To think many parents don't know what schools are like these days?

[AyeAyeShipAhoy]

It's something I've noticed quite a bit on many threads about teachers and schools. Some parents refer back to their own school days and use that to inform them as to what happens, but things have very much changed since I was at school.

As a teacher (primary) it's one of the hardest jobs I've done (this is my 2nd career, I was in management before so used to hard work and pressure). For one, the workload is huge and regularly spills into my evenings and weekends, affecting my own family time. Then there's the behaviour. But it's also one of the most rewarding jobs too and why I enjoy it.

The positives - a child that has struggled with a concept, getting it right and feeling proud of themselves, and knowing you made a difference. Supporting those kids who can struggle with their learning.

The negatives - being verbally abused - called a f*ing a*hole, cnt and a paedophile. Told to fuck off and been slapped and kicked and dodged flying objects thrown over the years.

I'll be honest, in my first career I never considered this was what was happening in schools. I remember being at school and kids doing low level stuff (humming, whole toilet rolls down the loo - this at secondary though - primary was fine!). It's been a real eye opener seeing what behaviour is like now.

So, teachers, what's your best and worst experiences.

And parents, how aware are you of what actually happens in schools and the workload? Are you aware? Or is this an eye-opener for you too?

PS I feel teaching is a hard job, but not THE hardest job, so this thread is not meant as a competition.

Worse things. Students filming in class. Being told to fuck off. Physical fights, chairs thrown, students who run the lesson for everyone else. Having to keep very very disruptive teenagers in lessons. I'm in Ireland so they can't be expelled and usually 16 before they can move to Youthreach. The challenge in teaching is that every single person has to at school. There is no other place in society where every single person has to legally attend.

The best parts for me are the holidays.

I really feel for teachers at the moment. An already difficult job has been made so much harder by COVID. I don't relate current times to my own school days, my daughters education is thankfully very different.

My child has autism and has just started reception with an EHCP that means she has full time 1-1 support. In 'my day' at school that would have meant she was ferried off with the other 'special' kids to one classroom where they were kept away from the other 'normal' children. Thankfully this doesn't (or shouldn't) happen anymore.

We're really fortunate that my child is high functioning and just needs help to manage her emotions in order to learn. She's doing fabulously and the school are doing an amazing job. We're also very lucky that she's in a tiny and well staffed class.

However there is another child who also has an EHCP who has autism and various learning and communication difficulties in the class, (with full time 1-1) and her mother is desperate for her to go to a specialist school. She's already deferred a year she's nearly six. However she can't go until she's been through the motions in mainstream. This poor child cannot possibly cope in mainstream school, but it'll probably take a year or two for her to be moved to somewhere she can cope with and where she will hopefully flourish. Nothing school or mum can do except go through the long and arduous process.

Aside from the two children who have EHCPs, the teacher also has an undiagnosed non verbal child to help, and a child who is undiagnosed - and may yet be neurotypical - but who is violent, disruptive and extremely challenging.

All this in one small class. Frankly the 1-1 TAs for the children with EHCPs end up half the time having to also manage the other children with difficulties. For my child this is actually ok, because it is good for her not to become fixated on one adult, and as long as she has AN adult to be her safe space, she's fine and I'm happy for them to move her around as they see fit. However the other child really needs that 1-1 always and currently is having to 'share' them with the other children who also need help but don't have the provision.

I hope they don't think I interfere. I try my best to work positively with the school, I listen to their feedback and I'm happy to try different things with my child to see how they work. At the end of the day I am the expert in my child, and to an extent when it comes to her they need to listen to me, but they are experts in children in general and in education and I would be foolish to ignore their expertise in turn.

As I said I'm lucky. I trust them, and I'm finding (just a month in) that they're doing great. 💐to all of you teachers out there, it's tough at the moment.

I started teaching primary in the early 80s.
My planning for the day was a sheet of A4 notes, little differentiation required, feedback mostly verbal and marking involved ticks and underlining. Behaviour was reasonable, with occasionally challenging individuals. Parents tended to stay out of school unless there was a major issue.
It’s not like that now.

Also we the teachers were free to go off on a tangent as they didn't have to stick to the planning. I still remember the things I learned which were not part of any curriculum. Lessons about life. We did topics which were interesting and related to the environment in which we lived. You weren't always told why you were told the facts and told to remember them.
On the downside I had a teacher who loved sport. In his class if it was nice weather he would take us all outside and play cricket. The problem was I wasn't very good and rather than teach us how to play he concentrated on all the sporty kids. The rest of us just stood about doing nothing whilst he and the sporty kids had the time of their lives.

