To wonder how anyone can be a teacher?

[Howdaretheydisciplinerudekids]

I think I am quite an understanding parent when it comes to my kids schools. However, I do contact the schools whenever I have a concern. I am always polite and understanding of school issues but flag things up when necessary.

However, I hear how some parents speak to and about their children’s teachers and I am pretty disgusted and wonder how anyone remains in teaching. I have so many stories from friends about the crap they put up with from headteachers, parents and children. Who else has similar stories?

1. A friend of mine was told on more than one occasion by a child that he wanted her dead and was going to shoot her. Her headteacher didn’t even ask if she was ok.
2. The same child regularly used to throw things in the classroom and trash the classroom. The headteacher refused to get involved and instead blamed the teacher for their being equipment on the floor (that the child had thrown) and asked why she hadn’t picked it up. The child was still throwing things (this time aimed at the class teacher) at the time.
3. I have heard many occasions of friends who have been out on capability plans for the most minor things. It would seem that bullying of staff from leadership is absolutely rife. For example, one teacher friend told me about the staff having a staff training day about a certain way of delivering maths. Part of the day was spent then planning maths in the said way. The headteacher went into maths lessons and then called all of the staff together because she didn’t like how they were teaching maths and told them all off. She said they should have ignored all training. Several friends have given me the same sort of stories.
4. My teacher friends are always making excuses why they can’t go out. They have too much work to do. They are too stressed. They are off sick. They have marking to do, leSsons to plan, forms to fill in, statements to write, parents to contact, documents to complete, emails to send etc etc. Then when they have done all that, they have to actually teach a class for 7 hours. They get no let up in that time. They have to be physically and mentally involved and face verbal and sometimes physical abuse, with no chance to recover.
5. Then they have parents to deal with. Parents who complain constantly because their child has been told off. Parents who constantly criticise teachers because their child, who has done something wrong, is then worrying about it. Or they have 2 sets of parents both claiming that their child is being bullied by the other. Or parents who have fallen out, expecting the schools to separate the children because their grown ups can’t resolve their own arguments.
6. One relative of mine, was put under disciplinary procedures because they dared to speak sternly to a child who had been stealing from them. They did not even raise their voice. However, they now have a safeguarding concern about them because a member of staff heard them telling the child how upset they were to have had their personal items stolen by them, and the member of staff didn’t like their tone of voice. My poor relative was in bits over this accusation because they had taught for nearly 30 years and now felt like they had been blamed for being a victim of crime. My relative had to take early retirement.
7. Another relative was teaching In A primary school and was filmed by a child on their phone, and it was shared around social media. My relative then told the child how upset they had been about this. However, instead of the child receiving any sort of consequence, instead my friend had to apologise to the child, for telling the child how upset they were. Sadly, another friend tried to commit suicide after all of the constant monitoring and accountability became too much for her. My friends and relatives who work in schools tell me about the lack of funding in their schools.

I left primary teaching 7 years ago to have my children and recently returned as a TA. The job has changed just in those 7 years. Admittedly I didn’t work through Covid, but to come back into the classroom post-Covid, it’s obvious there’s been a shift. Where there used to be a relatively small number of children with additional needs, now there are so many with issues that I am not trained to deal with. Lots of anger issues, impulse control issues, lack of social skills, and more children than I’ve ever known needing to access speech and language therapy.

Parent expectations are ridiculous. I’m not sure what some of them think we’re here to do. We’re not miracle workers, and we’re not going to parent your children for you. We’re not your personal therapists. We’re not the enemy. We’re people who care about children and want to support them in reaching their full potential. We’re also human.

@NeedToChangeName this thread isn't about teaching being a harder job than other jobs. It's about the reality of being a teacher.

This is false. I’m a teacher and I spend my time in class teaching brilliantly planned lessons. Our school provide a varied and rich curriculum to all children within the best of our ability. We push the Greater Depth, target the SEND, challenge those achieving what they should and analyse the borderlines. We’re state primary.

I also don’t have nearly the problems with parents I read about here. Sure, there is always the odd one but you can get that anywhere!

