Okay, about teachers...

[KitKat1985]

Okay I'm being brave here. I know a few people who happen to be teachers. Whenever they talk about their jobs, there's a real 'no other profession has to work as hard as us' vibe to their speech. I am fully aware and in agreement that it's a stressful job with long hours and ridiculous amount of pressure if you don't count the long holidays but it's hardly the only profession that has these issues. I myself am a nurse, and 14 hour shifts on an under-staffed ward with no breaks and several severely ill / abusive patient to look after are hardly a picnic either. But whenever I discuss work with teacher friends there's a definite 'if you want to talk about stress you should try being a teacher' element to the conversation, and it's starting to really get on my nerves. Lots of jobs are stressful, teaching isn't the only one! And it's only teachers I know that seem to have this general attitude about their profession. AIBU? Is it really more stressful than any other profession out there?

'The most bashed profession' I don't think that's true - there's a ton of negativity towards the Police, GP's, Social Workers for example and all are hugely stressful professions

I don’t moan about the stress and am not a classroom teacher anymore, but when you have PPA or non contact time, within school hours, that feels like a break. It’s the taking work home bit that’s horrible after a day of managing 30 children which is just exhausting.
The nurses I worked with (psych so probably different) had built in breaks that they stuck rigidly to, as well as supervision to support their emotional needs whereas us teachers working with the same kids picked up the slack.

But a teacher in one school will have a completely different experience to a teacher in another school, just as a nurse in one department will have it differently to one in another department and some will be extremely stressful in either profession.

It's not a competition, both are very stressful. I've never been a nurse, but i hear about the pressure.
I've been a teacher and no amount of money would make me do either job.

I’m amazed anyone stays in teaching these days. Mumsnet is full of teaching and school bashing threads. It’s demoralising. It doesn’t happen to other professions.

I don’t believe teachers have claimed it’s more stressful than other professions and as others have said, it isn’t a race to the bottom. But the constant criticism, often from people who have their own axe to grind, combined with everything else, is what’s driving so many out.

What will happen when there really aren’t enough teachers and few being recruited. Home Ed everyone?

'The most bashed profession' I don't think that's true - there's a ton of negativity towards the Police, GP's, Social Workers for example and all are hugely stressful professions

I’d love to see a bar chart showing the number of negative threads on here by profession!

Why do you work 75 hours a week? That's 2 full-time jobs not one.
That's sadly what is required in some schools to keep your head above water and to avoid being victimised and bullied by senior leadership.
Those sorts of hours nearly pushed me out of teaching. Then I changed schools and what a difference.

I think it's really tricky. MIL taught for 30+ years, middle school. She can't convert a fraction to a decimal or work out a percentage. She does go on and on about how hard teaching was and how it shoukd be better respected BUT for the last 30 years or so whenever she is with us at Christmas you woukd think the world was grinding to a halt over her utter surprise that DH or I might have to go to work on 23rd , 24th, 27th, 28th, 29th or 30th December. Also when DS was having the life crushed out of him by a bullying yr4 teacher, there was never any sticking up for ds, only for the teacher who DH and I were wrong to question.

BIL was a maths teacher and he got thoroughly fed up with it, the attitudes, the hours, the paperwork. So he left teaching and opened a shop - he found out that if he didn't open he didn't make money, he found out that as a small businessman if customers complained he had to be nice and had no authority, he found it very very hard to have only a few weeks holiday and be open from 10 to 6, 6 days a week. He found the tax and vat returns, ordering and accounts took all his time out of hours and were non negotiable. Hardest of all was managing staff because he had no classroom authority and he had no sanctions when they took the piss and could be a bit insubordinate. He also found he was responsible and thinking about the business 24/7. He closed it after 3 years and is now teaching again and says he's grateful to be teaching again.

