Who would want to be a teacher now?

[Painauchocolats]

I've just read an article (found on the DM) that a 53 year old teacher has taken her own life before she was due to appear in court for accidentally catching a pupil's hair. This was whilst she tried to confiscate the girl's mobile phone.

A male teacher (also in the DM) faces being struck off for shouting 'Who the hell do you think you are?" At some pupils who filmed tik toks during his lesson, and slammed his hand on the desk.

Sometimes teachers lose their temper, especially if this behaviour is incessant. Who can blame them? This is why pupils' behaviour is so poor these days, because there are no consequences, and because of things like this.

Agree 💯 I'm praying this happens before my dd starts secondary

I was a teacher for nearly 40 years and loved most of those years. I would not recommend it to anyone now. My own dd was a talented HoD in a good school. She gave up the HoD job but is still teaching . The stress is awful. Honestly the long hours, poor pay and daily abuse from some pupils and their parents have made it a thankless , soul destroying job for the most part.

We are paying the price for poor parenting every single day.

I work with challenging teens who are often thrown out of class. I have a positive rapport with them, but wouldn't want to teach them particularly. One teacher thanked me for the work I do, because while one of these young people is with me and not being disruptive, the rest of the class can actually learn

Do you work in a school?

What reporting have you seen that's 'biased'? I haven't seen any. Can't believe you've followed 'a lost life is tragic....'but'... and then are you saying that the possibility of the girl involved being upset is a more important thing than a woman dying?!

I am a teacher in an inner city school. If a student refused to hand their phone over to me SLT will support, students are taken over to our internal exclusion room, if they still refuse they get sent home and not allowed back til they complete time in internal exclusion. Our SLT are so supportive, we do have lots of behaviour issues but students get sanctions and they are followed through with. I do feel very overworked though! Constantly working in evenings or weekends.

I do, @JustAnotherManicNameChange , have done for a long time now.

I think that is exactly what happens. First, they realise that they are not going to be a premiership footballer, then they realise that the jobs they are qualified to do are actually very limited. Reality must be a pretty big shock.

At some point they start work and either learn to adhere to the rules or crash out. In our community, I run into former students quite a lot. Some of them are quite friendly, even apologetic. I have had parents describe their adult dc, former pupils, as 'a bit cheeky' or 'he gave you a bit of a hard time didn't he.' Massive understatement but I nod and smile. It's nice to see that some of them straightened out in the end.

Others end up permanently unemployed with pretty bleak lives.

It's a shame. I do wonder what parents think we have to gain by lying and picking on their kids. It doesn't make a jot of difference to my life if I wave goodbye to your kid in a few years and he ends up living a miserable existence. No, we get involved to try to straighten them out and give them the hint of a future. With parents on board, people can be turned around.

And you haven't seen any deterioration in behaviour ? None at all?

I'm rather jealous tbh.

I haven’t, @JustAnotherManicNameChange

To put that into a bit more context, my first teaching job (2003 - 2005) was in a really awful school. It was in an area of quite high deprivation and a lot of social problems: essentially, arguments and drama from the estate the school was situated in came into school. There were fights - lots of fights - and violence against teachers wasn’t unheard of either. The kids were awful to one another and we were pretty powerless to prevent bullying.

My next school was better - it was more of a mix, not an amazing area or anything, but the kids mostly came from stable homes and while it would be misleading to say they never misbehaved, it was nothing like what I’d had in the previous school (or the school I attended for that matter) and I stayed there for some time. By the time I moved on, it was in the heart of Gove and academies and very strict behaviour policies. That was a school that had once been like School No1, and while it wasn’t perfect either, it wasn’t anything like that first mad school. I had coffee with friends from that place a few weeks ago (one of the good things about that was the staff were amazing and still are some of my best friends now) and we were talking and reminiscing, as you do, and we couldn’t believe some of the things we went through!

The school I’m at now does have its problems, but is nothing comparable to what I’ve known before.

Just to add

I joined the TES forums in 2003, just after I took a class at my new school for the first time and was absolutely shell shocked by the behaviour.

The forums were FULL of similar threads, about awful behaviour, unsupportive management, difficult parents, disrespect. The forums are now kaput but honestly - it was reassuring thinking ‘this isn’t just me’ but that’s twenty years ago. I don’t think there’s any point that behaviour has been good. Some schools in some areas, yes. But the inner city schools, the schools languishing on the edges of sullen council estates, the schools on the unfashionable part of town - they tend to have social problems within them, and it needs a strong management to sort it. If they don’t have it, it’s miserable teaching there.

