Being a primary school teacher is INCREDIBLY HARD or AIBU 🫠

[BoneTiredandWired]

Today alone as a teacher I have: Intervened in three fights. Had multiple restorative conversations. Given up both my break and lunchtime to sort out arising issues. Unexpected fire alarm chaos. Taught music and German and had a real laugh with my class. Saw real positive developments of my kids abilities. Shortly later spoken seriously and told off my class.
Dealt with multiple crying children who don't want to leave my class next week. Sang and coordinated our summer concert songs.
Written the last of 28 individually written reports for all my kids.
Tidied up and emptied my entire classroom.
Had a 2 hour after school meeting.
Cried on the way home out of sheer emotional exhaustion and having to be strong carrying the emotions of so many throughout the day.

I ❤️ my kids so so much, but teaching is HARD and so so much more than people think it is

But this thread is specifically about teaching. So obviously teachers have replied. And not one of them have said their job is any harder than anyone else’s.

Many teachers have to have a supervisory system in place (usually from another member of staff) to help them process various safeguarding issues they have to deal with. That is what they can mean when they say they can’t leave work behind. Not sure many accountants have to have counselling service.

How do you think that teacher will feel like if that student commits suicide before they can get professional therapists help?

Many teachers here may not directly say they have it worse than others but they imply it by their hyperbole.

No. They don't. You just decide to take it that way. Also, how do you know it's hyperbole unless you've done their jobs in their schools?

There’s a wide variety of health and social care professionals who do face what teachers face, many face far worse.

The finance department in local authorities do get quite a lot of verbal abuse by the way!

On any one day, a teacher can also be a social worker, dietician, occupational therapist, speech and language therapist, nurse, PCSO and psychologist.

No teacher is doing the above.

@HeavingSuitcase i agree that teachers can’t do the above, because they’re not qualified in those areas.

The problem is that they’re often “expected” to attempt to perform those roles, because no one else is available to do it. If a child is suffering from MH problems and hasn’t got access to a psychologist, for example, their teacher has to deal with the consequences in the classroom.

If a child has a difficult home life, again, their teacher has to deal with the consequences, whether or not social workers are involved.

Tbh, it’s always been so, even when resources weren’t cut to the bone. My Mum started teaching in a deprived area in the late 1950’s (the type of neighborhood depicted in Call the Midwife) and she often had the children of sex workers falling asleep on their desks, because they lived in single rooms/tiny flats and had to roam the streets part of the night while their Mums entertained clients. I’m not making this up!

Teaching is a very tough profession, always has been.

‘On any one day, a teacher can also be a social worker, dietician, occupational therapist, speech and language therapist, nurse, PCSO and psychologist.’

The thing is, on any day a teacher has to ‘fill in’ for all the above roles - and that is in some ways worse. Knowing that a child in front of you needs SaLT, but because there are no therapists in your county, they just have you. You know they need a social worker, and until 5-10 years ago would have had one - but they don’t, they just have you. They need an OT, but they won’t see a qualified one for 18 months, so they just have you. They need a psychologist- but none are available, so they just have you.

Doing multiple people’s jobs much worse than they should be done, but in their absence, you have to do them, is immensely stressful.

@cantkeepawayforever Exactly!

@HeavingSuitcase when none of those professionals are available to a child what would you say a teacher is acting as when they are dealing with pupils who need speech and language therapy, counselling etc. Doesn’t come under teaching English and Maths.

Are you happy to accept many children aren’t able to access the services of therapists etc? The only people they have access to are teachers/support staff. Why do so many people think this is okay. Why aren’t people fighting against this, why are the only people they are fighting against are teachers who are the only people many vulnerable children have access to

What does ‘dealing with’ mean? It’s shit that these professionals are not available. But the teacher is not working as a social worker by listening to a child with social problems.

I've been thinking this for a long while. These threads are relentless on an almost daily basis and woe betide anyone who suggests they do a different job instead.

When I joined MN about 14 years ago, these threads were relentlessly started by nurses, week in and week out, but now you hardly ever see them.

Strange but true.

And as I have said, there lies the issue. I know that a child meets previous thresholds of social services involvement. I cannot ‘deal with’ the child or family situation because I do not have the power to intervene that a social worker has. So for the entire time that child is in my care - at least a year - I have responsibility but no power. I have to mitigate the effects of the situation on the child aa far as I can - through physical care such as food, washing, laundry, first aid to injuries and through emotional and psychological care as far as I can. I can fill in a LOT of paperwork, and rejoice every morning that they appear in school no more harmed than yesterday. What I cannot do - as I am not a social worker - is solve the problem.

Is it worse to know and see the problem for 12 months and not be able to solve it or get anyone to solve it, or have the job and power to take proper steps to solve it?

And I do think that it is the fact that every teacher is, at any moment, juggling many, many of these ‘not my job but filling in’ roles and unable to sort out or finish any of then does incrementally add to the mental and physical load.

You may say ‘just don’t do any of it, then’. The vast majority of teachers care. It’s an occupational hazard.

