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?

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

All nurses do is whinge.

Oh no, my mistake. I wouldn’t be so foolish or small-minded as to tar a whole profession with such a sweeping generalisation based on just one person.

That's more annual leave in one go than many people have for the whole year

It’s not annual leave. I used to really enjoy not having to teach classes for 13 weeks a year (apart from the revision classes at Easter and may half term), but it wasn’t annual leave. Teachers don’t get 13 weeks paid holiday.

Yes Kolo but only in some schools. You know that schools are run by despots as little kingdoms. If your merciful overlord decrees a Christmas Shopping is allowed, all the minions squeak with glee and grab the bounty. So in the 80s and 90s, I occasionally benefited from one.

I think many teachers just hate the job so much they can't see the woods for the trees anymore.

I actually think that most of the people who genuinely hated it have left now.

Rather than bitching at teachers for being stressed or miserable, I wonder if parents should start to spend a few minutes wondering about the small number of teachers who are left and what subjects they are teaching? Do your children have a maths graduate or maths teacher teaching them maths for example?!

Your working life is a piece of piss compared with teaching.

Unfortunately, I've been in and out of hospital a lot over the last few months and I don't think this is fair or true, nursing is not a piece of piss. I'm a teacher and fucking hate these threads, but comments like this are not helpful.

One previous poster who was unpleasant can't be jealous since she doesn't even do any kind of paid work due to inheritance.

@KitKat1985 you were being goady and wanted to start yet another teacher bashing thread....

I've never known any teacher in my 20+ years in education state that no other job is as stressful as teaching - I've also never known anyone to get a day off for Christmas shopping - it's crap like this that keeps the negative attitude towards teachers going...

I am a teacher. I would be a shit nurse. And I have reason to be exceptionally grateful for all that contribute to the NHS. It does indeed look very stressful and difficult.

My latest gripe about teaching is how much medical responsibility is creeping into school.

Highly medical procedures being done by people barely paid minimum wage with very little training.

And because it's all about the health and wellbeing of the children you are a parasite for disagreeing.

@BenWillbondsPants I agree.

Bil is a teacher and seems to think dh and I easy jobs. I work as a hospital manager and often get calls in the early hours and dh's role is the same. I do t know any teachers who had an urgent 3.15am call when they'd worked all week then had 45 minutes of work to do before going back to bed but that was my morning last Sunday. But if course bil works harder. We also don't understand tiredness as he has 30 dc to look after and we only have 3 - this was said when dd1 was 3 and dtds were newborns and just home after time in nicu... but he was still more tired. Dh and I do feel sorry for bil as he's obviously not happy at work whereas I love my job (most of the time).

you were being goady and wanted to start yet another teacher bashing thread....
Of course they were!
It's the weekend. We've not had one for a while. Last night was the return of "things teachers apparently said in the staff room" (which was a PBP with form for school threads).

Seriously people, we don't need to justify our careers to people who have nothing better to do than whine about other people's jobs.

@KitKat1985

Gets on my nerves too OP.

YANBU.

Why don’t you just tell your friends to their faces instead of bitching to strangers?

This again.

Just get new friends. I don't talk like that and neither do my colleague-friends, from a few different schools and a mix of primary and secondary.

You know shit people. Ditch them for being sanctimonious and irritating to you.

Few comments on here about how nobody bashes solicitors/lawyers - but every one of the comments on here assumes that all lawyers are well paid. Just worth remembering that many criminal lawyers really aren't well paid in comparison with other professions, including teaching. The average pay of a junior criminal barrister, who will often have to stay up til the early hours preparing a case at the last minute, is £28,000 after they have paid rent for their offices:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47372265

That's for barristers with up to 15 years' experience. Comparison with teachers' salaries here: www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/teacher-training-and-education/how-much-do-teachers-get-paid

And often, travel expenses to court have to come out of that.

Not at all teacher bashing, just pointing out that there are plenty of incorrect assumptions about lawyers out there too.

FWIW, I am not a criminal lawyer; I work in another legal field and consider myself to be ridiculously well paid.

Why don’t you just tell your friends to their faces instead of bitching to strangers?

What a good idea.

