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.

Re the time off. I knew a private school head and they said the time off was why they had chosen the teaching profession.

I think we have a weird thing within society where it seems to be a competition of who works the hardest and who has it the worst. I'm not a teacher, but I respect the profession completely and I do agree that there are a lot of people in the public who don't understand what hard work teaching is and how much work goes into it, but, at the same time, I also think there are a lot of teachers who have no idea what it's like to work as anything else. I have a teacher friend who has only ever been a teacher and she frequently will message me saying she's only just got home from work and most of the time I'm still in the office haha. We were trying to arrange a time to meet up over Christmas but I had no time off other than the bank holidays, she couldn't understand why I had no time off over Xmas, so it works both ways

Interesting about the curriculum changes mentioned. Dd is about to start gcse and much of it is very familiar to me despite being in my 40s. History is the same syllabus.

I think teachers find it easier to look at their role as full time with 5 weeks leave, the other weeks without dc is to prep and plan but you can choose how you spread it.

I struggled with the rigid structure of the day and having toilet breaks at set times. That’s hard to get accustomed to.

@WhenSheWasBad wrong.
Current CL has 3 free in a day, 2 another day each side of lunch.

Just because it doesn't happen in your school doesn't mean it doesn't happen

@Iwannerbeyourslave

The biggest shock for me was that I had to start buying all my own equipment - pens, paper, calculator, books etc etc.. In industry, I would just wander into the stationery cupboard and collect things I needed to do my job. Even more shocking was that pupils would sometimes deliberately steal my equipment meaning that I would have to go out and buy it all again!

This is something I find crazy about teaching, I can't believe teachers have to buy their own equipment!!! Thats madness to me (also read up thread they have to buy dishwasher tablets? Wtf)

@NowThatsWhatICall22

Threads like these just reinforce the idea that teaching is not in any way a rewarding career.

Does anyone else worry about where the next generation of teachers will come from? What’s the motivation aged 18 to choose to do a teaching degree?
Where’s the incentives to switch to teaching as a career change (even if you could bring with you a rich portfolio of life/work experience, which would really benefit the children who are learning with you)?
Why would anyone working under some of these conditions listed on the thread actually give a shit about children and particularly individuals needs, at the expense of their own mental health these days?

Or am I missing the selling points and that actually, plenty of people (enough) still apply every year, keen to pursue teaching as a career?

As one who ran away from lecturing because of all the ever mounting pressures I hope that there IS a very real shortage of people taking up teacher training.

The government, any of them, need to reassess how much they actually value the education of the next generations. Not how much they want to measure it, to constrain it, to add more and more layers of uselss oversight, to pay homage to the latest fad teaching methods, but the actual teaching, the stuff real teachers eant to do but get penalised if they have the balls to do.

The shit universities are now well on down the road of their own discovery.

Sadly this hasn't happened and there are no signs that it will. The government seem th think that expecting poeple to do 5+ years of education for about 5 years of actual work is a fair swap

They know the issues, they have a sparkling new report, starts off mentionng that primary school teacher do more hours per week than any other country except Japan. And what did they announce last week? Oh, it's only 5 or 10 minutes a day. But it is based on a deliberate misconception and fucks up so many things I am surprised any of the schools affected carried on.

researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7222/CBP-7222.pdf

That they are recruiting more now, and retaining some more, is a sign of change, but the carp tghey are offering to make it more exciting, like the 5% paid time out of classroom for 2 years won't make any difference (partly because it's just a new name for what already existed), it will just push the leaving rates own the line a little.

The worst case scenarios in that report are:
22% of NQTs don't ever start work as a teacher in the state sector
32.6% leave after 5 years
38.8% after 10 years

And they acknowledged that pay was not a driver for most who left, but it was also stated that pay levels were not reflective of the role.

So they know what the issues are. But choose to keep on adding sticking plaster after sticking plaster. Making soundbites that sound good to parents and make most teacher laugh out loud!

You only have to look at what they are doing to English and maths to see just how fucked up the current priorities are. Get an above average grade or be a failure - for decades now that has been the chant, from The Goviot and on.

Nobody is looking at the actual problems with an eye to a root and branch sorting out. It's ludicrous!

I did a Lucy Kellaway number, at 50, a year before she started her programme, from a related industry. My observations, FWIW... most young teachers were teacher's children and knew what they were going into.

The workload is relentless, and mostly pointless admin: I used to routinely work 15 hours a day as a freelance in a fast-paced commercial world, three or four projects in progress at once. The clients (students) are uninterested and mostly unruly, while teachers get little suppport and less thanks.

When I had a top stream class, it was brilliant, and I glimpsed all the satisfaction to be had from sharing ideas and stimulating discussion. It was also wonderful to see a shy Y9 come forward with ideas in class and gain confidence, and a young lad who had only been in the UK a year write an essay that got him onto a G&T programme, and others in the same vein -- but few and far in between.

I like to think it was a loss to the system when I didn't do my NQT year but I didn't have the stamina for it at my age, and I wasn't prepared to be pushed around by the whimsical targets of schools or political pipe dreams.

