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.

Like many others I have had other jobs. I trained at 30 to be a teacher and have been doing it now for 20 years. In my previous career I would sometimes work 24/7 as it was project based (good old century turning). It was highly pressured, exhausting and relied on results. I did that for 6 years. I always wanted to teach. I also did other jobs in between.

Teaching is exhausting in a totally different way. Until I did it I didn't believe it. It is intense like no other job I have done - I know other jobs are exhausting but it is the mental drain of teaching. I am teacher, mother, social worker, referee, advisor, agony aunt ... I spend time listening to stories of lives I could not imagine. I listen when kids tell me about their nan with dementia or their mum who has stage 4 breast cancer. At times kids tell me about the abuse they suffer. Pregnancy scares. Rape. I have dealt with it all - as a classroom teacher. Mental health issues, self harm, suicide attempts are regular occurrences.

The teaching side is only a quarter of the job. When I worked in an office I could walk away from my desk in frustration for five minutes. In teaching you can't do that. You can be screamed at, called a bitch and told to fuck off. I have had a table thrown at me and been pushed. But you have to carry on being calm until the situation is diffused. I am 5'1 and have split fights between giant year 11s. The list is endless.

But ... the majority won't listen because they are experts. After all they went to school. They have kids at school. And the old favourite 'I know lots of teachers'.

No teacher says that there job is worse/harder/more exhausting BUT other jobs don't get the rage and the stick that teaching does. Sadly this attitude gets passed down to pupils and it makes a huge difference.
Teachers are leaving in droves from a job most of them used to love. I am glad my son is near the end of his schooling and not the beginning because unless it is fixed it is not going to be pretty. Support teachers whilst you still have them!

Lola, I brought up my ancient experience by way of explaining why the level of oversight teachers are now under came in. Sorry for not explaining myself very well.

What I mean is that I can see that for a capable graduate this would be off putting and I get that - I would hate to be nitpicked the way teachers are.

But at the same time I am old enough to remember what schools were like before the dreaded national curriculum and there were plenty of people in them who were just not very good.

I dunno. Seems to me that decent graduates are put off by the codification of professional skills, whereas the duffers will go for it labouring under the misapprehension that teaching is a job for graduates who can't do anything else, bolstered by the decades of people doing it (like the ex army folk who taught my parents and the ones marking time who taught me) who really shouldn't have done.

I also have a lot of friends who would say 'one of my friends is a teacher and she's not over-worked and knackered'

And they would believe this because I don't moan about it - and I have better things to talk about with my non-teaching friends than my job!

So the 'I have lots of friends who are teachers' thing provides absolutely no evidence at all that you know what they spend their days juggling.

In my school it has to be given up if you go part time. No promoted posts for part timers
Noble, that has to be sex discrimination. Has it been challenged?

Then Pieceofpurplesky one of us is wrong.

As you have found the information within it pages you should be able to produce the evidence required to change my mind.

Threesoups
I see what you mean now you've clarified. You wouldn't believe how many people think going to school makes them an expert I have managed people like you described, taught in 80s, have a set way of doing things even if it's not effective, they don't see why they should do x y z. It's infuriating, but people with that attitude are the minority now I think (and I should clarify that not all staff from the 80s are like that).

The national curriculum is neither here nor there to me in terms of people leaving. I think it was right to assess outcomes and change to a measure that tracks all children not just A*-C headline, but because each phase has it's own pressures it becomes more and more ridiculous the further up it goes until you have students who can't write simple paragraphs with target grades of 7s.

The biggest factor I would say is pointless workload driven by Ofsted myths, poor leadership by those 3 minutes out of teacher training, and behaviour. Behaviour especially because there's not enough leaders who will stand up to confrontational parents who think a break detention for ignoring instructions is some kind of human rights abuse.

I think there are decent graduates who go into teaching each year, but not in the numbers to compensate for the numbers who are leaving. It would be fine if people were staying, but they're not.

As some previous posters have said, it's the never ending requirement to be "on" all the time which makes teaching particularly tough alongside some other jobs.

I remember going into work the day after I split up with my long term partner. I was heartbroken, worried about where I was going to live and quite down.
Didn't matter though. I taught over 150 children that day and took an extra curricular class duringmy lunch break with no time to go to the loo or excuse myself if I was becoming emotional or over-tired. Your needs as a human being almost stop and you are simply there for the students. The responsibility is huge and come the end of the day you are so exhausted by performing all day.

That's not even adding the huge class sizes, lack of training and support needed for the myriad of additional support needs in any one class, never mind dealing with hormonal and emotional teenagers while trying to get them some sort of qualification because you know it will make their future easier in the long run.

The summer holidays are a welcome relief to gather reserves so you can finally be yourself for a while and spend time with your own family. As a teacher I miss my own kids sports days, their school trips and often their assemblies because I can't get out of work.

So in summary. YABVU. It's maybe a bit crass to post on social media that teachers are the most tired but give them a break and allow their excitement to be off for a while.

CanILeavenowplease

You have not one clue. It has been some time since teacher’s pay went up automatically. Lots of excellent teachers unable to get past M6. We are beholden to back of a fag packet statistics that tell us what are results should be and woe betide we don’t make them.

