If you left the corporate world to go into teaching what was the biggest shock?

[coodawoodashooda]

Just wondering. Usually we have threads from fed up teachers. Im a teacher, not looking for a fight. Just interested.

I dont know how to teach, but i assume English teachers arent collectively deciding to make it harder than it needs to be for the fun of it. I assume the framework they operate in and are accountable to, expects it is done roughly the way it us done.

Otger countries have different systems - they might be better. But our government hasnt set that system up.

I left corporate in my 20s, not to teach but to be a nurse. I only did 2 years but blimey anyone dealing with the public day in day out in either nursing or teaching totally has my respect— it’s neverending , tiring and large amounts of the public are off their rockers!! Saying that it was also the job I enjoyed most and the most rewarding and surprisingly as lots of it is sad, it’s the job where I had some of the biggest laughs and the best colleagues.

Other countries have different systems - they might be better. But our government hasnt set that system up.

Exactly. Teaching is very different in other countries, especially in those that work from textbooks. But it's no good posters berating UK teachers for not making their lives easier by planning and teaching in a different way, when the government and ofsted won't allow it.

Ireland sounds wonderful. Are their kids' outcomes better, worse or the same as ours?

@Crikeyalmighty

I’ve heard some terrible stories of nurses infighting on wards. It put me off!!

When SMT show worth by introducing and monitoring new initiatives there is an inbuilt demand for new teaching methods/documents/powerpoints. New management = new reworking of everything. Ofsted readjustment = newer still reworking. Too many self important wankers sure but really the problem is with the system and govt. what the govt has done to funding, SEND and curriculum is appalling. Not that it’s only schools - colleges have been fucked over too or at least the lowest attaining/ vulnerable learners are. Certainly it’s not the time to have dyscalculia or dyslexia but be otherwise capable.

It wouldn't be rote learning, it would be the gold standard of lesson plans, surely no one thinks they are the absolute best at everything. Bollocks you differentiate for 30 children!

I’m not a teacher but in my experience of having two kids with very different learning styles and abilities, teachers do need to differentiate across the class. And my kids teachers do that very effectively given the abilities I know they have in their classes including my daughter who has quite complex learning difficulties. There’s no such thing as one size fits all if kids are to learn effectively and, more importantly, if school is going to be an enjoyable experience for them. The teachers ability to engage across a spectrum of abilities has helped my daughter cope with mainstream school. I have so much admiration for them.

Planning and delivering good lessons is the best part of teaching! Every class is different, even the same class is different period 1 on a Tuesday and period 5 on a Thursday. Sometimes half the kids are out having HPV vaccinations, sometimes half the kids are "working" via Teams.

I know that last thing on a Friday when my year 9s come to me from PE, they always come in late, in dribs and drabs, so it's best if I start with a fun game for those who made an effort to be on time. And so on and so on.

Standardised lesson plans would remove the last bit of joy from teaching!

Crocus 776

At first I thought you were trolling but actually your 'standardised planning' suggestion is exactly what is happening in phonics. The government is compiling an approved list of phonics schemes that primary schools must choose from. This enables schools to at least select a scheme that is right for their context. I don't actually have a problem with this, as long as schools are free to adapt lessons as they see fit according to their pupils' needs and understanding. I would have a problem if teachers were prohibited from doing this, which is why your 'gold standard' idea is too prescriptive to work. I do think that something needs to give because the current way is just not working.

Agreed Doobry. What the overwhelming urge to standardise has done is , while improving the bottom end of teaching to some degree, to reduce creativity and personalisation. It has also driven out some of the very best teachers as their natures are rarely conformist.

I have had 150+ kids through my room today. Have taught classes, emailed numerous parents, put two cpoms referrals through, spent lunch with pupil whose violence was putting us all at risk and led some training, still need to mark a class set, gather some evidence for an ongoing issue and upload resources before bed. I was in from 7.45-6.25pm. The issue of lesson plans vanishes really. At least 12 of my learners today had their work significantly personalised and many more got extra support. It’s genuinely a funny job and one that would be much better if we had more time and resources.

@monkeysox

You're always"on". In corporate you have deadlines but not five per day to differing audiences with different needs. For school Work before work so have work to do at work that creates more work for you to mark. Relentless

A friend says teaching is like playing in the cup final 5 times a day, 5 days a week with no time for training/physio/rehab or anything else! He was a late starter to teaching and like others mentioned the work load shock compared with working in the private sector. I taught with a nurse who'd re-trained to teach biology and who quit after less than a year because she couldn't hack the workload and the verbal abuse and went back to working on A&E in a large northern city.

