of them. But the amount of times I have had to listen to their complaints ... grrr

History- blackadder was out on, we could watch it if we wanted, or equally quietly chat.

Bollocks. I don't believe you! Every history lesson every week for 5 years?!

ANYONE who continually acts the martyr about their job and how EXHAUSTED they are bores the shit out of me.
Teachers do not have it the worst. They have every right to grumble, same as everyone else, though. It's when it's continual, which I have noticed to be specific to nurses and teachers tbh, along with telling everyone they don't know how easy they have it that gets me.
I've a friend who is a teacher. Yes she works hard and yes it must be exhausting but piss off with the 'oh you don't even KNOW tired til you're a teacher!'. Really cause I have a syndrome that comes with the joy that is chronic fatigue and I work around 47 hours a week. So I do know tired, it's just different.

I have never said my job is harder than anyone else's. I don't think that.

However, when someone says to me that I have it really easy-I will point out that, no, actually I don't think I do. That's generally when this sort of 'moaning' begins.

By the way, I agree that most of the 'moaning' from teachers is defensive because they are so often told that they 'have it easy'. As someone with a job that people consider even easier - I'm an academic - I've given up on trying to tell people what makes my job quite hard, stressful and long hours. Now when they tell me how easy my life is I smile and say 'I knoooow! Aren't I lucky!'. I find it pisses them off enormously and satisfyingly, and they're never people whose opinions I care about anyway.

Teaching is a piece of piss with long holidays. Please all become teachers, especially maths or science.

Because, inexplicably given how easy it is, schools are finding it very difficult to recruit teachers as they are leaving in droves.

But hey, at least they won't be able to moan any more. Just don't ask who is teaching your kids instead because you won't like the answer.

Redlocks28
I dropped it in year 9, and sometimes we worked our own way through textbooks, but there really was no actual teaching.

MargaretCavendish, funny you should say about everyone falling, because that is pretty much what happened. 5% of students got c or above in english or maths. 12% 5 a-c overall.

I did fine, went to college, uni, postgrad etc, but it wasnt because of the teachers. It was because in yr10 and yr11, I obtained the gcse syllabus in each subject myself, and then systematically taught myself in the library each night until 6pm

Things have changed, but for many of us, when we remember teachers, we don't remember hard workers.

Completely aside from that though, as I said, I know a fair amount of teachers now, and they simply don't do the hours that many speak of here. If they did, my friends wouldn't be able to have social activities planned for every evening of the week!!

I know someone teaching who is on the train at 6.30 and sometimes doesn't get home until 9 pm! Plus all the preparation. She's in her fifties and looks fit to drop.

I have sympathy for all people in all tiring jobs and if having a good moan helps people escape depressions and breakdowns, I'm all for letting them vent.

In fact if anyone tells me their problems now, I ask them if the just need a good moan or do they want suggestions on how to cope, how to improve things etc.

Sometimes moaning is all you can do!

I was I worked where your friends do Blueskyrain! Part of my problem is my school but because teachers of my subject have been so hard to recruit, schools have now dropped it at GCSE so now I'm up shit creek with nowhere to go!

Yy Noble, my department is currently staffed by 2 full time specialists, 1 part time and 4 long term supply teachers who don't actually speak the languages needed so there is a class of AS students with no teacher.

I do agree though that some of my views on teaching is influenced by going to a horrific school.

Not entirely though because friends and family who are teachers. Thankfully standards seem to have improved. I wouldn't wish my old school on my worst enemy.

EverythingEverywhere1234
ANYONE who continually acts the martyr about their job and how EXHAUSTED they are bores the shit out of me.

ANYONE who continually whines about someone else's job when they know NOTHING about it bores the shit out of me.