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!

In my experience a supportive team and dedicated head can make ALL the difference. Negativity is contagious and once one member of the team has lost enthusiasm it quickly spreads, as it would in any profession. Particularly with teaching, if all parents were on board (majority are but we all know a fair few who aren't) it would allow extra time for teaching and behaviour would potentially be acceptable. Instead your sorting out playground dramas which begin with the parents.

I’ve been a teacher for 26 years. Primary. It can be a very stressful and relentless job. But my main observation for this thread, is that teaching attracts a certain kind of person who is often very idealistic and perfectionist by nature. Whilst their is a lot of day to day stress, teachers often take too much responsibility for stuff outside their control, and feel they have to fix everything in a child’s life. Part of my job as a senior teacher is to get younger colleagues to be a lot more boundaries and realistic about what is possible. Some people feel this makes them unacceptably cynical, and it clashes with their deep sense of responsibility. But being for me being very firm with my personal boundaries is the only way to survive it. It’s not the physical workload, it’s the mental load. But you don’t have to take that in all its immensity if you don’t want to or can’t.

*there

I can see why this would be annoying, OP.

As a rule of thumb, a well experienced teacher will need to spend a minimum of one hour working to every contact hour working with children. Contact time is 6.5 hours a day, so that’s 13 hours per day of work. If your friend has been working 3 days, she is therefore probably working above full time at 39 hours. A teacher working 5 days a week will need to put in 65 hours by this system of calculation.
This is a very crude method because there are so many variables. How long has the teacher been doing this job? Has the teacher changed year groups recently? Has the syllabus changed? What is the school’s marking policy? There are so many. But hopefully you get my drift, which is that the 6.5 day is only half of the working day. Meetings and parents evenings are not included in this, because the work outside of school hours is the work needed to the the ACTUAL JOB, not counting the extras.
PS Teachers, never calculate your hourly rate of pay unless you want to weep.

Ah, it's the biweekly Goady Anti-Teacher Thread.

Teaching may not be stressful for some. It might be stressful for others.

Applies to any situation really. You can drown in 6ft of water or 6inches... everyone’s situation is different.

BollocksIsTheWord

Well, duh. But it is stressful for a high enough proportion of teachers who report it to be stressful, that we can sensibly describe it as stressful. It’s not some unknowable mystery - teachers have been asked, and have answered.

I think that teachers do have a stressful job, but comments such as this show a spectacular lack of understanding of other roles

“A HCP will have a stressful case, but then the patient will be discharged/transferred/die.”

A patient dying has a massive effect on the staff! It’s not just a case of thinking oh well and moving on! Deaths can be traumatic and/or unexpected. You have often built up a relationship with the patient and their family. Telling someone that their loved one has died is so difficult. And if the death is unexpected you always ask yourself if you could have done something differently.

And you don’t just go home and forget about patients. When I was in charge of a ward of 30 patients I would go home after a late shift (often at 10pm because it was so busy you never left on time) and go through the whole ward in my head thinking about what I needed to bring up on the ward round when I started at 7 in the morning.

As a nurse you are always on show with conflicting demands and everyone wanting a piece of you. For example, looking after an acutely ill patient, whilst knowing that another patient needs some more pain relief, someone else is being sick, a relative wants to talk to you and Consultant wants to start a ward round.

Hardly ever left on time.

Nobaggypants I totally get that a teaching job is full on and I think we may be arguing the same point from different angles, but I really don't see how you can say that other professions don't take their roles on in the same way or get breaks that are denied to teachers.

We simply don't know what stresses and strains take place in occupations we don't do. I think I read somewhere that dentists have the highest incident of workplace depression, but to me it looks like a great time boxed high earning role.

Therefore for anyone to categorically state that theirs - and no others by inference - is the most stressful occupation in the world is wrong.

I think I read somewhere that dentists have the highest incident of workplace depression, but to me it looks like a great time boxed high earning role.

