To have underestimated how demanding teaching is

[Makingplansfornigel2]

I was naive to think I could do the planning and marking in my frees and go home on time, I absolutely can't.
And this is with me using already planned lessons from TES. Either that or I print a worksheet and then create activities based on that, but this takes no more than 5 mins. I learned from the PGCE days that it's really not worth spending hours making fancy glittery PowerPoints.
We can't mark work in class as it's a school where they don't want you to tick things, they want written feedback in every book, and haven't got time to do that in lessons.
In between this there's tidying classrooms, adding on merits/behaviour points, contacting parents etc. And just having a break.
Would love to hear from anyone who gets it all done in school hours or stays the bare minimum after school!

Teaching is best seen as an 8am-5/5.30pm job with occasional overtime and 5 weeks holiday with the other 8 weeks for planning/prep. So essentially like any full time job. By viewing it like that you get far less overwhelmed. Good luck.

please tell me how (not snarky - genuine question)

Our students come in at 8.30 and last period ends at 4.20

That’s so interesting- I was a primary TA for many years and we weren’t allowed to mark, I wonder if that’s different on different schools? I assumed you had to have been a qualified teacher at some stage or a HLTA to mark.

On a side note, I think working as a TA would give people more realistic expectations of teaching before they decide to do the PGCE, for primary teaching anyway. I loved being a TA, even though the workload was intense at times, but I never would have become a teacher seeing the ridiculous expectations put on the class teacher, and the amount that parents got involved and constantly argued that their kids couldn’t possibly have misbehaved 🙄

This is the mindset that changed it!

It absolutely isn't. I'm not saying that the way things are now are right, and I fought to change it while it was happening. But I'm being pragmatic here, we are what we are, and I'm wondering how on earth OP thought it world be different.

I wasn't one of the teachers who went over the top at perfectionist level to find work that didn't need doing. But the level that was non negotiable could not possibly be achieved in school time..

If I was seen marking books in a lesson during a lesson observation or a teaching walk, or heaven forbid, ofsted, then of course there's be hell to pay.
Obviously it depends on the phase, but in primary you'd be walking around to see HOW children are working. To stop them going wrong at the beginning of the process or to pick up individuals learning issues and teaching individually. You'll be listening to group working.to pick up the level of understanding, etc etc.

Having watched a daugher go through her training year to get QTS too, I really don't understand how OP came out thinking she could do everything in a school day

It seems to vary from person to person. Variable factors such as school policy, pupil profile, subject, experience, ability and resilience

I only did my teacher training year and then didn't continue. I used to get up at half 5 and make it to bed just before midnight to have all my stuff prepared. I also had to prepare lessons for other classes which didn't help!

I appreciate anyone else who had been teaching longer than myself wouldn't take as long, but it is definitely an all-consuming and intense job. I think you have to love it to do it, and I didn't!

It's utterly consuming and thankless.
I'm sorry. I left the profession this year. But I honestly couldn't cope with the stress and pressure

Like all public services schools have been worn down to the ground. Whilst there's always been an expectation to do additional work and it's never been an easy job, it's even worse now and will continue to get worse as the shortages start to bite even more.

I do think even with all of the foresight and acknowledging it will be tough nothing quite prepares you for just how intense it is. It does vary by school a bit though and some people seem more able to be really stringent and organised with their planning and marking and so spend less time on it. The only thing that will change things is if people stopped doing masses of work in their own time, I know there's the emotional blackmail of what about the children but they'll invariably be worse off as teachers continue to leave in droves.

My biggest regret in life is not quitting. I applied for postgrad teaching at uni on the off chance I got in, I got in. I said I would do the first placement, no doubt fail it and find another career. I passed it. I ended up passing the whole year, got into the same situation with my NQT year where I would cry all the time about how much I hated it. There were nights I ended up taking writing jotters to bed with me that I hadn’t marked yet, fell asleep marking and woke up to finish it early the next morning before getting up for work. I so wish at any of these points I had just gone but I didn’t. I’m now 6 years in, filled with anxiety every day that I’d never experienced before but I think it’s been created by just continually forcing myself to do something I don’t want to be doing. I’m now in a situation where I’m thinking of having a baby and feel my only option is to stay for the sake of the maternity leave but researching antidepressants, which ones would be safe to take during pregnancy etc just to be able to get through it.