What I've noticed is how different every school is. You might think from an outside perspective, school is just school. Or school is like the school I went to.

Every school is massively different and I don't just mean the children, although that plays a part, it's the ethos, the technologies, the management, the departments, every little thing really. This can boil down to anything from a great experience to a terrible experience. So - I would say to teachers who are hating it, perhaps try a different school.

There is a real problem though with being able to move schools and that when you get too expensive, in comparison to a NQT.

How lazy private sector workers are and how little fecking work they do.
Oh yeah? You did, aye?

I’ve had 3 secondments into 3 different councils and this was my experience. Not so much lazy, but terribly inefficient.

@BigWoollyJumpers

Preparing lesson plans seems a big issue. And one done in your own time. However, surely once set, you are pretty much following a formula, unless there is a big change in the curriculum?

My DD's had a history teacher in primary, been there for years. Still there. Several year age gap between my two kids. She did/ does the same lessons, in the same order, with the same material, year, after year, after year. This is a Indie, so all sorts of caveats, but I know other teachers in state school primaries once fixed, do pretty much the same year on year. In the state sector, as others have mentioned, they struggle most with the range of abilities in some groups, and the expectation that they all can be taught effectively in the same group.

I used to teach food tech which to be honest isn't a bad subject in terms of planning and you can build a 'bank of lessons' as the kids rotate round however you should be differentiating lessons to meet the learning needs of twenty odd kids so what works for a high ability relatively focused group will not work for a more challenging class and actually inspectors would not be impressed if you just used the same lesson plans year on year with every class. In other subjects and particularly primary you're teaching twenty plus different lessons a week and there are frequent changes to the curriculum and then you might end up with a mixed year group who have already done a certain topic. Exam years often change what's expected and you will need to do much more individualised planning. My primary teacher husband has been teaching for twenty years and has never been able to just 'redo' vikings or whatever as I think people imagine teachers can do. The overall topic might be the same (but often won't be!) but the delivery and new teaching and learning styles (the kind of thing the inset days cover) mean planning is ever changing . Also as schools are more inclusive and likely to have support staff it's planning what they're doing etc

Xing what did you do instead?

I have 2 friends who went in to teaching from science based careers- accepting lower pay but expecting more time with their families and less pressure. Both were back to their old jobs after just 1 year of teaching because of the amount of their holidays/evenings/weekends they spent working and the difficult behaviour they had to deal with.

My DH, on the other hand, went in to teaching on his 30s and found that compared to his previous roles he had far more autonomy and although there is a lot of work to do after hours he can (unlike his previous role) at least do it at home. In his previous role it was always difficult to get AL during the school holidays (as everyone wanted this time, so he was often limited to one week). Now although he has to work a lot during the school holidays, and can't take time off at other times, we can always have 2 weeks off with the DC (and have been known to go away for 3-4 weeks in the Summer with him doing some planning etc in the evenings).

I think it’s interesting how I can always tell the teachers who have always been in teaching - jumping from school - uni - NQT - teaching. As someone else said up thread they just fuss more about things, I’m always shocked by how much they seem to think nothing else can be similar to teaching. I’m not explaining myself that well, but I think never leaving education creates people who are more institutionalised and they have less perspective about other jobs and environments. Whereas people who joined teaching from other professions struggle in different ways, but just seem to be a little less convinced that no one can possibly understand the unique experience of working in schools.

I’m not a teacher, but I imagine the big things doe me would be how ‘on’ you have to be all the time. You can’t even go to the loo when you need to if you’re in class. Even if yo-yo not teaching you are responsible to deal with any behaviour issues you see in the corridor/playground. The only place you have any respite is the staff room and you have to share that with other teachers. That’s before you get to doing the actual job!

@BigWoollyJumpers

Preparing lesson plans seems a big issue. And one done in your own time. However, surely once set, you are pretty much following a formula, unless there is a big change in the curriculum?

My DD's had a history teacher in primary, been there for years. Still there. Several year age gap between my two kids. She did/ does the same lessons, in the same order, with the same material, year, after year, after year. This is a Indie, so all sorts of caveats, but I know other teachers in state school primaries once fixed, do pretty much the same year on year. In the state sector, as others have mentioned, they struggle most with the range of abilities in some groups, and the expectation that they all can be taught effectively in the same group.

We used to have to differentiate the work by assigning the tasks of “bronze/silver/gold” then slt decided from year x they were changing it to red/amber/green so every single PowerPoint and lesson plan and scheme of work had to altered to reflect that change. An utterly pointless waste of time. And this was the same every single year - they found something new that had to be on the lessons and if it wasn’t there you were marked down on observations. And nearly every single year it was a completely pointless change (like the year we were told we could no longer use LO and had to write Learning Objective instead)

@OutlookStalking, I am PT company secretary and pension fund administrator for a family company and about to retire!