Enlighten me then, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that if performance is satisfactory teachers progress up the pay scale annually.

Mistressiggi

ashmts just to give some context, Scottish teachers have taken an over 20% cut in their income since austerity came in (yeah, cause we caused that didn’t we?) and have this years been awarded a 13% pay increase over three years (ie 3% one year, 7 the next, and then 3) You can’t add increases together like that tbh. This is a very welcome increase but still leaves us quite far behind where we’d be if the pay freeze had never happened. A lot of employees are in this boat and I have sympathy for them all. I have no sympathy for the fuckers who caused it in the first place.

Agreed, and NHS are in a similar boat. We fought hard for a '9% pay rise' which is similar in that it's 3% for three years. Would be very happy with 3/7/3 tbh.

Scottish teachers (after recent pay award) begin on 26 thousand and end on 40 thousand. There they will almost all stay as opportunities for promoted posts are now few and far between. There are no TLRs or extra remuneration other than being a head of faculty etc.

And 40k is a decent salary for public sector IMO. Compare that to other public sector workers. Most nurses for example would never get near 40k. It's comparing apples and oranges tbf, it's not a competition and there are pros and cons in all jobs. (I'm not having a go at you, it's just that you replied to me directly.)

I was under the impression that if performance is satisfactory teachers progress up the pay scale annually.

Wrong. Especially in this era of restricted school budgets.

They can always find a reason not to progress you.

The amount of teachers on here that are being taken for an absolute ride is RIDICULOUS!! There is not a hope in hell I would (or be expected to) give up my only chance of having a cup of tea, a bite to eat and a TOILET BREAK. Even on our days to do yard duty we set the class up with handwriting and go to the toilet and have a cuppa at our desk!! Why because we are HUMAN!! Dear god the UK really knows how to push a teacher to the limits! And we do it for at least 36k as that is the starting wage here. I have colleagues with no extra responsibilities who are on 60k+

I don't understand why teachers are saying they don't get paid for the holidays (not trying to be goady) Do you not just get a salary for the year and divide it by 12 like everyone else? Is it the case that you don't actually get a 'pay packet' as such those weeks when you are off, you only get paid the rest of the year? ie you don't get paid in the month of July say?

Ashmts do remember though that the 40,000 salary has been in place for precisely 3 months!
I do find it interesting how nurses are often seen as the comparator job for teachers instead of, say, accountants or solicitors.

Cinammoncake

Our salary is for 195 days and because it is salaried, we get a monthly payment 12 months of the year. If we were paid for the holidays as well, believe me, we would earn a hell of a lot more, as the poster above states they get in their country.

This might be off topic... but......I really don’t understand the ‘but we don’t get paid for the holidays’ quote that appears in all of these threads. Surely if the annual rate is £25k it’s irrelevant as to whether this is phased evenly between 12 months or paid higher amounts for say 10months with 2 unpaid. Now I realise the annual rate would be higher if the 10month rate was paid for 12 but comparing the stated annual rate with anyone else’s annual rate is no different..... or am I missing something?

@BoneyBackJefferson then what I’m confused about is when do YOU think your legally required, statutory protected, annual leave is taken?

Because it sounds like you think you don’t get any? Surely if you genuinely thought that you’d sue your local Authority for yours and every other local teachers statutory leave since time began?

Yes, you are missing something surreygoldfish, sorry. In teachers’ terms and conditions, there is not reference to paid holiday entitlement that most jobs get.

We’re not paid FOR the holidays but our pay is divided into 12 chunks and paid monthly. We're one of the only jobs WITHOUT paid holiday entitlement!!

It’s mostly because teachers can take annual leave when they want. A good example of this is when mothers go back to work a little later than scheduled because they accrue Annual Leave and can use it. Teachers cannot accrue Annual Leave in this way because it is not part of our pay.

*can’t not can, sorry

Corrrrr I feel teacher tired at the moment. But then again I'm not a lawyer or doctor so I don't know what that kind of tiredness feels like.
Anyway get outside and go enjoy the sunshine

@surreygoldfish you're not really. The ones that are missing something are the people that go on and on about teachers getting paid holidays as some kind of extra,unearned bonus. They're not,the money they get is the money they worked for throughout the year, just spread over 12 months rather than just working months.

You have an allowance of 190 apples a year . Because I know it's good for you to have apples daily, I cut them in half so you get half an apple every day. At the end of the year you'd still have eaten only 190 apples even if you ate some every single day.(I know numbers don't add up but rounded it because I'm lazy and hot).

Thunder and lightening here in Scotland!

MsRabbitRocks It’s not legal for you to be neither paid for, or entitled to take, statutory annual leave

SURELY you know this. This is U.K.
Law, there aren’t exempt jobs.

@YourSarcasmIsDripping. Thank you.... exactly my thinking. The design of the contract is just semantics.....

Our terms and conditions just state that annual leave coincides with school and public holidays. No numbers are put to it for permanent teachers.

Yes however a lot of people seem to think teachers get paid for not working. They already earned that money.

Why does OP have folk on her SM she doesn't like?