I started teaching 20 years ago. For me the massive difference is the huge amounts of unsupported children with SEND in the school.

@Futurethoughts l agree.

My worst class ever was in 2003. They were insane.

What's to say it's just the parents? Society is crumbling, and quite a frankly conducting to this. I say this knowing that there are amazing parents. Society, the system isn't working that well either.

Inclusion really had it’s heyday during the 2000s, though.

Looking through the TES archives from twenty years ago, you can see a lot of posts from teachers really in a dark place - some burned out and exhausted, some clearly massively stressed and unhappy and some experiencing bullying. It’s a bleak look. If Facebook had existed then I daresay the groups would have had similar themes.

Futurethought

When I started teaching the classes were also "insane", they got better through a huge a mount of work .However, just recently they are getting worse and are at similar levels to when I started, this isn't hyperbole, just the facts from where I am.

No, I don’t doubt it. I’m not accusing you personally of hyperbole: I’m sure if I started at a badly run school tomorrow I’d experience similar (I’m not saying you do, by the way - I just mean that I am not trying to claim bad behaviour just isn’t a thing now.)

What I do think though is that like absolutely any profession, teachers can whip themselves up a bit and exaggerate in order to get a salient point across. Other teachers then join in and the thread becomes full of teenagers charging and bellowing around classrooms like stampeding elephants, destroying equipment, assaulting teachers and wilfully videoing them. Like most things, there is an element of truth in this to a point but it isn’t the case that it was OK until a few years ago and then this suddenly started. It may be in some schools but equally, some schools will have once been awful and now aren’t (the brilliant HOY 10 when I was at my first school is now HT and is still brilliant.)

I know when I first started teaching I was shocked by the behaviour but when I really thought about it and reflected on it some years later my own secondary was awful as well. But I was in the top sets so didn’t tend to be in the worst behaved classes, and plus I wasn’t seeing things from the perspective of the teacher who has to collect and mark everybody’s work.

Give a child a detention and get a long email from the parent saying it’s not to happen, they didn’t mean it. Tell a child their behaviour is disrespectful, you get a phone call. Parents don’t seem to want consequences for their child but want well behaved children and a plethora of consequences if their child is the victim.
It’s exhausting having to constantly justify your actions. You can have seen the incident, yet still they challenge.
Parenting/society is broken.

I hadn’t just started teaching tjough. I was about 8 years in. I never had a class to match that class.

Just to say thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole, @Futurethoughts; I'd vaguely heard about Michaela but didn't know much about it until you posted this afternoon, and have only just stopped reading

Basically it's run the way my secondary school was, but then I'm an old gimmer and such things aren't fashionable any more - which in many ways may well be a pity if the pupil engagement and results are anything to go by

It is quite fashionable, though!

Michaela is on the extreme side but plenty of academies have very strict behaviour policies, very rigid with uniform transgressions, isolation booths, detentions. As you say, they do get results.

I tend towards slightly more moderation - we have to be consistent but we also can and should be human about matters. I think possibly now we have two extremes, at secondary anyway, between the super strict Michaela type schools and the liberal restorative conversation Paul Dix types. Both represent extremes.

This reminds me of something which happened years ago when I was teaching in a very "urban" comp. I had a group of Year 10s with various SEN who were doing an accredited lifeskills course. The police came in to talk about personal safety or something. They did their talk then nicked one of the class afterwards for some misdemeanour or other. Apparently, he'd been keeping out of their way and hadn't realised they were coming into school that day 🤦🏼‍♀️.
I've also worked in a couple of schools who've had a PCSO working on site. I guess that's not likely nowadays. what with the schools having to fund our 5% pay rise out of their existing (squeezed) budgets!
I don't know any teachers who are particularly happy in their jobs atm. I know I'd walk if I was younger but am trying to get to (early) retirement if I can...

Just think some of you will have the last laugh what do the parents think will happen with their kids who they have never disaplined ! Too lazy and unqualified they will expect parents to fund them.

The other side of this is that good kids are getting a detention for such trivial matters. My 10 year old diagnosed sensory issues has already said she won't wear a tie at secondary school, servant physically do it, she has extreme sensory issues. The only teacher who noticed used to work in SEN school and has just left , she is devastated, he was great!

Has wonderful has some teachers are they don't generally recognise neurodiversity and put all chiildren into the same box, expecting everyone to conform to sometimes absurd rules and starting from such a thing age. personally the school system has too change here. One lady I know will not go back to teaching, she is primary and said that their places immense pressure on children and teachers alike. I will be one of those parents to phone the school if you give my children silly punishments for such trivals things.