To think it's not normal for over 35% of teachers to have cried at work this term?

[Postapocalypticcowgirl]

Whenever we talk about teacher working conditions, teacher strikes etc on here people always point out that lots of others have really stressful jobs. But this can't be normal in any job, surely? It's not even people who've cried about work- just people who've cried at work.

I think this is really indicative of the stress a lot of teachers are under, and the real reason a strike is on the cards. But it's hard to strike about workload/stress/behaviour/parental and SLT expectations- whereas striking over pay is legally straightforward.

Agreed @OhIdoLike2bBesideTheSeaside

When did it become the case that you went into a public service profession with the assumption that you were probably going to burn out at some point?

I remember thinking that teaching would be demanding. But surely this level of stress for nurses and doctors also was never the norm.

Schools are the front line service for children. They have the most contact with the greatest number of children. By default they have the most safeguarding etc

Ask other services collapse they take on more of the burden as they are the ones with day to day contact with children and families. Its logical?

Other agencies deal with a small number ro children and the threshold to access those searches rises constantly and so again school have more of a burden.

@BounceBackBoris yes I think that’s what people were trying to say earlier when using the phrase “bearing the brunt”. Plenty of children in any given school will be affected by acute social problems but only a few of that very large group will end up in A&E with mental health issues or neglect etc. The fact that a large proportion of children who attend at A and E have problems caused by social issues is not the same thing. It’s A Venn diagram I suppose. I guess it would, however, be more accurate to say that hospital staff bear the brunt of issues in ADULT social care, because there is often no buffer between a struggling adult and acute medical care. With children, the buffer is school.

i hate these threads, they always result in people coming on posting with derision, leaving teachers feeling defensive and got at and misunderstood. Upthread I posted that teachers can’t release their stress because they cannot leave 30 children unattended to go and cry for 5 mins. Then it begins. “I’ve had shit thrown at me”, “I’ve had to sit with people dying”. Etc etc. No-one is saying you haven’t done those things and yes they are truly horrible things to have to deal with at work and would make anyone cry . In my family I have plenty of NHS frontline workers including A&E, paramedics and paediatrics. Police too. I’ve heard how bad things can be and it’s horrific. It’s starting to become obvious if you have to attend A and E as a patient too, you see the strain on staff’s faces.

that doesn’t take away from the fact that for teachers they are mainly literally on their own for almost all the school day with 30 children they have responsibility for who can’t be left alone or to their own devices at any time and there is no opportunity to cry (or hide your crying). It would be helpful if posters who aren’t in education could give descriptions of situations in their own jobs when this happens so we can all understand which jobs have this aspect to their working day. Instead of sarcastic posts full of derision about teachers thinking they have it worse than anyone. Just to repeat, no-one is saying that teachers have it worse than anyone!

I think teaching is really hard - I know I couldn’t do it. i think being on show all day is very difficult and not being able to have a slow day/go out for a coffee makes it harder. My EXDP was a teacher and had a nervous breakdown sadly - he had to leave the teaching profession. He struggled with lots of aspects of his job but the trigger for the breakdown was Ofsted coming in, even though he had received amazing comments in the previous inspection.

I also have a stressful job (not teaching). It is listed as one of the most stressful roles in all the surveys and in the past I have really struggled with my mental health - I’ve been on antidepressants as a result of work related anxiety.

I think there are so many jobs in our society where modern working has made the pressures worse. Longer hours in a lot of private sector - regularly doing 60 hour weeks in my case in the past. In my job most people don’t have a lunch break - sandwich while working is the norm. Lots of urgent decision making involved so really high pressure.

Our ladies toilet has been the home of many a sob fest. It's the result of the pressure of being fed the lie that as women we can have it all.

Here is an interesting and timely article that covers a lot of the issues:

metro.co.uk/2022/10/22/schools-and-mental-health-why-teachers-are-quitting-the-industry-17501832/

"The Teacher Wellbeing Index, a survey commissioned by the Education Support charity, found that 77% of teachers experience poor mental health due to their work, and that 72% report being stressed and overworked. The survey points towards the average teacher’s excessive workload, and a lack of a work-life balance, as being the key drivers for poor mental wellbeing amongst those working in education."

Cue certain posters lining up to say "that's not many" or "x profession has it worse" or "god, teachers moaning again" or "everyone is stressed and overworked". Every time.

I posted this on a different thread but I think it fits what I was going to say here as well. Like PP have recently said - education is part of a larger network of public services - services that are now dead or dying. They have been for a long long time, but when a dam breaks it takes a bit of time for the flood waters to reach the bottom of the valley.

