To just make a point about how hard teachers work.

[Poppadumpony]

Just inspired by comments on another thread.

I know I am not being unreasonable but I just want to say it!

Teachers keep 30 children with diverse needs safe, happy, occupied and learning from 9-3pm.

Teachers typically plan and prepare for 5 lessons a day. This involves finding, adapting or creating the resources for each lesson. (Average KS2 lesson might need: introductory powerpoint, items for practical demonstration, 3x sets of worksheets and a game). This prep all happens after 3pm.

Teachers need to mark and provide feedback on all the work that said 30 diverse children produce during the 6 hours they are in school (30x5= 150) every day. This also happens after 3pm.

Teachers attend staff meetings, discuss children with parents and create educational displays in the classroom. This happens after 3pm.

At any one time, a teacher is also likely to be doing one of the following: planning a class trip, preparing an assembly, preparing a school concert, running a club, writing a scheme of work. This all happens after 3pm.

Teachers work incredibly long, hard hours. Yes, they get the holidays. Yes other professions do overtime.

I am just pointing out that really only a third of a teacher’s work happens between 9-3 (high-energy work) and there is a huge amount of additional work to be done every single day, in preperation for the next. The pace is phenomenal, and there is zero flexibility in terms of hours.

Teaching is a very hard job. It’s why I left after 6 years, I just couldn’t hack it. I’ve done a PhD so I am not afraid of hard work.

Teaching is not for the faint hearted.
Those who manage to do it well and achieve a family life at the same time should be running this country, and I’m not even joking.

@cardibach

It may be that there are grounds for making the teaching profession more attractive in terms of reward *@Pelleas* many surveys of teachers have said they would rather the workload decrease than the pay increase but work stay the same. The problem is that the work that parents see/understand (delivering lessons/marking) is the tip of the iceberg.

But that's still linked to reward and budgeting. If funding was improved and more teachers were recruited, class sizes could be smaller and there would be more teachers to share the 'unseen' work as well.

And, yet again, the public face of most jobs is just the tip of the iceberg. All people-facing jobs have endless administration, training, regulatory requirements and so forth behind them. Very few people have the luxury of saying 'goodbye' to their client/customer/service user and then going home for the day.

Of course other professions work hard too. The difference is very few other professions regularly get told they only work 9-3 and they have an easy job and get bitched about on almost every other mumsnet thread. Hence the posters posting that teachers work hard. If no one ever posted nasty comments about teaching being easy, no one would need to remind the general public that it isn't.

I am a teacher and yes I work hard. Equally my husband is a steelworker and he works hard. Everyone works hards at a job really. Or they would be sacked.

I’m afraid the thread below really affected how I see teachers. So many awful stories of how teachers treat children.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3998720-What-are-you-still-salty-about

@How2Help

Multiple threads a week about how crap DCs teachers are (they may be, not the point)

I think this is part of the problem - it IS the point. It seems people often believe all teachers are 100% perfect or 100% awful. There’s rarely a middle ground. For example if there is criticism of support received from school during lockdown it is met with an argumentative defence “schools were not shut, I called all the kids in my class, marked work, prepared lessons etc”. I rarely saw “that’s really poor, I’m sorry your child has not been better supported”. People take it so personally and there needs to be more acceptance from the teaching profession that there are bad teachers that don’t care and don’t know their stuff.

On the other hand if someone criticises their experience of a nurse, or poor healthcare during lockdown I think it is more typical to get a response like “I’m a nurse, I am sorry you experienced that, that is not the standard our profession aims for, what I suggest you could do is...”.

I use words like often, rarely etc because I am not saying this never happens, but it is a difference that often strikes me.

Exactly this

@Chanteuse @cardibach

Interesting! The unions should leverage covid - it's highlighted the work teachers do/how important they are.

And they should get a good PR who can spin any "workshy" comments if you have to strike, to get media and parents onside.

I think working conditions need an overhaul, which will hopefully improve reputation of the profession and most important the quality of education to children.

I’ve done a PhD so I am not afraid of hard work.

You have a skewed idea so hard work if you think a PHD is the epitome of it.

Nobody who isn't a teacher seems to understand the vast amount of planning, preparation, marking that is done on top of the teaching day. And that's without any parent consultations, staff meetings, training, safeguarding etc, etc. I have worked long hours in the corporate world and was considerably better paid for it. Also, whoever said that teachers have job security is ignoring the fact that teachers with experience are more expensive than nqts and so find themselves less and less attractive to employers.

We’re not saints, the point of the OP was that lots of people seem to think (or pretend to think..) that we work from 9-3.

Everybody with a brain knows that teachers put in a hell of a lot of hours, and they are in stressful jobs. But it's the amount of threads about it that's over the top.

I know people in health care doing the same 60+ hours a week, shit wage, physically demanding thankless work.
You just don't see endless threads about other jobs.

Meh, for goodness sake can we not have one positive thread? Much like the 'all lives matter' brigade, many posters are missing the point. Teachers on here are constantly saying that they feel heavily criticised on here.

So can we not have one thread where people acknowledge that actually, the majority of teachers work hard? Without all piling on with 'what about me'?