Being a dentist would depress me, too.

Well it must be pretty damn stressful or the huge numbers of teachers leaving at present wouldn’t be. Why else would you leave a reasonably well paid (apart from the SE where the money doesn’t go very far) fairly secure post...I went because of behaviour, paperwork, micro management bySLT and ironically the lack of support from SLT. It’s far easier to blame teachers for poor behaviour and engagement than address the real causes.many are scared of students and parents alike. I got my life back and started sleeping again..

but I do think teachers complain perhaps more than some of those in other equally hard professions and that is probably what irritates people.

Are the people working in those ‘equally hard professions’ also accused on a regular basis by the general public, the press, social media and the government of being workshy slackers who only work 9-3 though? In my experience, as I have said on each of the (very similar) goody threads about teachers in the last couple of week, teachers retaliate to being told their job is easy. Do people go on and on telling nurses their jobs are easy? Pharmacists? Junior doctors?

Teacher respond with-‘actually, you know it’s not easy, it’s hard work and can be really stressful’ and suddenly... we’re moaning.

Being a dentist does depress me Everyone walks in and tells you they hate you! Why do people think that’s polite
I don’t think anyone is being goady, anti teacher or anything. Everyone agrees it’s a very difficult and stressful job. It is just being pointed out that it isn’t a competition! There are lots of equally stressful and difficult jobs.

So your friend is finding her job so stressful that she’s given it up completely and your response is to think ‘well, my (completely different) job is stressful too but I haven’t had to give it up!’

What a great friend.

I don’t think anyone is being goady, anti teacher or anything. Everyone agrees it’s a very difficult and stressful job. It is just being pointed out that it isn’t a competition! There are lots of equally stressful and difficult jobs.

Well, no, everyone does not agree that it is a difficult and stressful job. At all.

It is just being pointed out that it isn’t a competition! There are lots of equally stressful and difficult jobs

Absolutely-I’ve never met a teacher who has said otherwise.

I wish people wouldn’t tell me that I ‘have it easy’, that I ‘don’t know what it’s like in the real world’, that I’m a part timer, that I just play with children and that I get 13 weeks paid holiday.

There are lots of jobs that I know nothing about, so I don’t made insulting sweeping generalisations about them-I find that best.

Teachers "moan" because they are constantly being told that they have an easy life and only work 9-3, which is ridiculous. Even the children are in school for longer than 9-3 each day!

It's constant. So teachers defend themselves.

Teachers sign a working time agreement at the start of the year which accounts for a 35 hour working week. This is signed by the trade union and the headteacher and any teacher who routinely works much longer than this needs to discuss this with both of these parties. Of course, some teachers work a few extra hours a week, and this shows dedication to the children.

The DFE's workload survey found that secondary teachers work an average 55 hour week and primary teachers even more than this. There is no way that a teacher wrote this post - no one who actually teaches is that pig ignorant about the profession.

But, as a parent, if my children's teacher was working 60 or 70 hours a week I would consider this counter to effective teaching and learning.

Teachers sign a working time agreement at the start of the year which accounts for a 35 hour working week.

Do they? Do you have a link to this?!

That last paragraph isn't mine and I have no idea how it got there! It's a fair point though about the average primary teacher.

Yeah, that's another piece of total fiction - never signed one. Ever.

That working time agreement thing is complete bollocks

It's far more stressful than it used to be mainly because of the behaviour of children and parents. I'd never be a teacher and I'd hate my children to be teachers. I feel very sorry for teachers.

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

Are you suggesting that because it has its advantages, it isn’t stressful?

She is finding it stressful, thousands of teachers are leaving the job because they find it stressful and there is a consequential recruitment/retention crisis.

You seem to be suggesting that because you aren’t leaving your completely different job due to stress, that she shouldn’t be stressed either?!

I don’t think anyone is being goady, anti teacher or anything.

I think you are totally wrong about this.