The standardized plans thing haopens i Michaela-esque schools and is quite controversial. We have one near us. Funnily enough you wont see the private school sector adopting it...

IDK if it's the same today as it was when I had the conversation, but the French teach a completely standardised curriculum across France and the overseas territories, so that a child changing school from Martinique to Marseilles over a weekend would be going into school to have the same topic being covered in their lesson as they would have had if they hadn't moved. I dislike it for being so prescriptive, and quashing brilliant non-conformists, but as a recipe for standardisation of content and minimising the risk of missing material, it levels the playing field.

@Flipflopssndsocks

The 150 figure stood out for me. That’s 150 teenagers - and as a teacher you have a running narrative in your mind the whole time of who, what, where, parents, personal stuff, behaviour, progress, ability, personality for all of those that you need to be able to pull up to the forefront of your mind at any moment.

I think when you are ‘switched’ on in a job it is for short bursts of continuity whether it’s the checkout worker on the toll during a busy period or the lawyer in court but I don’t know if a job (maybe a & e) where you run through a huge amount of different personalities all demanding on your time and attention, whilst differentiating as you deliver a lesson on yr 12 King Lear then 45 minutes later, a yr 9 novel, then yr 8 language, then possibly, a yr 10 Macbeth. Whilst constantly interrupted by tannoy announcements, admin issues, behaviour issues, personality issues, etc whilst holding that intensity one step ahead of energetic teenagers.
It’s the physicality combined with the mental load (nearly always in my case caused by absent management and poor resources) that is wearing.

Then when a parent complains about (real life example) teaching her daughter Shakespeare even though I knew she didn’t like it and I was being unfair on insisting she studied it - GCSE exam class.

Or someone saying your display didn’t look great...

I found that the schools I worked in had already imploded and most staff were in a frantic head space that then compounded problems and clear thinking wouldn’t work because they had got comfortable where they were and were petrified of change. That was often a testimony of how much of themselves they had put in to the job and how much it had taken out of them.

Solutions to stop this happening (esp for young teachers who shouldn’t get all this dumped on them) might not ideologically be perfect but I think something has to give.

But you really wouldn’t believe some of the things parents say to teachers. I think it is parental extinct to protect their children from criticism and the whole set up must make parents feel on the defensive as the immediate response is always to turn it straight on teacher.

I would like to see parents given school support days from their work place (!) where they could attend days out as a parent guide, come in and read, help out with annual play, etc.

That would be an eye opener for some as teaching is possible to do for a session. A day. A week. But then week in, week out, the sheer drudgery of projecting your voice whilst thinking of Shakespeare and battling your way through corridors mid break is a particular hell I never want to experience again.

*The 150 figure stood out for me. That’s 150 teenagers - and as a teacher you have a running narrative in your mind the whole time of who, what, where, parents, personal stuff, behaviour, progress, ability, personality for all of those that you need to be able to pull up to the forefront of your mind at any moment.

I think when you are ‘switched’ on in a job it is for short bursts of continuity whether it’s the checkout worker on the toll during a busy period or the lawyer in court but I don’t know if a job (maybe a & e) where you run through a huge amount of different personalities all demanding on your time and attention, whilst differentiating as you deliver a lesson on yr 12 King Lear then 45 minutes later, a yr 9 novel, then yr 8 language, then possibly, a yr 10 Macbeth. Whilst constantly interrupted by tannoy announcements, admin issues, behaviour issues, personality issues, etc whilst holding that intensity one step ahead of energetic teenagers.
It’s the physicality combined with the mental load (nearly always in my case caused by absent management and poor resources) that is wearing.*

This is why I failed in a classroom aged over 50... I could not summon the energy to do it for very long or enough will to want to. And so, keen willing volunteer career-changing entrants to the profession, who could be quite good, are sacrificed.

@Jellycatspyjamas

It wouldn't be rote learning, it would be the gold standard of lesson plans, surely no one thinks they are the absolute best at everything. Bollocks you differentiate for 30 children!

I’m not a teacher but in my experience of having two kids with very different learning styles and abilities, teachers do need to differentiate across the class. And my kids teachers do that very effectively given the abilities I know they have in their classes including my daughter who has quite complex learning difficulties. There’s no such thing as one size fits all if kids are to learn effectively and, more importantly, if school is going to be an enjoyable experience for them. The teachers ability to engage across a spectrum of abilities has helped my daughter cope with mainstream school. I have so much admiration for them.

But do you expect your DD with 'quite complex learning difficulties' to equal her sibling @Jellycatspyjamas?

Because that seems to be the expectation of the system, which teachers adopt as the measure of competence.

@Jellycatspyjamas

It wouldn't be rote learning, it would be the gold standard of lesson plans, surely no one thinks they are the absolute best at everything. Bollocks you differentiate for 30 children!