By the sound of things, you are the odd one. Reading all these replies to my original comment, has made me think of my neighbour, a male primary teacher. Every morning, I hear him say bye to his ifs and then he is outside physically retching loudly before he gets in his car. His wife has told me before that he does this each day through sheer panic at what the day can bring. He always seems to have some sort of observation or monitoring thing of the teachers. And he has 2 kids of his own with autism to parent as well. Well hats off to all you amazing teachers. The kids are lucky to have had you, even those who have left. It does sound like private schools have the right model and this should be reciprocated by Government through funding and SEND provision.

It’s not just teaching, our kids go to these schools!

I know education has always had some schools which were rough or difficult, but it seems like a lot of schools are now stressful for teachers and pupils, with some really out of control behaviour that no one is addressing.

Nothing smug about it. Mine go to state school; I wish I could afford private.

But apart from the very super-rich, sending your child to private school at a cost of £20k a year is a significant chunk out of parents' pockets, so of course they are often very invested.

I can count on one hand the invested parents for the kids in each of my classes, but it takes two hands to count, for each kid in my classes, the parents who won't answer calls or messages, who tell me their child's behaviour is my problem, who refuse to buy educational equipment (not a pen, ruler or calculator in sight and always no money for this, but new phones every few months), who tell me their child shouldn't do homework after a day in school.
I have sewn torn uniform back together for my students because their parents wouldn't, and wouldn't buy another.

As a proportion, the parents who do this in private school is far lower. I know the difference.

This doesn't knock all state school parents; around 3 in 4 do take some manner of interest, but it's the 1/4 that couldn't give a shiny shit in the schools I have worked in over the last 7 years or so that cause most of the issues.

Tonight I’ve got parents evening. I know I’ll be asked by two sets of parents, “what are YOU going to do to get my child their target grade?”. These pupils have less than 50% attendance. I want to say “you get them to school” I’ll have to make up some polite bullshit. I’ve learned to say what parents want to hear.

I’m a Primary Teacher and on a daily basis parents shout at me, children are violent towards me, children fight and I need to put myself in the middle and I get spat at A LOT. There’s only so far a love of working with children can go…

Statistically there will be more parents of privately educated kids who support their education and i think that is what the poster is getting at.
I worked for many years in a "rough" school on the edge of a borough. Many of the "good" kids went over the border into the other borough. Leaving us with many kids whose parents did not care, did not support the school in terms of discipline, homework etc. Then there were the kids who were often young carers or who had to take their younger siblings to primary school because the parents were in bed either unwell or a lifestyle choice and these kids didn't even have a pen let alone the correct uniform.
This is a battle that private schools do not have. I'm sure they have demanding parents who expect top grades because they're paying. But they don't have, en masse, parents who do not value education themselves, leading to continual low level disruption, leading to more of the "good " kids going to a different school and so the cycle goes on.
that is what i understood the poster to be saying.

The reason your school is able to provide such an education is because you don't experience the kind of parents that other posters are talking about.

I wouldnt have let the attendance go here. Statistically, they have no chance if passing on that attendance figure. Theyd struggle on 90%. I would absolutely have said they need to be in school.

Then when they have done all that, they have to actually teach a class for 7 hours.
that has been my week. Teaching classes has fallen very low down on the list of demands this week.

If teaching is so bad, and I agree that it (mother and sister are teachers), why stay in it? I see sooo many posts like this so why not just leave and do something else? If you're a qualified teacher then you have huge transferable skills.

Has it escaped your notice that there is a recruitment and retention crisis? Did the strikes pass you by?

Yep. I am a TA and have often voiced exasperation at the fact that schools pussy foot around parents. A few home truths is what these people need. Same with social workers, meeting after meeting with inadequate parents going round in circles and not one person has the balls to tell them the plain truth that they are the problem. Glad I am not a teacher as I would probably have been sacked a long time ago.

I certainly feel as though being a teacher is who I am. I also live for the moments when I’ve made a significant difference to a child. There’s enough of those moments to keep me going (for now!).

