Is teaching really so stressful?

[summertime06]

Really trying to get my head around this without getting flamed. I have a good friend who is a teacher, part time since having kids, doing the same hours as me (I'm not a teacher), 3 days a week.

For the past year or two, all I ever heard when we met up was how stressful her job was, how difficult it was to be a teacher and a mum at the same time etc etc. I get that there's work to be done outside teaching hours, but I do the same in my completely different job and just get on with it, I think it's part of the job when you get up the pay scale/responsibility level a bit. Any time I did mention that things were similar in my job, I was put down, I couldn't possibly understand how stressful it was to be a teacher?!

And now she's made the decision to take a career break for a few years because there's just no way she can continue to be a teacher and a mum to 3 young kids. That's fine if that's what she wants to do but she's making out that she's been left with no choice but to make this decision because teaching is just so difficult. Is it just me or am I missing something? I get that it can be stressful as are lots of other jobs, but there are surely also lots of advantages? Not having to sort out summer camps and childcare during school holidays? Is it really so much more difficult and stressful compared to other jobs? I genuinely want to understand!

It’s emotionally draining. Every lesson is like being on stage, every interaction with a child could cause a parental complaint.

Holding a class of 30 kids at just the right work rate and then also dealing with their emotional/social issues is extremely draining. I am often sad that when I get home I have so little left to give my own daughter.

There are other stressful jobs for sure, but teaching really is insanely difficult. I have given up and have just one child, I couldn't do it with 3.

I would ask- OP do you have children? Do you find it hard work when you have to fully interact with them all day?

I’m a teacher and a mum. I absolutely love my job but it is hard. I think like any job a lot comes down to your colleagues and managers (and the children of course!) I work in a great school with a sensible Head and supportive colleagues. I suspect that if I didn’t have that I’d find things much, much more difficult. Regardless, it is genuinely much harder than any other job I’ve ever done.

Hmm, well - you do still have to sort summer holiday childcare as

1. there’s lots of work to do in holiday time (planning, setting up classroom etc)

2. teacher training days take place when there is no school so you have to sort childcare then.

It’s also just a huge responsibility and you are interacting all day with people who really need you... then again when you get home!

No OP, it’s a massive con and teachers are all liars

These threads always seem so goady.

You know how many parents struggle to cope with their own children’s behaviour, and most of them only have 1-4 children to deal with? Imagine dealing with the demands of 30 individuals, all with wide ranging needs and personalities and juggling that with the paperwork and the pressure of wanting to help those children gets the best results possible in their exams and coursework. All whilst the SLT are breathing down your neck. That’s why teachers feel so stressed.

I’m not a teacher, everyone thought I would be, but it’s a job I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. They are underpaid and nowhere near appreciated enough IMO.

Yes. Very difficult. It is a job where other people’s children are more important than your own. Try getting your head round that.

Constant scrutiny. Work load increases every year. Constant change of curriculum. Goal posts move every year. 22 years of teaching and I've only got the energy for a few more years and I'm a part time but a single parent of 1.

Thanks, it's interesting to have some other viewpoints because this has sort of been playing on my mind the past few days.

In my job I make decisions about people's health, and often I worry if I asked all the questions I should have about their symptoms, if I missed something, if I made the right recommendation etc. To be honest I'm just finding it hard to really understand how teaching is so much more stressful than the majority of other jobs that it can result in you completely giving up work, giving up a bit of your independence, paying into your pension etc....all things that I find are important to me.

Oh, and the holidays aren’t a jolly time for them to do whatever the hell they like. I know teachers who go in on the holidays to provide extra study days for students who want to push for higher grades and who spend a lot of their holiday times building lesson plans and whatnot to further improve the work they’re doing.

I know this because I used to provide holiday childcare, often for teachers who still had work to do during the holidays.

What Bellesausage said. Plus when you do get home you begin the paper work.
I gave up 3 years ago when I was talking about 'my children's to a friend and ds chipped up, 'Mummy, aren't we your children? '

If I think about my children's teachers, at secondary they have to handle between 25 and 35 individual people in one go, and they have about an hour to present them with new information and make sure it sticks. All kids should be leaving with the same new skills/knowledge.

Some of these kids find it easy. Some don't. Some have needs. Some don't want to be there. Some are hungry. Some have no equipment. Some want centre stage. There's a problem or question from another classroom. One kid missed last lesson so needs double input.

And then the hour is up and it starts again.

But most teachers I know LOVE their jobs. They're dedicated - let them vent steam about the hard bits, because if teachers bottled it all up we wouldn't have any left!!

Teaching is a doddle. You work 9-3.30 every day, and have 13 weeks off a year to relax. Teachers unions were created to ensure all
members kept the lie that it is a stressful job. Fact. Every-so-often teachers go on strike about a non-issue just to make the public both hate them and believe that teachers must be ‘stressed’ at the same time. And stressed teachers in summer term?! Absolutely fucking not. The kids are all watching disney films and colouring in.

