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

All jobs have stressful days but in teaching there are more stressful days than most. It does depend on the school, but for all of those saying that teachers are always complaining, I think there has been a shift. They are no longer complaining but are quietly leaving in droves and transferring their considerable skills to other jobs. Schools are struggling to get teachers and you can forget about physics and maths teachers. Teachers are looking for better pay, less stress, working from home, flexibility, some respect. Look back on this post in about 10 years when they’ve drafted in the caretaker to teach your kids, and I don’t think starmer has a hope of finding all these new recruits.

No they don't.
Teacher are paid for term time.

My dad was a maths teacher and he told me their annual wage is divided equally over 12 months. They aren't technically paid for school holidays.

YANBU
I think teaching sounds horribly stressful, and having dealt with some of DC friends who (at 7 or 8) were back chatting, ignoring reasonable requests and had the table manners of wild animals, there's no way I could deal with 30 of them!

Question though : what are the plans other parties have to improve teaching? (some saying its not necessarily about pay, which in some ways would be an easier fix) iirc Keir Starmer said he would recruit thousands more teachers....but unless things change a) would there be this many people willing to be teachers an b) would they stay (I suspect no)

What could be changed to make it more attractive to new and current teachers? As far as i can tell most things that teachers find unreasonable or stressful is stuff outside the classroom. Would having more teachers share the load of additional duties ....or are some unnecessary or should be done by another role altogether?

I'm not planning to vote Conservative BTW but trying to understand what or how things could be different. Simply recruiting more teachers (who are not experienced and might not stay in the profession) is possibly not enough, but what practically needs to change?

I think most jobs (whatever their holiday entitlement) are paid over 12 months?

Did you genuinely not understand what I was describing or were you trying to be snarky?

I'm making it easy on myself with the numbers here.

Let's say you are paid for 9 months at 2000 per month. That's 18,000 pa

You can either get 9 monthly payments of 2000 and nothing for the other 3 months or 12 monthly payments of £1500

You are not paid for the 3 months.

It is not the same as being paid for all 12 months.

I'm using a 9/3 split as an example.

YANBU (married to a teacher).

Yes there are other herd jobs, I'm in one!

The mental switching energy for teachers to do their day to day is incredible.

The abuse and disrespect is terrible.

The emotional investment in caring for your 'clients' and supporting them ( sometimes 30+ of them) for the academic year is unique. It's not like you pick them up, handle the crisis and then they move on. That's what makes it an unusual role IMHO.

Oh, and the mountains of admin ... ugh

Its a tough job, that's for sure but the amount of leave entitlement is staggering! Is is 13 weeks? Even if they worked for 3
Of those weeks doing research/ planning etc thats still 10 weeks nearly double the statutory amount. Very few Jobs have that amount of off time. My husband had 7 days last year and his job is full on (self employed)

The ignorance around this is staggering. It doesn't seem to matter how any times its explained, so many people just don't get it.

Tbh, it kind of undermines any other point they make.

Children have school holidays.

^Teachers" work for 39 weeks of the year and get paid for 39 weeks of the year. Our pay includes 28 day holiday pay (or whatever it is exactly) but it isn't annual leave because we can only take the time when the children are not in school. For the other weeks of the year, we often work through much of it (either at home or in school) but we do not get paid for that. Time spent working outside of our contracted term time work is not paid for.

School holidays are not holiday entitlement for teachers, they are days when the children are not in school and we don't get paid for them.

I'm sure that sounded good in your head.

You're basically parenting 30 kids. And trying to teach them stuff too. And anyone knows how hard it is to parent just 1 or 2. So YADNBU.

I think a better way of thinking about teacher pay and conditions is that it is a compressed hours job - extremely long working hours during term time and reduced working hours when the children are not in school. I have a friend wjo works for the Foreign Office and has time ‘on duty abroad’ and times ‘at home’ - I would not say that he has ‘excessive holidays’, just that he has a compressed hours job. Similarly shift workers aren’t ‘on holiday’ if they work very long shifts on a smaller number of days per week and not at all on others.

I work in professional services. My clients are demanding and I am taught to manage their expectations and perform to high standards that they consider sufficient.

I don't think teachers are now expected to perform more or more is demanded of them, but I do think that societies "never question" attitude has ebbed since Victorian days and especially, post covid, parents are questioning teachers and challenging the status quo. There is nothing, in my opinion, wrong with accountability.

Asking a teacher a question or asking whether they are challenging / developing your child (and asking if there is anything you can do to help) should not see you marked out as being "difficult" or "THAT parent". Teachers and schools should form a working relationship with parents - not see themselves in a silo.