My DC had many wonderful teachers some of whom we are still on Christmas card terms with. Their old primary head and I have a hug when we see each other but at school performances, etc, it was not appropriate when she used to tell all the parents her staff were all exhausted with three days to go before breaking up for Christmas. Many of the working parents had not had a week off 6 weeks before for half term, some would have had two weeks in the previous summer holidays and were looking forward to having only the BH's over Christmas. Many parents were run ragged sorting out childcare, etc. And the request for parents to make tea for teachers on parents eve because they had been working all day fell on stony ground for me when so had I and a cuppa for a full time working parent would also have been welcomed.

if you don't count the long holidays

The very fact that you said this shows that you have no understanding of what teachers actually do in holidays !

DD is a radiographer and says the same about nurses! She feels there is a real sense of martyrdom from them and no one works as hard as them. She says the radiographers get No appreciation for the 12 hours in theatre with half hour break or 12 hours pushing a huge mobile X-ray machine. No thank you cards or Quality Street for the X-ray department either.

I guess people are self centred these days, I don’t think any job is a barrel of laughs. Many people work hard in different ways.

I don't think it is the toughest or most stressful profession.

But I do think it is one of the ones with the biggest gap between what people THINK it is like and what it is ACTUALLY like.

So a firefighter or nurse or surgeon or corporate lawyer doesn't have to explain to anyone that yes, their job is very stressful. It's a given , which people understand fully. Whereas teachers do far too frequently often have to explain that it's not a 9-3 pm job with lovely long holidays, and so that tends to make us sound more 'whingy', more of the time.

In nursing and other stressful professions they take a zero tolerance approach to violence. In teaching you can be threatened or assaulted by a pupil and still be told you must continue teaching them.

It also has a lot to do with the pressure of being “on stage” doing a presentation in front of 30 people for several hours each day without adequate preparation because there isn’t time. Not being able to stop for a wee or anything else during specified hours. And being held responsible and blamed for other people’s behaviour over which you have no control. Nurses aren’t disciplined if sick people fail to get better.

@KitKat1985
Genuine question - how many 14 hour shifts does a full time nurse do per week.

can sometimes just lack the understanding really of the nature of doing stressful professional jobs, which don't have set hours and simply have to be completed. Probably those people are in jobs that perhaps don't pay so well and think teachers work 35 weeks from 9-3.30 just playing and think they are overpaid and have no reason to say they work hard, because they don't grasp the wider nature of professional jobs and the differences between turning up and carrying out tasks and going away again, and having jobs which take over your head for almost all your waking hours.

I think this is just bollocks. There are plenty of well-paid, professional office jobs that are strictly 9-5 and very rarely more. Statistics and data science, for starters. Never "takes over your head" because everyone's workload is assigned so that they can finish a 3 month project by doing 9-5 (or less) for 3 months.

I think this is just bollocks. There are plenty of well-paid, professional office jobs that are strictly 9-5 and very rarely more.

Just like, as backed up by posts on here, there are plenty of teaching jobs that don’t work 60 hour weeks and don’t work in the school holidays?

Ex-DH fits that box pp.
Programmer.
9-5, flexi time, occasional WFH, time off in lieu if travel is involved, earns much more than teacher at equivalent seniority.
Paid overtime if project needs extra hours to finish on time.

I think being a teacher is just hard work I was a Cunt in school because I was lashing out for attention constantly because of issues at home. I had a teacher who would phone me constantly pressuring me I felt at the time to sort myself out and I couldn't understand why she was so interested, I had teachers "isolating" me from my friends I thought, to get me do my work on my own because I COULD do it if I actually tried without distractions.
Now I'm older I think back to those teachers who gave their all to helping me get where I am now.
They never once gave up on me and thankfully helped me also get the help I need to sort myself out, teachings hard they deserve holidays and whatever else they get. I couldn't do it.

@shoutymomma the difference is the dentist would be doing a highly technical procedure in a very small, sensitive area of someone else's body. Obviously a dentist can't do 30 of those at once. You can't compare teaching to performing a clinical procedure- the analogy makes no sense.

Interestingly, dentists have some of the highest rates of suicide and mental illness of any profession...