Also we the teachers were free to go off on a tangent as they didn't have to stick to the planning. I still remember the things I learned which were not part of any curriculum. Lessons about life. We did topics which were interesting and related to the environment in which we lived.

That was one of the elements I really enjoyed, and years later, it’s often one of the things ex-pupils mention when I meet them.

I teach in the Scottish secondary system. In my 10 years as a fully qualified teacher the exam system has changed beyond recognition. So in my first few years I created resources for one set of exams. Then we had nationals so a year of rewriting for that, followed immediately by a year of revising once we had been through the qualification properly and seen the exams. Then just a couple of years later there was a full revision by the SQA followed by another couple of years of us changing our resources to suit. Maybe the curriculum didn't change much when most of the posters here were at school but that doesn't reflect the current situation.

Parents are far more involved in their child(ten)'s education now which means we are under far more scrutiny from senior management.

Oh, and there are a large number of pupils who have needs that would not have been mainstream when most posters were at school but who are now in classrooms with their age group - in some cases working at a level 10 years or more below. But planning appropriate relevant work for those children (as well as trying to ensure that their inclusion in the class doesn't impact progress for their class mates) is also just part of the day's work for me.

I'm not for a moment saying we have it harder than other professions. I do think we have the issue that everyone (as in literally everyone - parents, the public, the media) has extensive experience of being in the school system therefore think they are experts at knowing what we do - not an issue for say a city banker, a lawyer or a doctor.

DH is a primary school teacher so I have a better understanding than many parents. He's had a kid bring a (BB) gun to school and hold it to another kids head, various incidents of hitting and running away from school or at least trying to. These were in schools in rural and costal areas, places that would be considered nice by most people.

The work is ridiculous too. The curriculum changes all the time, as does the understanding of the best ways to deliver it. After school clubs aren't happening at the moment and meetings are more often online which is nice for us because he's home by 6 most evenings for a change. He still has to be in by 8 in the mornings to get things ready though so it's rare for the kids to see him in the morning even though it's only a 20 minute drive.

I loved the holidays! And some of the most rewarding experiences of my life happened in the classroom. I loved the feeling of opening up a student’s mind and the pride they felt when they achieved.

What I think parents don’t know is the terrible extent of underfunding since Tory austerity and how badly this affects every child’s education. When I started out, I had teaching assistants (secondary) and we worked as a team to support individual needs. Then some research apparent proved that TAs were not effective so they got cut. Then a huge range of SEN was downgraded so kids didn’t qualify for any extra support. One reason I left was because it had become impossible to meet every complex, challenging need in classes of 34 at a time with no help.

The early comment about teaching the same material year on year goes to show how people don’t understand the job. I might be teaching the same text two years consecutively but one year to a lively top set and a quiet but struggling lower set, next year it’s with an unmotivated top set and a huge middle ability set that’s had all the children with behavioural issues thrown in together with chaotic results. I need completely different lessons, different pacing, different tasks, different focus - each lesson needs rewriting for that particular group.

Then there was SLT’s need to justify their existence by insisting on new teaching strategies every fecking week (in one particular academy chain) - take risks in the classroom! Try something new! Don’t do that thing you know works because we’ve decided it doesn’t now! Oh and made sure you make rapid and outstanding progress just the same!

I’ve been out of it a year and I don’t really miss it!

Bad behaviour from pupils has always been around, but it seems to be far worse than when I was in school. The responsibility for bad behaviour and language lies at the door of parents. By being neglectful in their parenting, they are making the lives of teachers more difficult and taking time away from actual teaching. Then they complain when their child is disciplined for bad behaviour. Children don’t learn this behaviour at school, they learn it in the home.

I would be interested to hear from teachers how much teaching time percentage wise they feel they spend dealing with disruptive behaviour. From what I read on some threads, I would guess at 40%, possibly more.

No, it’s not an easy job ,far from it. I know for certain I couldn’t do it.

And you are contactable all the time. Anyone can access my work email via the school website

Do people expect a reply at all hours? shock I'm contactable on my work email at all hours too, but people accept that they generally don't get a reply late at night

I doubt people expect a reply at 10pm at night. But the contacts are often on a Friday night - about homework due on a Monday. So yes, I guess they are expecting me to magically fix Teams for them over the weekend.

