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!

One of my DSDs is a teacher and the workload is very high and pressured. One thought that got her through those first few years was to average the hours compared to someone in a different graduate role with similar experience. So, a graduate in a busy non teaching role might work a straight 38 hours a week, get 20 days holiday and bank holidays, working approx 47 weeks a year.
A teacher with similar salary and experience has 38 weeks of term time, and the salary isn't pro rated down for the additional weeks, so (at least in my DSDs case) she decided that compared to her bestie at the time it was reasonable for her to work 47 hours a week before she considered it 'above and beyond'.
It isn't necessarily fair and she did work a lot more than that in the first few years before she found her stride, but it helped her to put it into terms compared to her peers. I hope it helps you too.

What would happen if you just did 8 hours a day then stopped, like is normal in many job?

This. I was expected to write all this nonsense in books for four year olds who couldn't even read it. Previously I did pretty much as you suggested but the Head wasn't interested and wanted a written essay for each piece of work. It was clearly nonsense and not for the benefit of the children.

yes primary seems much worse for this. As a TA I didn’t mark but as class teachers were expected to do a pink smiley face with positive feedback and a green ladder for constructive feedback, the best I could do sometimes was to take a stack of books at lunch and draw the symbols 🙃

Unless you are the Head you can't make that decision. If you rebel against the Head you will be bullied out like I was. I was an experienced teacher and knew what I was being told to do was rubbish but that didn't help me.

The previous Head was fine with it.

Thousands of pounds a month?

How much do you think NQTs actually earn? £28k a year (which is a big uplift from the previous year) isn’t even the £2k a month required to minimally claim thousands of pounds.

My dd is a teacher. She is out of the house 7.30-5.30pm then marking and planning from 7-10pm. She can usually manage one night if she is going out but no more. Same at weekends too.

I'm shocked by how little care you're taking in your planning. Especially at this stage when you're getting to know your students.

At this stage of my career, I put a huge amount of care, attention and time into planning

Enid I didn’t say that the marking policy had to be whole school, but that where there is a policy (which could be departmental), it should be followed. The Ofsted myths say:

”Ofsted recognises that marking and feedback to pupils, both written and oral, are important aspects of assessment. However, Ofsted does not expect to see any specific frequency, type or volume of marking and feedback; these are for the school to decide through its assessment policy. Marking and feedback should be consistent with that policy, which may cater for different subjects and different age groups of pupils in different ways, in order to be effective and efficient in promoting learning.”

If your school policy is balls, Ofsted expect you to follow it and teachers should not be going off-piste.

Completely unhelpful

From the STPCD:

Are there any limits to working hours for full-time teachers?
The number of hours for which teachers can be directed to teach or undertake other professional duties is subject to a limit of 1,265. On top of this teachers are expected to work ‘reasonable additional hours’ to fulfil their professional responsibilities. All teachers are also subject to the provisions of the Working Time Regulations which seek to place a 48-hour limit on the average working week.

@TortugaRumCakeQueen. My DS is also a teacher and lived at home during his NQT year. He's now been teaching 4 years but still works a good 60 hours a week. He does extra classes after school which he doesn't have to.
He's out the house from 7.30 am to 5.30 most days and does 2 hours every evening but Friday. He has Friday evening and Saturday off and works all day Sunday. He absolutely loves his job but I can see the workload is unsustainable.
I agree spending 5 minutes on planning is not enough to produce quality lessons.

Hope you don't teach maths...

@McT123 I’m assuming they mean a 28k salary would not net a monthly income above or close to 2k after tax

@crochetmonkey74 - I was a bit succinct but my point is that, while I agree that teaching hours are too long (and the job in general is horribly underinvested in), OPs focus at this point should be on being a great teacher to the kids. Not on fucking off home at 3.30pm.

If you're printing off TES worksheets rather than planning lessons and then moaning about marking in your first week of being a teacher - well, I've taught with people like this and their classes didn't have good outcomes. Not that their teachers gave a shit.

I find it very hard to believe that in the course of your training you had not clocked what a very stressful and all-consuming job teaching is!

Hi OP, I did my PGCE and got through my NQT year (somehow) and then went back to the wonderful world of customer service. No-one dreams of customer service, but at least you can go home and forget about work until the next morning. And weekends are my own again.

When I think of my NQT I remember waking up in a cold sweat feeling I'd let everyone down, myself, my colleagues, worst of all the students. I used to set the alarm to get up at 4am to fit in more work and still it wasn't enough. (I was in a very 'marking heavy' subject/school).

Most of the people who were on my teaching course are no longer teaching. There is a reason for this!

No one is “sneering” 😒 just saying that an ECT spending 5 minutes on a lesson plan based on a TES sheet is not sustainable and that if OP’s marking policy is that intense that it’s forcing her to do that, then that isn’t sustainable either.

i could have written this @crochetmonkey74 it is tough and getting to me more atm. Not sure why. It is the constantly being ‘on’ as you say. I am 15 years in so it isn’t lack of experience. It is an amazing job in so many ways but really taxing too. I am just hoping it will feel easier once I get back into it. I think the pandemic has worn me out. 💐

@Makingplansfornigel2 Try and hang in there, despite what I said above, it does get easier but you do need to do extra hours, especially in first few years. Fewer things, better is a good book about managing workload.

What is your school's policy on written feedback? How often does it have to be given? Many schools have changed their frequency of feedback policy over the past years based on research that shows frequent marking doesn't benefit children but just overburdens staff. If it's a school that expects written feedback every 3 weeks, then leave and find another school. In our school we just need written feedback once per half-term.

plants from upthread That and 'using planned lessons from TES or printing off a worksheet and basing lessons on that' makes me very suspicious indeed. I can't think of any subject in secondary where you'd get away with that sort of 'planning and teaching' these days.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using stuff from TES, that's what it's bloody there for.

Teachers who insist that other teachers should be planning their own stuff from scratch are a pain in the profession's collective arse.

I’ve found it gets a bit easier, I’m 12 years in and have been at the same school for around 4 years now. I’ve reached the point where most of the time I’ve taught each scheme through once and can just tweak what I’ve already planned and am confident with. I generally use frees for marking and always try to mark one ‘set’ of whatever I’m marking on each day I have a free period.

I don’t leave as early as I’d like though, admin, quick words with colleagues, ITT students, emails, tidying up consumes after school time!

That said it’s my day off tomorrow and I’ve got LOADS to do, I usually never work on my days off but I’ve been swamped this week.

Take home. The actual pay that matters!

its £1900

And that’s without pension contributions.

No NQT is looking at thousands of pounds in their bank account every month.