I’m not a teacher but in my experience of having two kids with very different learning styles and abilities, teachers do need to differentiate across the class. And my kids teachers do that very effectively given the abilities I know they have in their classes including my daughter who has quite complex learning difficulties. There’s no such thing as one size fits all if kids are to learn effectively and, more importantly, if school is going to be an enjoyable experience for them. The teachers ability to engage across a spectrum of abilities has helped my daughter cope with mainstream school. I have so much admiration for them.

But do you expect your DD with 'quite complex learning difficulties' to equal her sibling @Jellycatspyjamas?

Because that seems to be the expectation of the system, which teachers adopt as the measure of competence.

Sorry... double-posted.

Honestly XingMing my adhd is probably my best asset. I am mostly somewhere between twitchy to manic but the pressure makes me focus. I enjoy the frenetic multitasking and chose to work in a erm lively school as this suits me too. I do think there is a school or job for most types of teacher but it’s like dating - hard to find the one!

A careers event was organised at my school attended by professionals from various organisations. There was a pilot, lawyer, optician, engineer and several others from the corporate world. Each one sat at a 'station' and spent around 10 minutes with small groups of pupils talking about their career, what qualifications/training they undertook etc and to take questions. The event lasted 2 hours with a break in the middle. It was also supervised by teachers who removed a couple of pupils who were behaving inappropriately. At the end a few of the visitors commented on what an intense morning it had been and how there was no way they could do this permanently.

But do you expect your DD with 'quite complex learning difficulties' to equal her sibling @Jellycatspyjamas*?

Because that seems to be the expectation of the system, which teachers adopt as the measure of competence.*

No, of course not but I do expect her to receive an education that is accessible to her - ie differentiated to her learning style and ability, and I do expect her to be stretched in a way she can cope with. Which means teachers adapting the curriculum to meet her needs and adjusting their teaching style to meet her needs (along with those of the 24 other kids in her class). My point is that teaching is a highly skilled profession where standardised lessons (as suggested by a previous poster) just wouldn’t be appropriate particularly given the range of abilities in kids and the assumption of mainstreaming for kids with SEN.

@BlueBellsArePretty

That’s the thing - when we talk to other adults we have lots of shortcuts, references, etc that we rely on to much of the real conversation. With children, you are articulating everything all the time from this constructed persona of a ‘teacher’ - it’s the equivalent of an actor staying in character all day, everyday whilst also changing from Shakespeare to poetry to behaviour to classroom management all the while mentally building this all encompassing character that you rely on the children to believe in.

The truth of that is evident when children see you out of school, in your own clothes and cannot quite make sense of the fact that you exist outside of your ‘classroom’ (unless they have friends whose parents are teachers - even then they have built a relationship with that person you have created and it is difficult to emotionally and mentally carry that because, as an adult, you are carrying them to some degree.

@WarmWinterSun Have you considered teaching at university level? Depending on your area of expertise, some universities look for practitioners rather than career academics. That's the switch I made. It's still a major pay-cut, but less drastic and you get paid overtime. Plus you don't get any of the behavioural or parental issues teachers complain about.

@DoobryWhatsit

Planning and delivering good lessons is the best part of teaching! Every class is different, even the same class is different period 1 on a Tuesday and period 5 on a Thursday. Sometimes half the kids are out having HPV vaccinations, sometimes half the kids are "working" via Teams.

I know that last thing on a Friday when my year 9s come to me from PE, they always come in late, in dribs and drabs, so it's best if I start with a fun game for those who made an effort to be on time. And so on and so on.

Standardised lesson plans would remove the last bit of joy from teaching!

Absolutely. Left to my own devices I would have planned the crap out of every lesson, differentiated until the cows came home and enjoyed every bloody second of it. And even spared the time for my Self Reflection Journal! That was the essence of the job. Find a way to impart often dry information on a way every learner could grasp. Teach it, check it had gone in, work out why it hadn't, return to it a short while later, back again some time later. Check, double check, reinforce it, extend it, use it or lose it. THAT is what teaching is all about, those are the plates we keep spinning, the joy of it.

It was the constrictions, the imposed measured outcomes, goals, monitoring, evidencing, listing, tick boxing, fucking repetition for the SMT who had forgotten they had ever enjoyed teaching and bloody Ofsted plus The Goviot, La Morgan et al that sucked the joy from the job.

Yes the actual teaching and learning stuff is fine imo. It’s all the other crap that really ruins the job. And we have too many contact hours in this country. I don’t think any other country comes close to expecting 22.5 hours teaching and 2.5 hours form time each week.