Tell Me What It’s (really)Like To Be A Teacher

[LucilleBluth]

I have applied and been accepted for a couple of School Direct and SCITT places for 2022. I’m 40, I work in a special school in a support role and feel like now my own DCs are older that teacher training is something I want to pursue…I have a good degree.

I obviously work closely with teachers and have teacher friends… BUT MN is so so negative about teaching. Will some of you MN teachers tell me what you love/hate about teaching. Am doing the right bloody thing here?

You miss every single school event for your own children as you are doing it with other people's.

It depends on the school and your role. In the early days you spend a lot of time planning. I found full time exhausting. I worked in some schools where behaviour wasn't tackled well. That was draining.
Now I am part time, have given up my TLR, and absolutely love my job. But I am in a school with almost no behaviour challenges, have 14 years experience, and still spend the odd Sunday marking.

It really isn't family friendly except for holidays. I walk a lot in the evenings. It used to be the case that I could have a work life balance. It no longer is. I neglect my home and I have little time for myself or anyone else. I think about what I have to do all the time and I work long hours on my laptop planning and filling in constant records of progress. It is fairly insane. I am v robust and v well thouht of and it is killing me at the moment. I think this would only be different in a more practical area like pe etc as the lesson planning demands are much lower.

The kids make the job worthwhile. I had the great joy of teaching many amazing, clever, witty, perceptive, compassionate students. I also loved the camaraderie and humour of many colleague friends in the staffroom. I loved my subject - I never stopped learning myself, and I thrived on the challenges of exploring more deeply into new fields, especially when A Level specs totally changed he content and direction of my subject.

I hated the growing behaviour problems. The increasing number of feral kids who had no support and terrible home lives. The introduction of assertive discipline and Paul Dix which meant that SLT washed their hands of behaviour issues and expected me to cope with exceptionally challenging (and at time downright dangerous behaviour) in ever growing classes - the record was 35 in a room that could really only properly take 28 students. Having kids from other lessons dispatched to me because they had been difficult in their own lessons could add up to 5 or 6 more to my total.

As a HOD trying to mange some staff with only half an eye on teaching the subject and the rest on furthering their own career on the SLT ladder. They were experts at making a half assed effort on doing the assessment and data collection and book marking and lesson prep. Well, I'm sure they protected their own mental health and work life balance but they shattered mine as I had to work harder and longer to fill in the gaps. I was the one who had to face the constant SLT nitpicking in meetings. It's very hard to run a dept when you have members of the SLT and pastoral team to manage. Their other work will always be given priority over their teaching commitments.

Totally agree with pp - a good supportive HT will make or break you. I worked with some amazing HTs, until the last one. After 30 years of service the changes he made to my once lovely school were the last straw.

I did love teaching. Never a dull moment and the highs are amazing. But the lows are brutal.

@Lacroix11 you have it EXACTLY right about how to cope and what kind of people will struggle.

I am SLT so probably hated by many on this thread but we do take staff workload very seriously at my school. We have ways to reduce staff workload as a regular agenda item on slt meetings and really do try to look after staff welfare.

I also got to this point very slowly and steadily. I was a mainscale teacher for 8 years (with 2 maternity leaves in that time) then I was HoD for 6 years. I think schools where very young keen staff get swiftly promoted to slt can often be toxic in some ways.

You miss every single school event for your own children as you are doing it with other people's.

See this is an example of finding the right school. I started at my current school when my dc were 5 and 2. I've been able to see every one of their nativities because my school gave me Leave of absence- this is usually "repaid" by doing additional covers but is worth it and the flexibility is appreciated. (This was Before I was on slt)

I've heard similar horror stories about staff being asked to set cover work from their hospital beds. That would just NEVER happen at my school because the leadership are compassionate.

Also agree with @Lacroix11.
And that it's vital to pick the right school. My current Head, whilst having many faults, does not "do" unnecessary paperwork. That has been a life-saver.
Your colleagues can make or break you. If you're lucky enough to have a lively, supportive, vibrant and conscientious team to bounce ideas off, it's great. If not, it can be very isolating. But I guess that's the same in all lines of work.

In all the (many) years I've been teaching, I can honestly say I have never been bored or clock-watched. Every day is varied and (usually) fun.
But it's tiring and relentless, particularly as I'm now nearing the end. Days that I used to be able to manage easily, now exhaust me.

I've heard similar horror stories about staff being asked to set cover work from their hospital beds. That would just NEVER happen at my school because the leadership are compassionate.

The problem is that even if you leave and find a supportive school leadership changes and what may start off as a compassionate school with an understanding slt can quickly become just as toxic as the one you left. Its great you have found such a fab school and I hope it stays that way but I sadly wouldn't be surprised if it did eventually change, I've seen it happen in way too many lovely schools.

The problem is that even if you leave and find a supportive school leadership changes and what may start off as a compassionate school with an understanding slt can quickly become just as toxic as the one you left.

I agree. Lovely schools with supportive leadership and a healthy work life balance are rare, and getting rarer by the year.

The problem is that even if you leave and find a supportive school leadership changes and what may start off as a compassionate school with an understanding slt can quickly become just as toxic as the one you left. Its great you have found such a fab school and I hope it stays that way but I sadly wouldn't be surprised if it did eventually change, I've seen it happen in way too many lovely schools.

Well that's very cheery and optimistic!

Something I'm a bit perplexed about....I have been teaching for over 15 years, and when I started there were Sats in y9, there was coursework and then the nightmare of controlled assessment which meant that huge pressure was put on teachers to inflate marks and "game" the system. There were faddy trends like VAK, marking fads like APP which over complicated planning and assessment.