@Knittingchamp

I can't see the point staying up all night to write a report for some meaningless corporate presentation that won't ultimately achieve anything but make more cash for company X. But I can see a huge meaningful reason to do the same for students when you're a teacher. It sucks to have to work outside hours like that in either case, but at least the teaching example isn't soul destroyingly pointless.

so you don't want a nice environment to live in then? I'll stop doing my 'soul destroyingly pointless' job but that means you'll stop having infrastructure to get to yours, a nice environment with affordable and sustainble houses and places to live, and eventually a planet to live on. Oh, and I won't mentor the next generation of engineers, environmentalists and designers either with my 'meaningless corporate presentation'.

Corporate doesn't always mean capitalist nonsense. Its not a competition between corporate and public service - they both have value.

[quote NiceTwin]@WhenSheWasBad wrong.
Current CL has 3 free in a day, 2 another day each side of lunch.

Just because it doesn't happen in your school doesn't mean it doesn't happen [/quote]
Ok no need need for the smug face.

If a teacher has two frees in a row (you are right it probably does happen). That time is for planning. If a teacher chooses to spend that time, nipping to the shops, scrolling on mn or simply staring at the wall. They will still have to do that planning later on in their own time.

Does it really matter if they do it later in the day rather than that 1 hour slot?

That you don't get "all those school holidays" free to do whatever you want. You actually do school work eg Easter holidays GCSE assessments etc. Plus you work your weekends too. Plus you don't "clock off and go home at 3.30" - you have meetings and parents' evenings.

I’ll give two examples. One was DM who spent a lot of her career in advertising as production assistant, copywriter etc. She then had her own fashion company. After having kids and getting divorced she went into teaching.

She told me she hated the bitchiness and gossip of other teachers compared to friendly ad agency. Also the worry over inspectors.

Another friend spent her career in IT and when she married and had children retrained as teacher. Hates all the sticking to rules and regulations and everything Gove etc brought in.

Neighbour used to work in IT, did for a while then retrained as geography teacher in girls high school. Hated the hierarchy and horrible headmaster who liked to control and had rules etc a mile long. She left when she was pregnant with her third child and hasn’t returned.

@theviscountess

I think it’s interesting how I can always tell the teachers who have always been in teaching - jumping from school - uni - NQT - teaching. As someone else said up thread they just fuss more about things, I’m always shocked by how much they seem to think nothing else can be similar to teaching. I’m not explaining myself that well, but I think never leaving education creates people who are more institutionalised and they have less perspective about other jobs and environments. Whereas people who joined teaching from other professions struggle in different ways, but just seem to be a little less convinced that no one can possibly understand the unique experience of working in schools.

Is this how you think about the following who went straight into their work from education: Doctors Nurses Vets Scientists Artists

?

Thought not. It's only teachers.

Never ever seen this boring fucking claim about any other job.

@PlainJaneEyre

That you don't get "all those school holidays" free to do whatever you want. You actually do school work eg Easter holidays GCSE assessments etc. Plus you work your weekends too. Plus you don't "clock off and go home at 3.30" - you have meetings and parents' evenings.

@PlainJaneEyre my DM trained as a teacher in 70s and finishing at 3.30, no work in weekends or holidays (or very little) and school holidays appealed to her as a parent.

So, your anecdote is 50 years out of date then?

And this was the same every single year - they found something new that had to be on the lessons and if it wasn’t there you were marked down on observations

Totally agree. I have spent hours over the years getting something properly done across all lessons, and think, ‘that took ages, but at least it’s done now and I can use it again’ only to find something significant is changed meaning those hours of work was wasted and the work now useless.

So much stuff is changed for the sake of it and what were once considered ‘outstanding’ lessons would now be deemed unsatisfactory. So much time is wasted on pointless new initiatives when the children’s outcomes are not improved at all by them.

If teachers could come in, use good quality textbooks which schools could afford to use for some years because the curriculum hadn’t been totally changed, mark verbally/by modelling during incidental exchanges whilst floating around chatting to the children so much time would be saved.

Do we need to differentiate every lesson 20 ways? Absolutely support and scaffold where needed, but often that is enough.

Do we need to show progress in every lesson for it to be good? Why? Research shows learning is embedded by repetition and consolidation.

Do we need to write the learning objective for 5 year olds? Do we need to deep mark for 5 year olds?

My lessons in the 90s were consistently good and the children made good progress, were happy, the parents were happy and my management happy. Now, 25 years on, I probably work at least another 5-10 hours per week more per week but I would say that the results are exactly the same. Obviously they are measures now in levels that mean nothing to anyone because the government removed levels saying they were too confusing for parents, but I KNOW the progress is no different to before. But now, I feel the children are demotivated, anxious and stressed (nothing to do with lockdown, this predates that and is mainly linked to the hugely narrow and inflexible curriculum) and I am on my knees.

The worst bit is that I know it doesn’t have to be like this because I have taught for a long time. I remember when it wasn’t.

Education is broken, teachers are working stupid hours when there should be no need and we have a child mental health crisis. But all you read in the papers is that teaches have had 2 years off and can’t work in the real world.

@BoredZelda

How lazy private sector workers are and how little fecking work they do. Oh yeah? You did, aye?

I’ve had 3 secondments into 3 different councils and this was my experience. Not so much lazy, but terribly inefficient.

Is council work private sector?