Why do you care? Why do you feel the need to point out that you or solicitors work as hard/harder than a teacher. Good for you! Can’t it just be most NHS staff work very hard and most teachers work hard and everyone gets on with their lives without trying to tear people down about it? Why you care is really beyond me.

Both teachers and nurses work hard, it's not a competition.

I had to witness a teacher have to explain herself repeatedly to a stone faced parent. The child had whispered to it's mum and the mum came ready for a battle and you could see that the teacher didn't want the mother to feel like she personally didn't like the child, he had just broken a class rule and that meant he was left out, like 5 other children. Whenever something happens to my son, I always feel the teacher is a bit fearful about approaching me, since he attends a school that could do with better parent-teacher relationships. It's not life and death, like a nurse, but it is still a stressful job.

I don’t think anyone is teacher bashing and the usual refrain of ‘oh if it’s so easy go and be one’ is just defensive nonsense.

Teaching has its own downsides like the evening planning and marking, the parents, the constant changing targets etc but it’s own upsides like if you need to leave at 3.30 you can even if you make the time up and yes, the holidays. No denying the holidays really.

But I think what irritates is the self importance that many teachers have about insisting their job is oh so much worse.

There are loads of jobs that are hard, stressful and with long hours and demanding themes. But most people accept its a choice they have made and get on with it or leave.

It is a common theme and it does wind people up.

I think some of it is that teachers actually think it’s going to be 9-3 with a bucket load of annual leave and then are pissed off when that doesnt quite turn out to be reality even if the hours are actually on a par with many other jobs.

I know a group of three nurses-one is my cousin and the other two are her close friends.

They do lots of moaning about their shift work, bitching about ‘skanky smelly patients’ who don’t wash properly and go on regular pissed nights out where they shag men they don’t know very well.

I could say from that very small survey, that in general, nurses are whingebag slappers.

That wouldn’t be very accurate though, would it and would probably make me look very silly and judgemental. So I wouldn’t.

Both Teaching and Nursing are difficult professions .I think that all of this competition between whose job is the most stressful ,is detracting from the real issues of underfunding by the various government departments.

Very true, but as I mentioned upthread, it's a pretty one-sided competition. Did you ever hear teachers (or indeed people in general) saying "Huh - nurses say their job is hard!"? I doubt it.

Teachers complain about their jobs because the education system is a broken thing that makes it virtually impossible to teach kids well and remain sane, not because they think everybody else's job is a piece of piss.

If a nurse complained to me about the broken state of the NHS, lack of funding, poor management or rude or violent patients, my first thought would not be to look for any perks of the job to hold against them, or to claim that my violent pupils were as bad as their violent patients. I wouldn't think that they were saying that their job was the only stressful job in the world. I would totally and utterly sympathise with them, because their NHS is our NHS, just as my education system is our education system.

I'm a nurse, I work 3 x 12.5 hour shifts a week. The job is hard work and stressful, BUT after my 3 days or 3 nights on duty, I get 4 days off, and I never have to do any work at home. Friends that work in education struggle to get a good work/life balance. As for the holidays, now that my DC are all grown, we can take annual leave in June or September and take advantage of the cheaper prices for holidays. I would rather be a nurse than a teacher.

Sometimes I wonder, when I read these threads, if people are a bit jealous that they didn't think of being a teacher.

Just for the holidays. Or course.

Or = of

I don’t think anyone is teacher bashing and the usual refrain of ‘oh if it’s so easy go and be one’ is just defensive nonsense
It's not defensive. It's just dismissive aka "fine, go do it then if you know it all and it's so cushy". There's zero point discussing with people who are so intent on proving their own little inaccurate versions of reality with massive generalisations so it's easier to say "fine come join us" than it is to bother explaining the facts.

The types of people who start threads generalising about entire professions aren't interested in a sensible discussion about the challenges and perks of a job. All they want is to throw a silly argument out there, wait for people to challenge them and then take all the corrections and some odd "proof" that they're right and all teachers do in moan and think their lives are difficult.

You see the same on the SAHP/WOHP threads. An OP turns up, makes a mass generalisation, waits for people to point out they're talking shit and then turns up again to say "see! See! I told you SAHP/WOHP...."