The email issue should be easily handled by an email from the Head to all pupils and parents stating that emails will not be read or responded to outside normal working hours and teachers will aim to respond within their next working day. Teachers should put an out of office message on out of hours and over the weekend.

I have emailed teachers in the evening because that is when I have time to do it. I don’t expect a response out of hours or over the weekend.

@HamishDent I felt like behaviour declined significantly over the years I was teaching with the most noticeable difference by last year being a deterioration in student’s attention span and a genuine outrage if they were expected to do anything they didn’t want to do (like write for 20 minutes or longer - this was GCSE English btw 😂). Phones, social media and gaming had a significant and detrimental effect on behaviour in school - they wanted to be constantly entertained, constantly in contact with their friends, genuinely agitated by the idea that they had to switch their phones off at school and tired from being up in the night on screens. It certainly made a lot of students a lot harder to teach.

Also @HamishDent there was no time in my working day to read and respond to emails so like many teachers, I did have to do it evenings and weekends so an OOO wouldn’t have worked. I was ok with working outside my hours but that’s because I went part time two years into my career so that I could actually have a day off every week.

I agree Captain that games and phones etc have had a detrimental affect on pupils. I have seen it in my own children. Suddenly, reading a book becomes hard work, when it was seen as a leisure activity when I was a child. Access to 24h spoon fed entertainment is a problem and can easily get out of control if parents don’t police it. It’s all too easy to just let children get on with it so you can do what you need to get done. I’m guilty of this as a parent, especially during lockdown when I was working.

I think some people are genuinely naïve, not out of malice or selective ignorance, but because they see their child's education through their eyes, they are generally happy with their child's education and don't see what goes into it. I understand that. I wouldn't know where to start with what goes into my GP doing their job, but as a patient I like them and appreciate their work and sympathy.

Then there's the second group who don't know what it's like in schools, but unlike the first group they have a monumental chip on their shoulder so have no intention of finding out. It's very comfortable for them to sit in their little echo chamber where teachers are lazy, hate kids, are on power trips, work 9-3, couldn't manage in the 'real world'. Those people can be found starting goady threads on Mumsnet about how 'teachers want the schools to close' or 'teachers get paid not to do their job'. Then if teachers challenge the silly ranting, daft assertions and general goading, these people take that as more confirmation that they're right.
You get conversations like this:
OP: teachers want all the schools to close because they want even more holidays. AIBU to think they'd not manage in the real world where most people work hard without all the holidays
Teachers: Actually, we don't want the schools to close but we would like better planning. Just for your information, we don't work 9-3 and there's lots you don't see.
OP: Look everyone teachers think they have the hardest job in the world. See, they're always starting threads saying how their job is harder than anyone else's.

🙄

The mention of naice schools in privedged areas made me have a wry smile....the proportionality highest referred of CaHMS and Eating Disorders in our area is the very desirable Grammar, draling with this cohort takes time and emotional effort too

I love teaching, I really do. I enjoy the fact that I never teach the same thing twice. The workload is high, but I have worked in other professions with high workloads (admittedly better paid) and I have made my peace with it.

The challenge is behaviour. Some classes can have four or five really disruptive, high tariff children in them. In years gone by, they would have been placed in alternative settings. There are less and less resources to help these pupils. I’m all for inclusion, but often, I think we do some children a disservice by insisting they join mainstream. My most difficult pupils, often become very dear to me by the end of the year, after all they are often the ones who need the most love and understanding, but the other pupils often miss out due to constant disruption.

Currently, we have three very high tariff infant children, who kick and bite staff and children, call everyone c**ts amongst other things. Imagine being a pupil in that class subjected to that every day. Many of them are terrified. Often, the only solution is for support staff (who are grossly underpaid) to remove the child (of course, they are not allowed to touch the child so must coax them out) and try to find ways to placate them, often being subjected to violence and abuse themselves.

I’ve worked with classes where it is normal to have chairs thrown across the room, paper and artwork ripped off the walls, pencil pots and other resources (bought with our own money) deliberately smashed. All we are allowed to do is calmly remove the rest of the children from the room. You spend half the year utilising all your strategies to calm the child and getting them to a place where EVERYONE can learn, only to pass them to another teacher at the end of the year and the cycle begins again as they lose their one trusted adult.