Do two things:

1. Join exit the classroom and thrive Facebook group
2. LEAVE

Really? I don't think this happens everywhere.

@maddy68 congrats! What do you do now?

Agree. This is good advice.

So this leaving on time thing - what do you mean by that?

I said this on another thread about teaching this week but my LEA contract says 6.5 directed hours and a reasonable amount of non directed time daily. So say 8.30 - 3.30 is 6.5 hours directed time plus half an hour for lunch, and then I'd expect to stay at least a couple more hours non directed time to get the rest of the job done. So I wouldn't expect to leave before 5.30.

Its tough but there will be tweaks to make it better.

my advice is to stop using TES and work to medium term plans. What do you need them to know at the end of 2 weeks/ half term and what do you need to teach to get there? Make sure you add plenty of consolidation / low-prep lessons and focus on a few key lessons each week.

I work in a lot of primary schools and don't know any where the TAs do the marking. In fact most don't have many TAs now - mostly one to one's and not enough for each class to have their own all day.

my lovely and much missed Mum admitted that she used to be a bit of a teacher basher, then I trained as one and she saw the amount of work

I agree with a PP who said that as you progress, there's more to do and also, Covid meant responding to things with very short notice and it's been hard to claw that back- everything we are given seems to have a quick deadline - so normal day to day work is always getting 'derailed'

@Cocopogo I work in a primary school, we have two TAs for a school with 15 classes. Not only does a TA not do my marking (😂), I’ve never seen one

It's a shame to hear some schools don't have enough TAs. In the primary school I went to in the early 00s, every class had a designated TA. In secondary, not so, but then I was in top sets so they weren't really needed. I believe there were some emotional/behavioural support TAs for some students, and there were TAs for the lower ability sets.

TAs have been made redundant in large numbers since the Tories came into power in 2010 and started systematically and deliberately underfunding schools and education.

We are still getting per-pupil funding that is below 2010 levels despite the challenges of the last couple of years.

Teachers are also being made redundant/not being replaced.

I managed to do my NQT year working 8am - 4:30 (on average) with 10-15 minute break for lunch and that’s it. But it wasn’t really enough to do everything many other teachers were doing and made me feel I was skimping it. So I quit classroom teaching after successfully completing NQT year.

I enjoyed the basic teaching and planning, which was a good 8 hours day worth (no time for lunch hour), but didn’t feel the pay warranted another 2 hours daily work (which was really necessary) to get all the paperwork/prep/feedback/other bureaucracy done. Working from 8-6 for just over £20k and all that stress and responsibility seemed a poor deal.

Why are you surprised? I'm not a teacher but even Mumsnet is full of threads about the workload teachers have to take home with them. YABU not to have known this!

If you’re primary you’ve no chance.
Secondary? once you get some experience / a LIT of schemes of work under your belt that just need tweaking? Possible. I worked ever single free period, and I mean worked like a machine at marking etc, and one hour after school and rarely took work home or worked my days off (I was p/t 3/5). You need to sacrifice EVERYTHING in school -no chats, no coffees at break / lunch.
It’s brutal but it meant that real life was then the 4/7 days that I spent at home with kids.

I’ve read several threads today and they’re all about teaching and the stress it’s causing. Aside from the unreasonable expectations, box ticking exercises, Ofsted stress etc, why is it now so bad? Why is the behaviour so poor? Why is it all so unmanageable? The system surely is at the point of collapse now.

When I first started in 1999 I could mark a set of books (30xYear 10) in an hour long free period.
When I left in April 2022 it took around 3-4 hours to do the same marking.
I was on a 0.8 timetable and had 3 hours PPA… 3 GCSE classes, 4 A level classes, tutor group and a whole school responsibility.

Utter madness when I write it down… and at the moment I don’t want to return. My new job is full time, 25 days annual leave etc, but I am nowhere near as stressed!

Fet the pupils to tidy the classroom. Add it into each session towards the end. It's good self-discipline/life skill for them. Apart from any electrical/IT stuff or dangerous materials, you shouldn't be tidying.

And yes, teaching is absolutely exhausting.