Yawn. Another thread bashing teachers.

YANBU. Teacher friends on my Facebook do similar things, posting their marking and about long hours. Two uni friends became junior doctors and were never so vocal about the shit they went through and the ridiculous hours, plenty of people I work with stay at the office until 8 and/or are working until the wee hours trying to get something over the line, I can’t remember the last week my husband didn’t work on Sunday or did a working week of fewer than 70 hours...it’s not a competition, but it does feel like teachers are much more vocal about it.

I know a few teachers. I know a few nurses (family). I know people who work as self employed builders (dh plus various friends and family). I know clerical staff and salea assistants and sahms and self employed mums. And I know carers and pharmacy staff and low paid, unskilled manual workers (like my mum).

I think a lot of people are miserable about their jobs. And a lot of times it is justified. And don't doubt that some teachers work incredibly hard and are passionate about what they do. But I do think they whinge an awful lot compared to other professionals. Especially on here.

The 2 teachers I know are happy with their jobs, one primary, one secondary. Seem no more stressed than any other working parent. Do 4 days each so around for dcs 2 days plus weekends plus holidays plus secondary teacher does pick up another day so 3 out of 5 covered.

Please don't be envious of our holidays - join us! There's a massive shortage can't think why so you'll easily get a job.

Just to add that I am a teacher; and the vast majority of 'complaints' about staff are made by mums regarding female staff; particularly those in their twenties or thirties. Some recent examples [last 7 days] include a complaint made to the Headteacher about a member of staff who hadn't responded to an e-mail within 24 hours. A complaint made to myself, about someone in my department who hadn't given enough praise to her Y7 child, in a class of 32. Add to that complaints about missing P.E kit [ with no name on ] and a damaged ruler- I kid you not. I spend several hours a week, at home, responding to such issues; rarely from dads. Make of that what you will in regard to this 'debate'.
I also want to make the point that some subjects have a heavier workload than others. I myself do 10 hours each day at school and work one full day at home each weekend- an average of 50-60 hours each week.
It's not just the workload that is stressful; It's interacting with children/young people constantly; dealing with their worries; keeping them safe and trying to coach them to achieve their potential.

Oh goody, this again

OP - if you didnt want to be goady you would have asked 'why do my friends think this?'. The response you would have received is 'I dont know - ask them?' But no, you have to present it as 'teachers think x'.

Why deal with people assuming they are a homogenous group? I actually saw one poster the other day describing all teachers as 'colleagues'. Truly bizarre.

Anyway, in response to your non-question, many teachers often feel they have to explain why their job is so difficult because so many people, just as you have done here, question it. No one ever questions how hard a nurse works and rightly so because they work ducking hard.

Also please let me know where these schools are where the salary is good enough for a sports car and where you get shopping days off. I work at an excellent private school and I sure as hell havent heard of either.

Ach, OP just needs less grumpy teacher friends.
Or to tell them their job isn’t as hard as they think instead of a bunch of randoms on MN.
Actually, OP, why don’t you do that, as that might result in some resolution for you as your grievance seems to be with your friends specifically? Or would that be too easy and less goady?

As a teacher, it is a hard job and there are elements of safeguarding that feel well outside our area of expertise. The theory that "if you see something that isn't right, report it to the relevant agency" is totally false in practice, and school staff are left to try and support with (and feel responsible for) mental health and neglect issues etc. with rudimentary training at best. Some schools also seem to live in an over the top fear of Ofsted, despite their mythbusting efforts and so go to extraordinary lengths with marking and displays and whatever else, as though Ofsted demands it. (I've been through 5 ofsted inspections in 11 years).

However, having said that there are a lot of teacher martyrs who seem to make work for themselves and then whinge about it. I work for a strong department where consideration for workload is always a priority. Even within our team though, there are those who seem to work non stop, and others who have a good W/L balance yet perform just as well.

The wailing about how hard we have it, and NOBODY has it as bad can frankly be a little bit embarrassing.