Now, a system of mostly 100% exams has meant the pressure with coursework has pretty much disappeared. No y9 sats. There is much more of an emphasis on high quality teacher explanation and direct instruction which has simplified planning. Yes gove's reforms and new specs resulted in huge amounts of work but some of those specs have been in place for 5 years now so teachers have had a chance to build up plans/expertise, many hods encourage collaborative planning to help workload. Yes Covid has resulted in HUGE challenges and the workload of TAGS was horrific but before that things were heading in the right direction. So I don't understand the "worse than it's ever been" narrative.

A pp mentioned Paul Dix. I think the move towards 'restorative' behaviour management in quite a few schools has been horrendous for teaching. Behaviour in classes became appalling with the focus being on keeping the naughty kid in the room rather than sending them out, ruining endless lessons. Workload for behaviour skyrocketed as responsibility for every incident of misbehaviour fell to individual teachers to deal with with outrageous expectations of 'restorative conversations' before the next lesson with kids who did not give a toss and saw it as license to endlessly piss around while teachers got the blame.

Thank god a lot of schools are now moving away from it.

School funding cuts, lack of TA support, no funding for SEN and massive waiting lists for CAMHs have also heaped a pile of crap on schools in recent years.

So I don't understand the "worse than it's ever been" narrative

None of the ‘positives’ you mention affect primary-it really is as bad here as it’s ever been.

Yes sorry, I am obviously speaking from a secondary perspective. From a pastoral perspective I agree that cuts to CAHMS etc have had a negative impact and a huge amount is expected of pastoral staff, and we really do try to look after them. We now offer supervision which tells you everything you need to know about the toll they face on a daily basis.

Dix and restorative approach is dreadful IMO, we didn't do it but pleased it is going in schools I know who did leap on that particular bandwagon.

I mostly love it. There are times in the year when it's draining e.g. December when everyone is ill with colds, tired, trying to prepare for Christmas and then we have to mark mock exams on top of all that. There has been the odd class that I have genuinely dreaded teaching because of their behaviour but they are few and far between. I have been in my school for a good few years so have good relationships with pupils, parents and other staff which helps. Also my HOD is awesome and very supportive.
In my last school I was HOY which was incredibly stressful. I lost every single PPA period and lunch break to deal with incidents, phone parents etc and often had meetings with parents before and after school which meant I ended up bringing home all my planning and marking and working most of the weekend. I was often ill and looking back it was the stress of it all. I am much happier "just" being a classroom teacher.
I think the longer you are in teaching the easier it becomes in many ways because you build up a bank of resources, ideas and strategies instead of having to micro-plan every minute of every lesson and the kids are more co-operative when they know and trust you.

Name changed to post this! Might not finish writing before I post as I’m feeding baby but hopefully you will get just!

In MY experience: taught for over 10 years. If your HOD is a psycho then it’s hell. I got outstanding in every single lesson observation (shows my age as no longer assessed). Then I went off on maternity to have eldest. Came back and HOD made my life hell and suddenly outstanding teacher became a failing teacher! - other teachers might be able to fill in why in more detail (but imagine now I wasn’t able to do every single holiday catch up for failing kids or stay till the caretaker kicks me out as he needs to lock school up for the evening). My pay progression was stopped even tho I did everything I was supposed to. I was in same pay scale for years and was told maybe next year. HOD kept failing me.

I thought maybe just that school so got job in another school a d different issues.

In short my experience was great when I killed myself for school and had zero life but when I had kids to think about…

I work part time in hew job but they EXPECT me to still come in for meetings etc. On days off snd do training sessions. I hate it but don’t know what to do. I’m getting butterflies about tomorrow. I absolutely hate it.

@bentleydrummle This is an interesting perspective- I’ve worked in two outstanding schools (as support and a teacher) and there was a constant sense of striving in both of them so you were never able to just stop and say - oh yeah everything is actually going pretty well let’s just keep on doing what we’re doing. One of them was very business like in its structure and there was a top layer and an extra middle layer of management who had to keep making you do tasks that were maximum effort for minimum reward. Some people really thrived on this because the actual teaching requirement seemed quite low. It was a bit like working in a think tank that happened to also be a school. Writing about it has reminded me how glad I am not to work there any more.

Well, I turned down another secondary level teaching job in order to pick online shopping orders for a supermarket, so make of that what you will. Life is good now.

I taught coursework and controlled assessment for 26 years and l never overinflated marks.

We need a combination of coursework and exams imo.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow no but there was definitely pressure to in a some schools.

Controlled assessment was HORRIFIC

who on earth came up with a system in which teachers were responsible for effectively invigilating exams which they also marked - recipe for disaster

I liked it. And it was moderated.

I think it was also terrible educationally. I teach English Lit. For CA students used to study a couple of scenes in a Shakespeare play and then write a CA essay about it. Now they need to study it properly and to know the full text inside out because they could get any scene as the exam extract. This leads to a much richer and more rewarding experience of the play IMO.

I do agree with @bentleydrummle

I dread CAs coming back.

I think it must depend on the subject. I taught DT. They still have NEA now.

I used to love teaching it and marking it.

From a workload pov I hated coursework and controlled assessments. With coursework it was all the chasing to get it handed in and then all the marking which would take most of the Easter holiday. Controlled assessment was a bit better but it was still a logistical nightmare to ensure that everyone who was entitled to extra time got the right amount of time (as this wouldn't fit into the lesson necessarily so meant they had to do extra sessions at lunch/after school) and also making sure that anyone who was absent got the chance to catch up. This meant a lot of after school sessions on top of all the usual revision classes, detentions etc.
However, whilst it has made my life easier I do think I the coursework was more fair on those who really struggle with exams, anxiety etc and I also think that researching and writing up a detailed analytical report backed up with data etc is a far more useful skill for the workplace than sitting exams.

@HumbugWhale I think this is why the EPQ is SO much better than General Studies A-Level.