And the form in which most children express their needs through behaviour is almost impossible to ignore!

@ShowerOfShites and there is a nurses shortage and NHS is in a mess. Maybe people should have listened to them!

Yes just as there was back then.

That's the point, nothing has changed except they don't start threads anymore.

I think the MN support eventually fizzled out and the threads didn't get many replies in the end, due to the volume of them.

Looking at the voting on this one, I wonder if that's happening with teachers?

But why aren’t people listening. Do people really not care what is happening in education?

Do you not get that people are fucking exhausted from their own jobs and just trying to get through the day that they don’t want to listen to teachers complain about how hard they have it?

Yes it’s shit, loads of jobs are shit, I don’t know exactly what any teacher thinks they are actually going to achieve but complaining on a Mumsnet thread.

No we’re not happy about it. But also I’m not a hypocrite. Yes I want my son to have a teacher but at the expense of someone having a break down, or worse a string of teachers having one each? No. A lot of time telling people to leave due to stress are being serious. There will be a shockingly awful period for education in the intervening years of there only being one teacher for a school but maybe it will get better by the time I have grand kids? Maybe not but soldiering on when you’re all dropping like flies isn’t the answer.

And yes you could say I should support you more but what about the nurses, the nursery workers, dentists and all the other professions I can’t help you all. I can vote and I still respect in my son but really what else is there?

Because they're just forum members.

What do you expect Mumsnetters to do about it, other than suggest the OPs look for different jobs? 🤷‍♂️

So many threads on MN about schools having to restrict access to toilets. Parents up in arms. One reason why access is restricted as many children self harm in the toilets. Huge increase in self harming. Children aren’t able to access professional services. Only people they can see are school staff. Not one person complaining about this. Plenty of posters complaining about toilets closed and blaming teachers. But don’t seem to care one jot about self harming children. Self harming big issue in Primary Schools. Why aren’t posters on here concerned about that

But teachers are saying the education system is shit

Scottish schools finish next week, we also have too many teachers here I know plenty who can’t get permanent positions. I often wonder what the difference must be like down south because I have teachers in the family and they all love their jobs.

Different contracts with specified time limits for starters (although I'm sure many still work beyond that - but at least the idea is there. In England we have directed time of a certain number of house assuming not an academy, but our contract also states any extra hours required to do the job. )

Also, though the big problems are not about pay, the extra approx £8k per year paid to a Scottish teacher at an equivalent level to me probably at least sweetens the deal a bit.

Funding in schools is dire. It's June and we need to order supplies for September... items like exercise books, pens, pencils. But we have been told we can't put any orders in until October. We also have to suddenly lose three members of staff, whose contracts won't be renewed despite the needs they were employed for still being there.

We have two children in KS2 with intimate care plans - literally wiping bottoms. Although a TA is employed partly to do this, they only work some of the day and only 4 days a week. Another has to clean her teeth after snack and lunch, supervised by a member of staff, because her parents don't insist on it at home and her teeth are so appalling that she can't have an operation on her mouth until things improve. We also carry out SALT activities on different sounds / aspects of speech as signposted by a SALT (not taught or modelled, just told "work on this, there's stuff on Twinkl / alternative website." She is one of five children requiring SALT input by one of us.

We carry out physio exercises with another child twice a day but only have a sheet of paper to go off - we have to hope we're doing them correctly and not making them worse.

We have bereaved children and self-harmers who are on never-ending waiting lists. All we can do is try to carve out time to talk and hope we're not saying the wrong things.

One parent alone was responsible for 15 hours of paperwork and meetings after school last week for threatening to punch the secretary and head - they are now banned from the school premises. She actually did this at a previous school. Our head will now have to go on a visit to their home to make sure the child is okay, despite having been threatened and sworn at.

All this plus expectations from leadership, parents, OFSTED and most of all ourselves to be delivering an ambitious curriculum.

It's bloody hard. Noone says it's harder than other jobs but it is hard. And a LOT of everyday things in teaching are definitely beyond the remit and beyond the scope of the job many of us trained for. Teachers get frustrated that they get shut down and told by non-teachers that we're wrong and it must be us.

There are many, many wonderful things in teaching too, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly not what it was and not what many people think it is.

I would also say that I'm really, REALLY concerned by the number of people in all sorts of jobs saying about how many hours they work unpaid. That is not okay in any job! Not on a regular, many hours a week basis. A pp said something along the lines of "that's what modern work is like." How have we all fallen into thinking this and going along with it? Maybe if we were all paid fairly or enough staff employed that work was shared around so it could be done within the actual hours, everyone would less stressed, less angry, less physically and emotionally wrung out.

Plan from current government seems to be not bothering to try to fix things but just hope they can churn out enough new teachers who will stick at the job for two or three years before quitting. They're not even bothering with retention. It's a bucket full of holes with experienced teachers leaving and they just keep trying to top it up with newbies. But it's not a fast enough rate.

Exactly. And it’s insulting to those professions to insinuate that they are. Sticking a wet paper towel on a grazed knee is not being a bloody nurse ffs!!