To feel the rage with “teacher tired” posts

[Rainbowsandglitterbullshit]

The season of teachers posting SM messages “no one knows tired like an end of term teacher/TA/dinner lady” is almost upon us.

I want to scream, what about the fuckers who work stupid hours all week and don’t get 6 weeks off in the summer, half term, two weeks Easter, two weeks at Christmas.

I wouldn’t be a teacher for all the tea in China but these people chose their career.

Grrr, actually don’t care if I’m BU.

Please excuse the typos-My screen is not doing as I tell it!

Well teachers themselves don’t seem to know whether they’re paid for school holidays so how is it surprising that the general public don’t know? 3 different answers on this page!

I think that @Pieceofpurplesky must be correct - 30 days of the school holidays are paid in lieu of “normal” annual leave because teachers don’t get the luxury to chose the days they take.

That’s how they do it with zero hours contracts- increase your hourly rate to allow for holiday pay you won’t get.

However it’s not possible that teachers don’t get paid for any annual leave

Its my first year working in a school ive never been so tried and my daughter didnt sleep for 5years

@Youmadorwhat @Bumper1969
That makes at least three of us reading this thread, currently on holidays from our respective schools and delighted to be teaching in Ireland!

@Rainbowsandglitterbullshit Why on earth would you waste time reading SM posts that you know will annoy you? We are twinned with a school in London and have been over to visit them many times. I think their job is as different from ours as could be, and wouldn’t do it for double their pay.
Admittedly, we in Ireland have times that are extremely busy(Christmas/Sacrament classes-Catholic school/end of school year) but teachers in England seem to have to be full on ALL the time. Don’t get me wrong-I love my job and have been doing it for over thirty years. I enjoy the children I teach, have a good rapport with them and their parents, and generally look forward to going to work each day. I also spend time planning and correcting when I get home in the evening. But the planning is something necessary to my work and is done to benefit me and my class, not some external body that seems to have crazy demands. Likewise, my correcting-it benefits me (helps planning and assessment of what I’ve taught), and it benefits my pupils, but I don’t have to adhere to the complicated system that my counterparts in the London school have to.

Their classroom displays would put mine to shame-extremely time consuming and ever changing-whereas my classroom “displays” are usually ones that are there to help the children recall salient facts about topics already taught, apart from a few art displays. I DO put effort into my displays and my classroom looks interesting but those displays stay up once they go up, for the most part, which is a great time-saver.

I’m on my holidays as of yesterday and yes I’m tired-but it’s a “good” tired, because I’ve had a good year and put my best effort in. I don’t post about it on SM because I don’t resent it. I chose to put in a lot of extra effort this past month to make my Sixth Class children’s final month in primary school a celebration of all the years that have gone before, and I don’t regret those late nights one bit.

Teachers in England don’t seem to have the work-life balance we do, and the attrition rate is frightening. Give them a break, and skip past their posts to something that you actually enjoy!

The reason teachers are tired at this time of year is 1) it's the end of the school year 2) in addition to usual planning/teaching ( school trips are exhausting, high stress and involve a lot of paperwork), there is report writing, end of year target reviews/progress reviews etc. 3) Preparation for the following year in regards to discussing new classes, transition, meeting any other professionals etc. So an increase in workload the Summer term.

In regards to pay in holidays of course they are paid the legal requirement for holiday pay ( the usual that everyone gets), the rest of the holidays are unpaid - so approx 4 weeks paid ( as is required by law) the rest unpaid.

It's not actually difficult to understand, it's just people don't want to believe it!

Butterfly isn’t it 30 days? Statutory annual leave is quite a lot less than that

I agree it’s not that hard to understand so why are teachers -who presumably read their own contracts- still insisting they don’t get paid for school holidays? Totally misleading

I remember saying I was very tired when I had twins. I was very tired. I am sure I was less tired than someone with triplets and more tired than someone with a singleton baby.

Totally off topic I know, but when I had my second, I was bemoaning how tired I was (he was very hard work) and she helpfully informed me that there was another mum who had just had triplets plus had an almost two year old like me.

I think she was unsuccessfully trying to give me some perspective.

@Team unicorn

Imagine having 30

People understand teachers are tired but so is everyone who works. It’s no harder and then you get 6 weeks to recover...no other job has that so saying you are more tired strikes a bit of a nerve in the rest of us. No you aren’t more tired than the rest of us you are just as tired.

s. No you aren’t more tired than the rest of us you are just as tired.

