Bored of teacher friend banging on about how hard her job is

[JustACog]

Friend's a teacher and I'm tired of the chat about how her job is harder/longer/more stressful than everyone else's.

Almost every conversion now gets round to her moaning about how much she's overworked how much time she spends marking or planning. I do believe there is a lot of work involved in teaching and it's not a job I could do but I'm fed up of it being laid on thick. Fed up of the martyrdom around the sacrifice she's making for the children

CF said to me that I'm lucky to have my job (nurse full time shifts in A&E) as I just get to switch off when I leave and she's on the job from dawn to dusk.

AIBU to call her out on this, really feeling like I'd like to ask her what she really thinks other people do that's so much easier than teaching.

I agree with the poster who said it’s also to do with expectations. People think if they have a degree then they can teach and because it’s not hugely valued by society, or the government, then the assumption is that anyone can do it. It requires intelligence, resilience, humour, flexibility and lots of other things. Not everyone has those - it also takes years to feel really confident and even then things are changing all the time. Your friend probably isn’t really cut out for it.

I don’t think teachers have an ‘easy’ job and I know I couldn’t personally do it as aside from anything else I haven’t the patience for other people’s kids.

What I do notice - and this is truly not intended to be goady, it’s my own personal experience - is that all the teachers i know without exception go on about how they have such a terribly hard time of it and no one else could ever understand the pressures etc etc. Its as though they operate in a little bubble and don’t really see or consider the working lives and difficult work/life balances of others.

I know a number of teachers very well, but also have friends in many completely different careers and I truly do not see that the teachers have it any worse than anyone else I know, and in all honesty would appear to have it easier than quite a few.

To try and explain, rather than just rile people up- one of the main reasons I feel this way is that while teachers have their own very real challenges, by and large they don’t have the stress of high profile work, of life or death situations, or of urgent decision making that is likely to hugely and permanently impact on others lives. For example, a teacher is having an off day and teaches calculus very poorly once. The students are all fine and assuming the children normally work well and the teacher teaches well the rest of the year, they don’t suffer in any way. In contrast, a surgeon has a bad day, someone dies. A Police officer has a bad day, and I don’t know, loses control of an emergency vehicle in a pursuit and hits someone, or doesn’t arrest someone they should or respond as quickly as they could, and someone is killed/seriously hurt/robbed blind/whatever. A criminal lawyer or a judge has a bad day, someone is losing their liberty or their justice, and it’s possibly all over the papers. That kind of pressure, to me, is what makes a job difficult. When there’s no real room for error because someone entirely depends on you in that moment. Not in a year at exam time, right then, or their life may be forever changed. Further, in the few jobs I’ve mentioned there, everyone is doing overtime. Everyone is doing on calls. Everyone is bringing work home mentally. Everyone is affected - deeply- by what they experience daily at work. I do not understand why teachers (not all teachers I’m sure) seem to feel the have a monopoly on being overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated.

I feel that if it wasn’t for all the grumbling, more of us would appreciate the terrific job they DO do with our children, and there would be less ‘teacher bashing’ as PPs have put it.

Ooft long post sorry! I’ve listened to a lot of teachers 😂

Can't stand anyone banging on about their job to be honest. Leave it at fucking work.

they don’t have the stress of high profile work, of life or death situations, or of urgent decision making that is likely to hugely and permanently impact on others lives.

Not many jobs do. Quite a few people do jobs that could disappear off the face of the planet and never be missed (telephone sanitiser).

Funny that the OP pitched the teacher against one of the few jobs that does.

This is depressing but seems relevant if we are going to talk about how much people are affected by their jobs:

For females, the risk of suicide among health professionals was 24% higher than the female national average; this is largely explained by high suicide risk among female nurses.
Male and female carers had a risk of suicide that was almost twice the national average.
Females within the teaching and education profession had a lower risk of suicide but specifically for primary and nursery schoolteachers there was evidence of an elevated risk.

Funny that the OP pitched the teacher against one of the few jobs that does
It's almost like teacher Vs nurses is a well done cliche on MN.