It isn't the only stressful job of course. I've just been watching an episode of ambulance where a young man on one shift went from attending a case where a young woman jmped from a bridge on to a motorway below, to attending a RTA where a motorcyclist had been thrown 30 feet from the incident, without his helmet. Tremendous strain to be dealing with. Then I think about colleagues in Children's social care, or the Police Officers that work in investigating child abuse.
No teacher ever sets out to claim their's is The most stressful' but what Bellesausage says is true.
Since I've come out of the classroom, it is clearer to me that, m many jobs, if you are 'performing' until 8pm one night (as you are on parents evening), then you can often factor in a quieter morning the next day, for example. You can't do that when you have 30 faces looking at you for 6 hours. They know immediately if you aren't prepared to the hilt.
In my current job I do, quite often answer emails or write up a report in the evening, but if I can't / or choose not to for some reason, then it just means I am behind the next day, not I am eaten alive the next day. It is quite different.

There are so many teachers that quit after just a few years. They start off very dedicated doing their chosen job but gradually their enthusiasm fades and they go part time, take a less demanding role, quit to do a less paid job or retrain to do something else.

I think it is the ones that care the most that burn out that much faster.

To be honest I'm just finding it hard to really understand how teaching is so much more stressful than the majority of other jobs that it can result in you completely giving up work

Everyone has different tolerance levels for stress. You may be particularly resilient. But you shouldn’t doubt that teaching is very stressful - there’s a damn good reason why so many people leave. It can’t just be a myth, can it?

It really, really varies

There are so many factors that affect it. If you work in SLT in a large inner city state comp with all the issues that brings then you will be out the house 6.30-8pm every weekday and work a full day at the weekend in term time.

Also, total mad shit happens. Dh ended up on a bus with a load of his school kids last week policing them until they all got off at their home stops - for 2 hours ! So they didn't meet up with another school for a fight.
And there were 3 colleagues on other buses doing the same. London normal buses.

I have friends in lovely primary schools who work 7.30-4 and are able to be home for their children at 4.30. They do much less weekend work and there's fewer curriculum changes so they don't have to give up a lot of their summer holidays to them.

Curriculum changes in secondary are bloody constant.

So it could be opposite ends of a spectrum or somewhere in between

I'm a TA and that is quite stressful enough.

If anyone seriously believes that teachers work 9 - 3.30 then they are deluded.

The best teacher I have known in 20 years of working is leaving the profession. He is amazing. The kids love him. He is in his 20s and he is in school by 7am at the latest every day. He leaves after 6pm and does work at home.

The people who complain about teachers having an easy ride are the same ones who will complain the minute their kids aren't getting the very best education.

Well of course there are plenty of jobs that are equally stressful and we have no way of knowing about yours and how it compares.

I suppose the way to explain why teaching is stressful to another mum is to ask them to imagine the mental load you carry as a parent and then imagine an additonal load requiring similar input and emotional stress. Like if you had a second family or something. I am not suggesting it's equivalent but just a cimparable mental load.

It entirely depends on your job whether yabu or not. Some jobs carry more mental load than others. I suppose teaching is just in the top.10%

I make a point of never moaning about work with friends from other industrries. Moaning about work should be saved for colleagues or partners imo.

I think there are lots of jobs which are equally as difficult as teaching if not more so. Say, being a hospital doctor, a paramedic, a social worker, a nurse. Surely all of these are ridiculously “important” pressured roles where mistakes really matter. But they don’t get the holidays that teachers get and that’s what sets teaching apart. With teaching there is at least some extended periods of rest! And teachers don’t have to work crazy shift patterns with random meal breaks.

I think teaching must be really hard and I wouldn’t want to do it but I do think teachers complain perhaps more than some of those in other equally hard professions and that is probably what irritates people.

I work 3 days a week and have no energy for my own kids in the evenings of my work days and that gets me down too and I whinge about that a lot to those close to me, but I don’t think my job is any harder than anyone else’s like some of my teacher friends do.

It’s very intense (understatement.) I find that only other teachers can appreciate it.

Fuck to the yes.

16 years out of it and still have the mad dreams.

Genuinely I don't want to come across as goady, this has just been on my mind and I didn't really have anyone else to share it with!

Actually I think I wouldn't have an issue if my friend acknowledged that I also have a stressful and busy job, whilst also being a mum and a wife etc. I get the impression that she thinks I just go into work for a few hours 3 days a week and that's it, whereas she works lots more and it's much more stressful. I'm also doing a degree on top of my job, I have 2 young kids, things are generally pretty hectic but that's our choice as a family.

Yes it is ridiculously stressful. We are expected to teach kids 31 at a time without any resources due to cutbacks. No pencils, paper, glue, paint, broken whiteboard, broken computer, broken laptop, no felt tips, a forest school without plants. Yet we have to show the kids are making massive leaps in progress. I can't keep buying resources out of my own money just for the kids to break as they have no respect for anything we have. My holidays are taken up trying to resource things for lessons and plan more lessons as apparently last year's outstanding ones are no longer suitable!