Teachers and the current status quo

[Lifeisabeach09]

Maybe a teacher bashing thread or not, I can't decide.

My experience of this current lockdown is that my DD's teachers are streaming live or pre-recorded sessions from their homes. Support staff and teacher rotation are dealing with the kids in school. Learning is the same-school or home, it's streaming on Ipads, so the children are being treated fairly.

Surely, not have to deal with 30 unruly kids, not having to discipline, and being able to pre-record lessons or even livestream from home has made life easier (lovelier??) for some teachers. Obviously, each school is different and teachers situations are different (own kids, etc).

Any teachers enjoying the new status quo or AIBU?

I’m a secondary teacher and apart from management being nobs, and making us responsible for attendance as well as teaching (at the same time...), I am enjoying the rest. Much easier to sit down all day, have snacks, drink tea. I am enjoying the change of pace and lack of behaviour to deal with.

I’ve had a long day teaching from 8:40 until 4:30 - we are still doing compulsory unpaid after school intervention for gcse groups. I then spent 4:30-7 calling parents chasing up missing work, which is my problem and not theirs because I have to prove progress to show I can do my job, I can directly see in a classroom if they are working or not I can’t see if they’ve logged in and walked off. I had my tea at 7 which my partner cooked again as I haven’t had time to do it once during the week since going back after Christmas. I have been marking since tea and I’m now having a 5 minute break reading this delightful thread before I start adapting and uploading tomorrow’s work.

But it’s all worth it because I now have the amazing opportunity of being able to go to the toilet without holding my bladder for 4 hours in school. It’s fucking brilliant.

If I'm being totally honest, I did enjoy the first lockdown.

This one is an absolute pain in the ass though. I'd rather just be in work than trying to teach remotely, home school my older ones, entertain the toddler and stop the dog from being a general nuisance.

I wanted schools to remain open though so my pov may be slightly skewed!

No, I don't like it. Weird thread. I can't imagine why you'd think home teaching was preferable from anyone's perspective. I think you are just up for a whinge but the ground's a bit thin isn't it.

I think you were polite and reasonable OP- not a covert teacher-hater!

DS is a maths teacher who loves his job with a passion. Normally. Remote teaching is twice the work for half the progress. Much of his teaching involves being able to judge whether a child has "got it", if not he will change tack and explain a different way. Its very difficult to make that assessment when you cannot see the class. It means sticking ridgidly to the plan.
Also thereis no fun or spontaneity which is often what makes the job rewarding.
The positives? No commute. He would far rather be in school.

I hate it tbh. It's a necessary evil to stop transmission of the virus, but right now I'm doing all the crap parts of teaching without the nice bits.

I love being in the classroom (mostly, possibly not with my worst behaved pupils). I really love the interaction with the kids, helping them understand, having a bit of a laugh, getting to know them, just generally being around so many young people. Now I'm at home, and my school's policy is to send prerecorded lessons so pupils can access them at different times to allow for lack of devices/poor internet. So I'm only doing live lessons twice a week. Those are the highlight of my week, because I get a tiny, tiny bit of interaction. The rest of the time I'm sitting at my dining table looking at a laptop, marking work that arrives at various times, planning lessons that I'm not sure if I'm pitching at the right level because I can't see if any of the kids are confused, and generally feeling isolated. I'm also working longer hours than I would at school, because it takes me longer to prepare each lesson, and it takes longer to respond to each bit of work, marking on paper is much quicker than marking online (using the system my school are using anyway, other systems might be quicker). Everything takes so much time.

So no, my life is different while the majority of pupils are at home, but it really isn't lovelier. Or easier. It's shit. But I'll do it, because I care about reducing infections, and I also care about the pupils I teach. I would far rather be in the classroom, but that's not safe for the community we live in, and I personally have conditions that put me at higher risk of complications (not death really, but hospitalisation or long covid)

I teach in a secondary school, currently I go into my classroom to do live lessons. I really dislike it. Most have their cameras off so you can't see if they're engaging, I spend most of my time chasing up work / ringing home to hear various excuses for not logging on. It's really frustrating. There are still behaviour issues with kids changing their name to inappropriate things / making daft noises on the microphone thinking you don't know who it is! I worry a lot about the kids who've dropped off the radar. I teach in a diverse school and some of my classes are abroad in their home countries, so we can't really check on them. I'm also spending more time planning because my usual lessons don't transfer over well to remote learning.

I'm hoping our head is going to let us work from home soon as I would like that - but would still rather be in school like normal (when we're all vaccinated).

Well, there can't be a status quo because we're in all in different schools teaching different subjects to different ages in different ways.

For some it will be harder, for others it will be easier.

Most (ime) will hate it but some will like it.

Some will cope very well, some will cope very badly and most will just about deal with it.

Personally:
I can't stand it. For the first week I cried for a good portion of every day. Now I occasionally get through a day without crying. I'm very isolated and miserable, my subject does not work well online and the children are so obviously missing doing it properly.

Physically, it's way easier for me to teach online. 75% of my extra curricular stuff is cancelled or postponed (theatre productions) so my hours are less than half what they would normally be at this time of year.

Mentally, it's relentless, joyless and makes you wonder what on earth the point in living is!