I am not blaming teachers by the way, just the system that denies teachers the right to tell parents the truth.

@Cosyblankets good morning to you too!! lol. no need to be so patronising. I'm asking the teachers on here who are clearly still teaching why they stay?

@Igglepiggleandhisboat that's exactly how my mother saw it. As much as she hated parts of it in the end (just VERY happily retired) teaching was very much in her blood.

The promotion process in schools, as in other areas of the public sector, works to promote the wrong people. So you get managers who are dab hands at running competency based questions through chatgpt but are bullies, not very bright, cowards.

But to me the bigger question is how the unions got so rubbish. They've got the government over a barrel. Why aren't they taking action over mistreatment of staff? Is it because officeholders are only doing it to pad their own cases for promotion?

There's a huge crisis in retention and we are losing so many good teachers.

Really we need to look at a national level at what we are doing. Why teaching is such an awful career now and why schools are not functioning well.

What will happen instead is sticking plasters until we end up with low paid people "delivering content" and the teachers creating resources just supervising a team of these.

It's so sad. So many don't want to leave teaching as they're passionate about teaching and get a buzz from supporting learners but the job is unmanageable. The system were working in is unmanageable and not great for the kids.

As for plenty of transferable skills. I'm now working in adult ed and earn a small fraction of my teacher salary. I regularly wish I'd started in a different profession. Or retrained before kids.

Tarbert- but noone listens. We had the strikes but that didn't paint teachers in a good light.

Parents on here are regularly anti teachers. Noblegiraffe does an amazing job of highlighting what teaching is like and what every day school is like for our kids.

Noone listens. Noone cares tbh. Then act surprised when their kids class is out of control as they dont have the resources to support kids with additional needs, the teachers go part time or leave, they haven't got time to go the extra mile etc.

This doesn't knock all state school parents; around 3 in 4 do take some manner of interest, but it's the 1/4 that couldn't give a shiny shit in the schools I have worked in over the last 7 years or so that cause most of the issues
Agree with this. That's true in my experience.

It's not that parents who choose private care more than parents who use state education.It's that in private education you don't have the group of parents who not only don't care about education, but will actively undermine any attempts to give their child an education. This group of parents, and then their children within school, cause issues for staff and pupils.

Different schools find have this group of parents in different amounts. In one school I worked in it was a very small, but loud minority. In another school I worked in it was probably more than half the parents. Unsurprisingly they were very different schools to work at.

I’m in my 25th year and luckily have a very supportive SLT and generally good kids. I’ll never leave this schools because of the crap in so many others!

we still have increasing issues. There just seems to be a huge increase in non compliance and has Amanda Spielman said in her recent report a breakdown of the ‘social contract’. Basically lots of kids can’t be arsed with school and want to mess around, listen to air pods, vape in the toilets and not conform. How can we honestly stop them? If their parents don’t support and they’re quietly just saying ‘no’

Wr can’t drag kids into lessons, force them to engage, be respectful or do the work. They know this, so we’re stuffed!

There's also a growing issue around emotionally based school avoidance (Dr Fisher from "Not fine in school" website is good on this.) This is a growing concern and the "alternate provision" of sometimes just a couple of hours a week is not okay. I've supported families where a parent has had to give up work for this reason.

The whole way schools are currently set up and run is difficult for a subset of students. And they are really not catered for.

Specialist schools are like hens teeth too so there's a group of those with additional need that are not being supported well, and can have a knock on effect on the rest of the class too.

Also the increasing numbers of those who are neurodivergent who may struggle to get through a day/year at school and has huge knock on effect on everyone else.

I know of more than one year 7 child who struggles with transitions (autistic) so is late in between classes. And getting detentions. What will likely happen imo is that behaviour/attendance will get worse and really the issue is managing transitions as an autistic kid. They're perfectly able academically to do Gcses.

Then as a teacher to try to manage all this without support. It's hard.

I simply have no idea how any of them carry on going. I admire them immensely for their gumption and stamina because I know I couldn’t do it for a good clock!