As I have said in previous post, teaching is my third career and by far has me the most shattered. I see a lot of comments on here about the misconceptions of time spent so thought I would do a typical day list.
7:20am arrive in work. Lessons for all plans need to be in place. Our school expect us to write mini reports on the lesson plan and our expected outcome. We have 6 lessons a day
8am: meeting with team to ensure we are all teaching at the same level. Twins are separated so we must remain consistent.
8:30 - 11am deliver classes, constantly encouraging the group of children who need 1-1 help and support but are not getting it.
11am breaktime for children. Phone parents who have given their year 4 children mobiles and it has all kicked off on chat and they want to know how I am going to handle it.
11:20-12:15 deliver lessons
12:15 - 12:30 sit with the children who have had break removed due to poor behaviour as that is our schools way of dealing with behaviour management.
12:30-1pm scoff down lunch
1-3:15pm deliver lessons.
3:30 - 4:30 either delivering after school club or phoning parents.
4:30 - 6pm the marking begins. A tick is no longer acceptable. We have to write comments and measure their progress according to the learning objective. If we have a staff meeting then I have to arrive an hour earlier to get the work done in the morning.
6pm: I try to leave to get home to see the children. Once they are in bed I often work on all of the other bits not mentioned.
Other things add significantly to this list including reports or display changes. Often we will have meetings about individual children which eats into marking and so without fail, I always have to catch up at weekends. At this stage, I wouldn’t be able to take on more responsibility. Most of my older colleagues feel the same which explains why our SLT are all under 27 and the new acting head was doing his teacher training 5 years ago.
But despite all of this, it’s not what makes me tired. The tiredness comes from teaching a class where 6 of the 30 have significant learning barriers, 5 are just lazy and disruptive and 5 are plain rude and disrespectful. The SLT are unsupportive and the parents are fed up that nothing is being done about certain children.
It is constant demands from all angles. The worse of it is that this is the case regardless of how good or bad a teacher you are. In my previous life, if you were bad at your job, you were sent packing. With teaching, you can be the best teacher and still get told on a daily basis from someone that you are not doing enough or that a Parent is bad mouthing you on FB. It is mentally draining.