It seems this is something no one is allowed to talk about so I am glad the OP put her head over the parapet and mentioned the war. Its helpful to me to see everything all the teachers are doing, because I too was confused and now I know why. Hardly any of this is available through DD's school.

Parents aren't allowed to ask teachers for technical help - they have one person they can email. Phone calls are not allowed. If there is a technical problem its just tough. No work is marked, no feedback given. You can email head of year or a teacher if you want, but they chose whether or not to reply. All lessons are slides - you can hear the teacher's voice - here's the slide, this is what it says, write your notes, here's the next slide. There is a chat box where students can ask questions, mostly ignored.

There is no register, no one knows who is online or not. No complaints are accepted or responded to. My DD has SEN, this is now being disregarded completely. She can't cope with online learning (in common with other children with similar SE needs) and they just say well, that is what we are offering, so we cant be expected to offer SEN support if she can't cope with what we are offering, that's just parents being unreasonable.

I have to say this isn't a million miles away from what happens when the school is open. But I am glad that it seems that a lot of very conscientious and caring teachers are out there trying their best. Just a shame my DD never got to be in front of one of them. This is her final year so too late now.

I work in a secondary school. I am one of the support staff who is in school all week (no rotas for us) with the students while the teachers work from home.

We are dealing with behaviour, full classrooms, cajoling students to work, pastoral issues, safeguarding, trying to fill time because teachers have decided to finish their online lessons early.

Yes teachers have had to adapt the way they do things but it is different stresses.

The support staff (who are paid significantly less than teachers) are dealing with the day to day stresses with the constant fear of Covid.

The teachers I have spoken to all seem to be quite pleased to be away from the students for a while.

So in my opinion (where I work) teachers are having a much easier time.

I'm sure teachers will consider they are working hard- who doesn't.

But I don't think they are- not all of them.

And online teaching is a cop out for them.

Are you kidding, these teachers may also have families of their own and they have the pressure of teaching our children. Our teacher sends videos and tasks at all kinds of unruly hours! In a world when you can be anything be kind!!

@mineofuselessinformation

I'd love one for you.

No law saying you have to read the thread. Feel free to leave.

The only positives I can see for me compared to others on this thread are that I am allowed in my classroom so don't have to teach from home and we have a cameras on policy whereas it seems many have gone the opposite way.

@Daphnise

I'm sure teachers will consider they are working hard- who doesn't.

But I don't think they are- not all of them.

And online teaching is a cop out for them.

How do you work that one out?

DishingOutDone - none of that is acceptable. The school is not fulfilling its duty of care or education.

@Daphnise that’s just not true. You just don’t like teachers and think we are lazy.

@Barbie222

No, I don't like it. Weird thread. I can't imagine why you'd think home teaching was preferable from anyone's perspective. I think you are just up for a whinge but the ground's a bit thin isn't it.

Not at all. Plenty of other topics to whinge about.

I’ve done it all ways- taught online when we were isolating. It’s nice for a day or two but there’s no bounce back from the kids. I’m teaching a group of keyworker etc atm and that’s probably nicer except I’m bloody freezing and hate wearing a mask all day but I’m old and vulnerable (but not enough for an early vaccine) so need to try to be careful.
The best one is proper class proper day but normal (pre covid I guess) . You get the oomph from the kids and it just flows and it’s fun. I don’t mind the chat. My job makes me laugh and smile and mostly it’s good. I like kids. I suppose that’s why I do it!
It’s shit this covid lark.

It's shit. I became a teacher because I like people. I miss the interaction terribly. Most of our students are very reluctant to speak on Teams and a lot of the time I feel I'm speaking into the void. I also miss my lovely department and the camaraderie; WhatsApp etc isn't the same as being in the staffroom together.

Yes, not dealing with behaviour is a positive, but I also feel a bit powerless about those not engaging, though I luckily haven't had any bad behaviour on Teams.

The anxiety about exams is awful and I don't know if there's any point to half the things I'm doing. Workload is awful, largely because of emails. I'm doing about 7.30 - 3pm with very minimal breaks, then about 7-10 in the evening too. Last week it was 7-11.30, but I caught up a bit at the weekend so this week has been a bit better.

The workload is big anyway, especially at this time of year, but the variety and fun has largely gone .

OP, by the same token, you don't have to post a clearly goady thread, and then say, far too far into it, 'oh whoops, maybe I'm wrong', meantime carrying on being goady.
And all for what? Based on your OP, that you have to discipline your own child, heaven forbid.

Can't believe (for the 1,055,948 time) that @MNHQ let these threads go on.

OP has done the faux naivete with partial goadiness admissions and its lasted this long.

@lifeisabeach09

The phrase is "I'm really sorry, I was wrong" and you amend your OP.

Just FYI.

Still gutted by this, as I am sure so many other teachers are.

I have one class of year 11s that I must admit I’m enjoying not having to teach face to face. There are a lot of ‘characters’ in the class and they all feed off each other. All sitting separately in their own homes they’re getting much more work done than usual (probably because they know I’ll be contributing to their assessment grades 😉) Otherwise I would rather be in class. I am in school every day as I have a pastoral role too - but live teach where I would usually have a lesson. The number of phone calls I’m making each day is ridiculous and I’ve just stopped working for the day at 22.15