And has been said a thousand times-teachers don’t say that.

The OP said that people MIGHT start start saying it.

Not the same thing really.

I agree it’s not that hard to understand so why are teachers -who presumably read their own contracts- still insisting they don’t get paid for school holidays? Totally misleading

The teachers pay and conditions document say we are paid for 195 days. There’s no mention of annual leave.

Teachers being paid for statutory leave in the holidays is the case in Scotland but in England we are paid for 1265 hours of directed time and are required by contract to do as many hours as necessary to effectively discharge our duties.

Annual leave is a fudged issue. In other professions you can accrue annual leave and tack it onto maternity leave. In teaching you can’t, but you can name your return date as the start of a holiday and get paid for the holiday. How long the paid holiday is doesn’t depend on annual leave allowance.

@Likethebattle

Have you taught? And no it is not like any job

@hanvicteacher explain why it’s more exhausting than any other job then. I work 5 days 9-6 plus overtime at weekends. Have strict deadlines, unexpected flies in the ointment that increase stress, clients who demand immediate results, that’s in a good week! I earn less than a teacher, I get 5 weeks holiday and i’m bloody shattered! Yesterday I didn’t eat until 3 as I was so busy!

I am a huge fan of teachers, they flippin brilliant. But yes, millions of us work shit long hours for 23 days holiday a year.

Passthecherrycoke

I can tell you exactly what my contract says and it doesn't include holiday pay.

If you think that you can prove otherwise please do.

I also think it’s worth realising that, when attacks come from all sides, in the way they do in some professions like teaching that are political footballs, and then you hear the people whose children you are helping, making additional negative comments, you really do send a message to teachers of ‘why the f**k am I bothering?’

The most frightening thing is that we are the only thing holding a free, fair system to all regardless of their needs (in principle, at least). Those of you who criticise our attempts don’t really seem to recognise where the alternative leaves your children. An education system run along the lines of the private sector will leave children so vulnerable to market forces. I went into teaching for good reasons but have left for equally good reasons. You really have no idea, some of you what people have sacrificed to hold up the principle of good quality education and the right for all children, regardless of background, to access it.

I think teachers are bloody brilliant and I would say their job is a lot more tiring than alot of jobs - not all, but a lot - and they have my complete support for doing a brilliant job in often difficult circumstances

Okay we get our revenge in September when we can put kids gone back to school post yay hurrah with lots of dancing animals

@Likethebattle

In at 7 to set up class.
Teaching from 8.50 till 20
Playtime duty till 10.40 and then spent till 12.10 teaching
Then spent lunch hour helping a colleague set up for sports day before teaching for 2 hrs again and then a meeting until 4.

I did not eat or go for a wee all day.

Likethebattle
How about the radical idea that lots of different jobs have lots of different pressures so it's pointless saying 'bu t everyone who works is tired' as a silly way to tell people to shut up.

I was tired in my pre teaching career, but it's nothing like the teaching pinch point tiredness I get at certain times because it's a different sort of pressure. I would imagine that's different to the sort of tired nurses and midwives feel after their shifts, which would be a different tired to my friend who seems permanently jet lagged during peak business travel times.

Everyone's allowed to express their tiredness and share silly things joking about their job.

The thing is that a little bit of 'nobody understands x' sharing on social media is read and understood by the vast majority of people as the daft joking that it is (e.g. one of my friends shared one about having 6 month twins) and don't see it as an opportunity to get their knickers in a twist.

Still for teachers to say they are more tired than anyone else is ridiculous, we understand you are tired but so are many of the rest of the population without 6 weeks downtime. Feel free to say you are shattered but don’t make out you are more exhausted than everyone else. Several of us have stressful tiring jobs with long hours and long commutes too.

Thank you @Vulpine. And I completely agree, there is a tier of jobs that equally push people beyond their limits (NHS, for a start, carers on min wage, firefighters, etc) for little other than the awareness that these are essential services that enable society to function as it does. I know when I go to my next job, that I will meet people, who will, when they find out I am an ex teacher, unleash their anger at something that happened to them at school, or their child.

I don’t think we should get into explaining what is tiring about our particular jobs as that just plays into the assessment of the goady fucker OP

@Likethebattle

So how did my day compare ?

@gloomyfriday yes you win!

I think every job seems to have more red tape than ever before and I am guessing when it involves kids it's worse than ever.

I helped on a school trip on Thursday with reception class. Never again!