There ought to be a better way.

Hamish definitely! I really struggle with it as a parent myself. I don’t think there is an easy answer. And I spend too much time on my phone myself so I’m hardly a shining example!

I'm a parent. I can't get over how much nicer the teachers are from how I remember them.
And how seriously they take minor pastoral problems these days.
I'm sure the majority of "issues" I've been to the teachers with...simply wouldn't have been considered part of their job when I was at school.

"You moved my kid onto a different table and now his former best friend is playing with someone else"-
No problem we'll do a special circle time about how to ask people of they want to play...

"My kid is keeping up with the rest of the class but I feel like he'd be even cleverer if he didn't have ADD"-
Yes I've noticed that too. And I'm making a special reward chart to encourage him to focus....and if he wants to bring in his chewy necklace thats fine too"

Its great. Its how it should be. But my Mum would have been laughed out of the classroom if she'd come winging about any of that.

I was a teacher. I am now a TA (so not unqualified as some people believe)
I have a 16 yo DS and a 13YO DD.

I say with all honesty that teaching broke me. I am still not better. My mental health is shot. For me the breaking point was the CONSTANT scrutiny - lesson plans took longer to prepare than tewaching the damn lessons because they HAD to contain all the questions I would ask etc. The marking with " 3 stars and a wish" in a specific colour pen. The highlighting pieces of written work to pick out targets etc.

This week at work (I'm a 1-1 TA although I work with several children) I was sworn at, had a bag thrown at me, I've hurt my shoulder restraining a child because they were trying to beat up another one and I've spent quite a bit of my own money on resources (am also an ELSA - emotional literacy support assistant) The child that swore at me etc is not 'my' 1-1 charge.
My class teacher has regularly been in work until 7 or 8pm. She has no children but I can see she is exhausted and we have 3 weeks to go.
Staggered starts and breaks mean we have children in our room from 8.45 until 3.30 (I'm paid from 9.15.......)

I find it hard to compare my experience of school to now - purely because I went to a selective, tiny convent school and then a grammar school!

I agree @unlimiteddilutingjuice . If I'd have complained to my mother (in the early/mid 90s for primary so not that long ago) that I was sat next to someone I didn't like, or my best friend had been moved she'd have told me tough luck, that I was there to learn not to chat to my friend. She wouldn't have dreamed of going into school to moan about it.

Bullying or if I'd been sat next to someone that was truly disruptive or violent etc then of course she'd have had something to say then but just 'I don't like what the teacher has done'? Not a chance. I sometimes think we fail to prepare our children for the real world - if you have someone in your team at work that you don't like you can't just moan you don't like them can you? You have to learn to get on with it!

@essexmum777 This is your experience OP, not all schools are like this.

Of course, but I posted so that other staff and parents could say what it's like where they are. Are you a parent, or do you work in school?

If a parent, how much do you know about what your child's school is like? If you work in a school, what's your experience?

When I started teaching in the early 90s my planning was on an A4 sheet. Now I have to do 4 plans including differentiation, questions, vocabulary, etc. I timed myself when I completed it yesterday at home. It took from 10am to 9pm on a Saturday. I stopped for lunch, tea and phone call to the doctors. So probably 8 hours in total for my weekly planning. I can't use last year's as it now has to be on a different format and the curriculum has changed again.

@JeffVaderneedsatray I feel so much sympathy for you. The micromanaging is very dispiriting. Putting all your questions on a lesson plan benefits nobody. Part of the skill of teaching is knowing which question to ask of which child at which time and it’s a natural, organic part of the lesson. Plus their response (or lack of) then leads to more questioning or a different strand of questioning which teachers are capable of improvising. Writing them down before is insane unless perhaps it’s a new or student teacher who needs to focus on developing the art of effective questioning.

@Whiskas1Kittens

When I started teaching in the early 90s my planning was on an A4 sheet. Now I have to do 4 plans including differentiation, questions, vocabulary, etc. I timed myself when I completed it yesterday at home. It took from 10am to 9pm on a Saturday. I stopped for lunch, tea and phone call to the doctors. So probably 8 hours in total for my weekly planning. I can't use last year's as it now has to be on a different format and the curriculum has changed again.

Whiska’s that’s crazy. I thought teaching was meant to be trying to get away from the crazy levels of planning. I’m secondary and my school are genuinely trying to reduce planning and marking time. Planning questions in advance and writing them up is insane.