The very idea that 'the pupils are all fine' shows you have no understanding of a teacher's job. It's enormously stressful ensuring, often single-handed, that 25 plus 5 year olds are safe while learning through play, particularly nowadays when many mainstream classes have children with special needs. Injuries can happen and the buck stops with you. While we are not doing a nurse's job, a teacher's job is important and needs to be valued, not constantly denigrated.

monthly salary = annual salary paid over 12 equal months equally ........including leave!! I really struggle to understand that (some) qualified teachers appear to think that this does not apply to them?

Oh wow, I've never seen this topic come up on MN. I'm so excited to see all the balanced, knowledgeable posts that will undoubtedly come up, and I'm sure people will listen and not wax lyrical about 'their friend's sister's husband's brother' and how they are a teacher but spend an hour a week- if that - marking- and earn 50k after 2 years

Nomdunchien - I don't think there's a teacher anywhere that would rate "teaching calculus badly once" as up there with their "bad days".

A baiting teacher thread will always hit the mark, but the old adage of if you can you work, if you can't you teach is as old as time.

Working in education is attached along political lines and they moaned just as much during labour, so it automatically a loaded question/response, it is the only profession thatloaded personal anecdotes should be extrapolated, there is a reason why the many ex teachers who went into the private sector are not put in front of the media machine, and it isn't because of how hard teachers have it.

Yes, the weekly teacher bashing. It made the job so much more of a pleasure.

@Justanotherlurker You are so utterly clueless, I'm not even going to begin.

Please can someone explain the unpaid holidays to me? I see it a lot and get confused when thinking about the annual pay side of things.

I’ve had a look on the NASUWT website and can see that top of ‘main pay range’ for a classroom teacher is £35k

Does that mean that gross monthly pay is £35k / 12?

Or is the £35k reduced pro rata to the unpaid holidays?

Sorry, don’t know how many weeks are unpaid, so if there are 6 weeks, and for ease assuming 52 weeks in a year), is it actually 44/52ths of £35k?

It’s an annual salary. Paid monthly like most.

A permanent teacher is paid in the same way as most of us are. Our salaries are not reduced in the months we take annual leave.

Dollymixture22 so in my example the £35k isn’t reduced because of the unpaid leave?
(How many weeks are unpaid??)

When teachers are on holiday (annual leave) they are paid the same as term time. Salaried. They are paid whilst on holiday (like the majority of workers in UK)

I think you get people like this in every job.

I’m a teacher and you get teachers who moan relentlessly and teachers who love their job and don’t.

From the other side of the coin, I often feel whenever I have a wee moan about my job the holidays always come up. Yes we are
very very lucky to have such long holidays.

No weeks are unpaid

I’ll grant you specific moaning about nurses is rarer than about doctors but it’s definitely there here.

Do an advanced search with the keyword ‘nurses’ and I had to scroll down multiple pages before I saw a post complaining about a single nurse. There is barely any ‘nurse bashing’ on Mumsnet, which is quite right too.

Do an advanced search of the word ‘teachers’ on the other hand...

They are paid whilst on holiday (like the majority of workers in UK)

They are not paid ‘for’ most of the holidays. The yearly salary would be higher otherwise. This has been done to death on here.

@Clarke45 so your salary is paid in ten instalments.

Surely you are legally entitled to holiday pay? Are you an agency worker?

Full time teaching contracts are 1265 hours of directed time, or 195 days, or 39 weeks.

This is then divided into 12 equal monthly payments.

From the 13 weeks of none contact time, there is a holiday allowance. The rest of it is unpaid.

If we were paid for 52 our salaries would be considerably higher.

Both are underpaid and underappreciated.

Both do work behind the scenes that is mentally draining.

Both have a recruitment and retention problem.

Rather than complain that your friend complains, perhaps join her in her complaints. The more the public hear about the poor treatment of key workers, and I also include care workers here, then perhaps something might eventually get done to the improve working conditions.