[quote Cassilis]I’m afraid the thread below really affected how I see teachers. So many awful stories of how teachers treat children.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3998720-What-are-you-still-salty-about[/quote]
In fairness, most of the teaching anecdotes on that thread were at least 20 years old.

The teachers I know who went straight into teaching feel hard done by. The teachers I know who were in the private sector first (law / banking) appreciate the shorter hours and holidays you get with teaching and really don’t moan the way the ones who have only ever taught do.

@rorosemary

Can I make a point on how hard it is to be a Doctors receptionist? You know, the job where the boss will give you hell if you don't ask what kind of complaint the patient has and the patient gets angry because you ask? I used to do that job and I was thanked maybe once a year. I was tgreatened more often than that for liw pay. I think that teachers get more recognition for their job than that.

Funnily enough, last month I dropped a card and some goodies to our Dr's surgery to say thank you. My friend commented that they probably never got any thanks when I mentioned it Some people appreciate you a lot

The teachers I know who were in the private sector first (law / banking) appreciate the shorter hours and holidays

Yes - I know two or three people who've made that move and preferred teaching, though doubtless there was an element of greater job satisfaction as well as conditions.

Yes. Friends who went from banking / corporate law find teaching way easier - shorter hours and they appreciate the holidays in a way those that have always taught don’t. That said the ones I know both teach secondary maths in quite high achieving schools in one case a public school so less struggle with government paper work / challenging behaviour etc

I do think not everyone suits teaching, some people are much better at it & it comes easier to them then others.

For those that can do it I think it's a great job. Good money (my friend earns 50k), great pension, works with family life, ability to do p/t, change your hours & job security.

You could literally start this thread about any job.

Nurses
Doctors
Lawyers
Police officers
Shop workers
Business owners
So on and so on and so on...

We get it. You work hard. Well done, big pat on the back.

Personally I don’t think you can do it well for your whole working life. My father was nearly destroyed by it. I think it’s best as a second career. Those I know who went in later are more enthusiastic and energetic. Not sure it’s a job you can do for 40 years.

I used to work in a very demanding sector & I moved to the public sector. My colleagues often moan about how busy it is & Im like this is the dream. I earn about half of what I did but I like my job & have a life!

@blackwych the teachers I know seem to have very little reference of what work is like for others.

I think anyone who takes a moment to think about it knows teaching is not 9am-3pm.

But if any teacher takes a moment to think about other professions you might have better perspective of your own. For example, you're not a police officer where (if you're on the beat) you almost on a daily basis have the threat of assault. Or work in a competitive industry like TV where work are precarious and contracts can be as short as a couple of weeks. Or on an oil rig where you are away from family for long periods of time and any safety issues could have life ending results.

I don't know why teachers seem to need more appreciation than any of the professions above, I suspect it's because they are dealing with most people's prized possession - their children, and that somehow this makes their work more worthy and need of being explicitly appreciated?

@sillybean

Teachers seems to moan a lot about their working conditions but seem to do very little to try and change them, and therefore play the whole martyr card.

If classes are too big, and there is so much marking, planning etc. to be done - why is someone not lobbying for more teachers and smaller class sizes, so that everything is more manageable?

Unions have been doing this for a long time, but interestingly the government doesn’t really care. And there’s nothing we can really do about it.

I don't question teachers work hard , I do question that it goes beyond school hours but my God does mumsnet become the place for some of the most self involved embarrassingly martyrlike teachers I have ever seen. What do you mean they aren't given credit ? There is practically a thread every week about how underappreciated they are.

As is medical staff, care staff (my industry of choice) and every other industry.

OP do you and the other dramatically inclined teachers that post these things realise how lower on estimation the profession goes on here? I saw a post in covid where a teacher on mumsnet did a suitably dramatic post begging "oh please please just stop" ....from home where whilst I don't doubt they were challenging I had just got off a zoom with a care home manager in tears because they had lost 6 residents to Covid and blamed themselves (I have intricate knowledge of their infection control procedures and they absolutely weren't to blame at all). So yeah....my estimation of some teachers who feel the need to garner unending sympathy and praise drops dramatically.

Noone has had it easy , it's rare these days a job is a walk in the park but somehow on MN I only ever see teachers doing this rubbish. Thank goodness MN is not important.

Thankfully the teachers I know in real life are amazing people , tough job but they don't seem to resent it (sometimes the parents but I can't blame them for that even remotely).

You are killing your own cause with this sort of post.

What on earth was the point of starting a thread like this in the current climate? Everyone knows that MN hates teachers and are extremely unsympathetic towards them.
I am a teacher and I think YABU. I do my job, same as everyone else does. I don't expect a round of applause for that.

Don't question that it goes beyond school hours , I know it does for a fact , apparently autocorrect doesn't agree

I appreciate good teachers no doubt. But sometimes you can be blind to the good stuff in your own job.

So from the outside job security is a big plus, avoiding office politics, not being ousted when you get over 40, not having half the women leave after having dc.

I liked the sector I was in but they all have downsides, and upsides.

Also teacher v parent has been upped on mn over many threads, in both directions, irl it’s not the same.