Teacher wellbeing days for shopping

[ForAMinuteThere]

Nope - this isn't a bash. I saw an article in the Fail about it and wanted to add some support for the teachers of this world.

I am a non teacher. It looks hard. One day off for shopping is a nice gesture.

I expect mixed responses but personally, I think teachers staying sane and feeling worthy can only be a good thing.

(This isn't my first post, have NC)

Maybe not but most of my teacher friends in different schools work 12 hour days plus weekends, and most of their holidays.

Teaching isn’t an easy job (I know not the only one) but some schools find ways to ease the burden.

We also get a well being day (Christmas shopping day) plus we’re allowed paid time off for our children’s nativities too.

I don’t see over 50 hours a week as being a good work life balance

It probably isn’t but it is the average workload for teachers.

www.teachers.org.uk/pay-pensions-conditions/workload

I have taught in U.K. and rep of Ireland and it is quite different (somewhat similar to @Tunnocks34) schools start and finish at a variety of times depending on the school 8.40-2.20 (my daughters school)
Or 8.50-2.30 or 9.00 to 2.40 bearing in mind the first two years they actually finish an hour earlier!! Teacher rock up somewhere between 8.00 and start time. 15 mins break, half hour lunch and most teachers are gone by 4 at the latest and sometimes you can find them walking out with the children. Unless there is planning meetings (once every two weeks)

Marking isn’t long drawn out...it’s a tick and that’s it!! ✅ Most subjects are done in workbooks so no creating sheets on a weekly basis. No SATS no pressure for those. But that doesn’t mean that irish teachers don’t put in hard work they do, they still take planning home but it doesn’t take over their home life!! We are very respected and love our job so morale is so much better imo.

Also if there is a family occasion e.g. graduation etc things are sorted so teachers can go. I covered for a girl last week who had a wedding 🤷‍♀️ I think the least the U.K. could do is give a shopping day but as the others have said that’s the last thing they actually want 😔

mistressiggi
I do around 8-10 hours a day typically but don't work weekends unless there's a bottleneck.
As teaching goes I'm happy with that as I'm not stressed (mainly) and I feel I'm able to keep on top of things.
At a different school I used to work in the region of 75 hour weeks just to stay afloat and was probably one step away from being signed off or leaving the profession.

know many teachers that work far harder than me and even I work more hours than this. However so does my husband who is not a teacher.
I
I don’t really get why that is relevant to a post discussing a head teacher in a school somewhere giving his staff a wellbeing day.*

I was answering the poster who said that teachers work 60 hours a week for 39 weeks a year. Even I work more hours than that as a teacher and so other teachers definitely do. However before I got accused of saying that teachers work harder than anybody else I wanted to make clear that my non teaching husband works similar if not more hours than me. Sadly many of us have got sucked into a long hours culture

My DH works about the same hours as me, earning double what I do.

I’m part time, 0.7, and he’s full time. So I don’t believe the stories that everyone is doing twelve hour days and being paid tuppence.

Ofsted wellbeing survey interim results:

“Concerns about the well-being of teachers are well founded:

Teaching was one of three professions with the highest reports of stress and depression, in the 2017/2018 Labour Force Survey.
A very large proportion (84%) of the 11,000 respondents to the NASUWT’s Big Survey 2017 identified workload as their number one concern.
Similarly, 65% of the 5,218 respondents to the National Governance Association’s 2018 survey identified teacher workload as a problem in their schools.
A study published by National Foundation for Educational Research on 30 October 2018 warns of ‘shortfalls in the number of trainee teachers and an increasing proportion of teachers leaving the profession’.

76% of teachers report that their job impacts negatively on their mental health and 60% report that it impacts negatively on their physical health.
62% of all respondents believe that teaching is not valued by society.”

educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/2018/11/30/teacher-well-being-and-workload-survey-interim-findings/

My DH's basic pay is much lower than mine but he gets bonuses and so it is very up and down. He probably works slightly longer hours over the year but earns slightly more. However he does not need a degree and has few qualifications🙁

Teachers do NOT finish at just gone 3. Children do

Schools have several days allocated to inset days, or occasional days. Increasingly, schools are saving one for close to Christmas, where teachers can go shopping, or just catch up on everything else, because Christ knows with all the Christmas things that go on in school, and all the paperwork, pressures and planning, an extra day is a bloody godsend.

Teachers do not get enough support from parents. Thank goodness they’re getting it from their schools.

Teachers do not get enough support from parents
I think we have to remember that we often have the support of the vast majority of parents who are quite happy with us getting on, they trust us, they back us when we need their help, they challenge us politely if they think we've made a mistake. They are the friendly ones at parents' evening and the ones who genuinely mean it when they say we can get in touch at any time.
I think of them as the quiet majority.

The loud minority are the ones who battle us at every opportunity, are rude, like to weigh in like experts on all things education, have weird chips on their shoulder and are over invested in teacher conditions (but manage to cherry pick what suits). They are the ones who encourage children to be defiant if they don't like a particular rule. They are the ones who complain that PD days should be out of term time (when they already are), the ones who complain that teachers have a cushy job with too many holidays whilst also complaining that they're exhausted looking after 1 child by day 4 of the holidays.

The loud unreasonable minority end up taking up more air time and more of our time at work.

Very true maisy