To think teachers could stop using parents evenings as a working late example?

[needabreak5]

Reading a few recent teachers threads and I have a few close friends that are teachers. I don’t doubt teachers genuinely work long hours during term time, weekends, evenings etc (as do some other professional jobs but for better pay). However, I do think they sometimes point out the ‘parents evenings’ a bit too much, given everyone knows it’s not even every week, why not just say you work late most nights, without giving that specific reason, surely it’s a drop in the ocean not worth mentioning? I work a 9-6 office job (and usually stay late) but have a fortnightly recurring meeting 6-9pm, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, it’s a core part of my job (just happens to be outside of normal working day). I just think non-teachers/parents may be more understanding of the relentless long hours if parents evenings weren’t repetitively mentioned as one if the main examples.

Sounds like you’re being shafted by your employer in the same way teachers get shafted by the government. You shouldn’t need persuading in the perfect way before you’ll support them tbh.

Parents Evenings are not working late they are part of our working time agreement. Our job is 35 hours per week. On top of that we have 195hours allocated for planning, assessments, meetings, CPD, and parents evenings.

Says a teacher who has just finished working at 11:15pm

I think most non teachers would be more sympathetic to teachers if they did one week in their job.

The country is absolutely crying out for teachers. Feel free to apply 🙄.

I teach 7 year groups. Two parents evenings per year. 14 parents evenings. Usually finish around 9pm. Then an hour's drive home

What's your point?

Not a teacher here. But a daughter of one (and she's retired years ago).... she worked so hard every holiday. It wasn't 6 weeks off in the summer at all. Evenings working. Plus bringing up two children alone. Working every single holiday to do the prep and planning etc. Parents evenings - tip of the iceberg.

I don't think most teachers even mention parents' evenings as being one of the main issues, do they?

Oh look, a goady post about teachers. What is your aim of this thread?

Parents evenings - tip of the iceberg.

exactly my point.

Are you one of those people who think teachers only work 9-3:30, Mon-Fri?

I work a 9-6 office job (and usually stay late) but have a fortnightly recurring meeting 6-9pm, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, it’s a core part of my job (just happens to be outside of normal working day).

Are you in a union? This sounds ridiculous.

This - I just think examples like this are overused, which are a drop in the ocean in comparison to the total hours worked.

👏 👏 👏

No, I believe they work 60-80 hours per week, but using parents evenings as one of main examples doesn’t help in making others grasp this.

Why do you care what examples they use when talking about their own job? What a weird thing to get your feathers ruffled over.

I was always under the impression that teachers work incredibly long hours. I’m not counting the extra they do at home, but I know they have a very early start and then most days I see them leave the school after 6:30- 7.

This evening my husband and I were chatting about me retraining and going back to work once the little ones are a bit older and he actually said ‘But not as a teacher, please. The hours are insane’. So I’m not the only one who thinks this.

I have a huge respect for what they do and the time they put in. About an hour after the kids are back from school I internally scream ‘This is too muuuuuuuch!’. How do they deal with an entire class all day is beyond me.

I think you are wrong, parents evening is the one time you actually see a teacher working beyond their hours.

People seem to think planning, marking and everything else magically happens.

It’s a crappy example but maybe teachers are too tired to think of a better example?

I volunteered at a primary school once. Was utterly exhausted after 3 hrs. If I’d tried to do it full time I think I’d have collapsed!

Parents evenings, nativities, school discos, film nights, summer & winter fairs, celebration and after school assemblies and masses, residential trips, day trips, sports events are all events & activities that my DDs teachers all participate in. This dose not include all the lesson planning and everything else they do to be good teachers to my children.

Im guessing your wanting to be goady and start a teacher bashing thread because of the strikes.

If you're a single parent with no family or ex-partner, how do you get childcare once or twice a month for as hoc events like PE? Traditional childcare usually shuts at 6pm and doesn't cater for people who need 2 random days a month, never mind nights.

My kids are secondary and PE is online which solves the childcare issue but local primaries still have face to face.

I read about the teacher sand they're hours and such and just think how awful it and how fucked people would be if teachers just washed their hands and all quit.

instead of worrying about the language they've used, wonder how parents and other workforces would manage if teachers all quit.

time people stopped seeing teachers as free childcare.

It’s an exhausting job. 44% of newly qualified teachers leave before teaching for five years.
www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/11/teachers-england-plan-to-quit-workloads-stress-trust

@PeekAtYou it’s bloody hard. I wasn’t a single parent but dh travelled constantly pre Covid. I had to pull in a lot of favours from friends which I then returned doing some childcare for them in school holidays.

Sorry mixed up the statistics. It’s 1 in 3 newly qualified teachers leaving before five years.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/one-three-teachers-quit-after-28867577
and the Guardian article was that 44% of all teachers are planning to leave within five years.

Op, secondary teachers do so many parents evenings! They teach all year groups usually so they have to. Those would be on top of their usual evening working, so I think it’s fair enough to mention it.

primary will do fewer formal parents evenings but in my experience will do much more informal ad hoc meetings or phone calls with parents during the course of a normal working week after school hours, as well as evening working at home.

The parents make me laugh (I’m primary school office). They will ring up at 4.40pm and express surprise that someone is still there picking up. I do think a lot have absolutely no idea of the huge amount of work that goes into running a school behind the scenes. They only see what is visible to THEM.

The reason why parents evenings are used as a clear example is because fucking idiots people just say that teachers should work harder/more efficiently/faster during the school day and, if they did, then they could complete the copious amounts of marking/planning/behaviour logging/parents meetings/assessments/CPD/learning off-specialism lesson content/reports/grade tracking/etc during their lunch break. Parents evenings are a clear example to the people (who have absolutely no idea what teaching actually entails or how schools run) of a time when teachers absolutely must stay late in order to fulfil their job to the basic required standard. There are a million tasks that require teachers to work late but parents evenings are one of the few that parents actually see and recognise needs to be done outside of school hours