Full disclosure (and because I know someone will probably ask!) - I work in adult MH and have 2 school aged children with SEN, one with significant SEN who we are trying to move out of mainstream.

This was my post:

It really makes little difference who they pick at this point.

The public services that underpin and support the country, our society, to function - NHS (both physical and mental health), social care, (adults and childrens services, court system, education, emergency services - they have ALL been neglected and dismantled, if not actively sabotaged and destroyed, to the point that they have now collapsed.

The scoffolding has gone. The dam that holds back the water has been destroyed and we are now flooded and drowning. Services either no longer exist, or where they do are so depleted and under funded they that they may as well not exist for the thousands who need them. People are DYING due to loss of these services.

• When there aren’t enough drs and nurses, people die.

• When there aren’t enough MH staff, people die.

• When their aren’t enough community care workers, people die.

• When there aren’t enough social workers, important things are missed and people die.

And so on… the net runs wide.

And for those who survive, lives are permanently negatively impacted by lack of this services, children growing up in abusive environments, adults unable to work due to their no support for their mental or physical health, losing their jobs, homes, their families.

It will take DECADES to repair and rebuild this structure. It will take monumental investment, motivation and compassion.That’s not going to come from the Tories who are the very people who have destroyed it all. they have inflicted actual trauma on us all and it the scars will be visible for a generation.

Whoever they pick, right now as a society we are completely fucked.

Yes it would probably have been better if OP had said something like “I was shocked to read this statistic about teachers. To the teachers on here, do you really feel like this and also is this a wider thing in the workplace general today? Are we all breaking down at work regularly?”

instead it becomes a competition about who has it worse, when instead we should all be getting angry about the reasons things have got this bad everywhere, and how now there is no choice but to put up with it all day in day out if you want even the basics of life, like a roof over your head, to be warm and to have enough food on the table.

i can’t understand why there are not angry mobs banging on the gates of Downing St and Buckingham Palace. Probably we’re all just too worn down and just shrug and feel helpless about it all. A few people I know have stopped reading or watching the news as they just can’t take any more bad news as daily life is such a grind now.

When you are fighting just to survive it’s hard to do anything else

@CurlyhairedAssassin

If teachers (and people speaking for them) don't want to feel got at or misunderstood or for ot to be made a competition, they probably shouldn't make it one.

Its genuinely the only profession I've seen do it.

The exchange earlier where a pp refused to acknowledge yhat other services are also bearing the brunt of system failures just shows how bad it is.

I guess teachers (who do this, not all do and those speaking for them, need to get the caveats in!) Need to ask themselves why they need to be worse off than any other role.

Because it does just create animosity where there could be support.

I think the huge numbers on anxiety/depression medication would also be an eye opener. I’m on the countdown to quitting my teaching job finally, after years of it wrecking my mental health and making me so miserable. I’ve never had a day off sick and feel like I’d be letting the kids down by going off but my anxiety is through the roof at all times

The exchange earlier where a pp refused to acknowledge yhat other services are also bearing the brunt of system failures just shows how bad it is.

Oh, I thought that exchange demonstrated a refusal to use the actual meaning of words in order to put the other person in the wrong.

@noblegiraffe

Then that just shows why (some) teachers are in such denial about this I suppose.

No, I don't think so.

No?

What do you think it is then? If not bias?

Oh I agree that it demonstrated bias. Just not the one you are arguing it did.

Lol.

So I have bias but you don't? Sure.

You didn't really answer the question

I think it's perfectly clear what 'bearing the brunt' means and if you're going to try to twist that in a ridiculous way to argue that a poster somehow thinks that other services do not support children or are not under pressure, then you are either genuinely shit at constructing arguments, or you are desperate to try to fit a normal conversation into your own personal view to the point of linguistic contortions to achieve that aim.

You are the one that tried to compare a healthcare workers shift to a teacher. You are the one that said at least HCPs can go in the office or ask a colleague for support. I'm guessing you don't know actually the reality of this work I did a placement in a SEMH school which by definition is a tough school and while I respect the staff it's not as horrible as teachers make out. I'm guessing many teachers have never done other jobs. You said you need to keep 30 children safe and can't have a 5 minute cry. It's totally different being responsible for keeping people physically alive.

The poster you are responding to isn't a teacher.

@noblegiraffe

Yeah, that's not how I read it at all.

🤷‍♀️

Yes, well, Topgub if you automatically reach for the worst interpretation then that says it all.

@noblegiraffe

Then maybe they should stop posting on behalf of teaching.

Saying things like at least other roles can have a slow day or go for a coffee (wtf) is either a deliberate wind up or completely tone deaf (another non teacher comment)

As is repeatedly arguing teachers have it worse and denying thats what's being said