I do understand that there is an issue with parents undermining their children and not supporting teachers (and that teachers, unlike professional services cannot "dump" a child if the relationship is not reconcilable) before their children but again, support there should come from management. All forms of organisations have poor managers. If you have a poor manager, move to a school with a better one rather than moan about parents and schools generally.

I don't think teachers are now expected to perform more or more is demanded of them

Then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Sounds really hard OP and not something I've considered before, my daughter hasn't started school yet but now I've read this I can imagine it must be hard.

You sound like a bloody good teacher though.

I wish more teachers would use their union and push back more though. Where I teach we all have a lunchbreak which is protected. We would never answer phones in reception routinely or spend a lot of time fixing photocopiers (obviously help out where you can but you can't do everything)

I would agree with this. I am constantly reading Teachers posting how difficult their job is, how they are leaving in droves blah blah. I am sure it is hard but there are many many jobs that are equally as tough but I barely see them complaining like the sheer number of Teachers. Why is that?

Because no other difficult job attracts the criticism that teaching does. No one else needs to defend themselves. Except, the police I would say.

People assume if they have met a rude shop assistant then they met a rude shop assistant; a lazy nurse? Must be them because we all knpw nurses are angels... but teachers? People have a bad experience with a teacher and all teachers are tarred with the same brush.

Plus the sheer breadth of problems that we deal with in school - poverty; the impact of DV; trauma (parents and children); violence and abuse; parental relationship breakdown; emotionally dysregulated parents; etc. On top of the actual remit of our jobs which is to plan and teach a ridiculously overstuffed curriculum.

I've been updating the online assessment profiles this week. We have been shit hot on curriculum coverage - not a single opportunity has been wasted. Sometimes, we've been able to cover more than one objective from more than one area of the curriculum in the same lesson. Every second has been utilised and yet we still have more objectives to cover than there is time for between now and the deadline for updating the online assessment profiles. Not meeting all the objectives is questioned and seen as a failing on our part. Ie - we haven't done our job properly. The childen are overwhelmed and exhausted.

A lot of the issues are around parental expectations and demands. I can support your child, I can (and do) go above and beyond to meet their academic and social/emotional needs but I can't fundamentally change who your child is.

I could write a book on unreasonable parental expectations this year!

Sorry I don't agree. I don't think expectations have changed albeit there is more accountability - essentially teachers are paid to educate and complete paperwork which evidences a child's development. I'm paid to both DO my job and complete associated paperwork.

And as for those saying 1 in 5 people leave after teacher training, a lot of people don't proceed with law or accountancy after studying that at university.

I don't doubt it is difficult but lots of jobs are hard. Add in being incredibly short-staffed in most sectors and that makes jobs even harder. Almost every week there is a post from a teacher complaining. We get it, it's incredibly tough and not everyone is cut out for teaching.

As for the notion that only teachers get disrespected, try being a part of another allied healthcare profession. Drs are considered saintly, nurses are angels but that level of respect or lack of criticism isn't levelled at the rest of us.

Somebody else who enjoys it more?

@JustMarriedBecca you really don’t get it. With the reduction in other services teachers (and support staff) are being expected to pick up the pieces, so be social worker, mental health support etc. When parents can’t access this support they take their anger out on the schools as they are the only place they can access. Some days they will spend more time on this type of support than actual teaching.

How many threads are there on here asking why their child is now being taught by a TA and should they go in and complain to the HT and tell them they need to sort a teacher out now as this is not reasonable. As if the HT doesn’t know it’s not reasonable and it’s not like they haven’t tried to get a teacher

Most parents really don’t have a clue how dire it is. Hence people posting on here about moaning teachers and get out if you don’t like. That is what many teachers are doing. Targets for teacher training missed every year. Where the hell Starmer thinks he is going to get 6,500 extra teachers from I do not know. What needs to happen is to do something about the 40,000 plus teachers leaving every year.

@ttcat37 You have heard that there's a dire teacher recruitment and retention crisis, yes?
Why do you think that is if so many teachers are "enjoying" their job?

I am more than happy to have those conversations with parents. More than happy.

If a parent asks for a meeting, I'll accommodate. Phones me, I call them back. Catches me on the playground for a quick chat, no problem.

I'll also admit if I've dropped the ball, forgotten or not noticed something. It's my job not my life and we all make mistakes. It happens. And I'll rectify it.

But being threatened with violence? Shouted at? Expected to achieve things that I'm completely unable to do?

And I have no issue with parents who want to know what they can do to help! God, if only!!

And, when they do ask, I tell them. Some ask for extra homework to support. None of that work is ever completed. Most of the time, it's not even collected from the office where its agreed I'll leave it. Some of them don't even do the basics like reading with their child twice a week. In a lot of cases, parents asking for more is about them asserting their authority and not a desire to help their child at all.

There are many good and supportive parents on MN. I read threads where a parent worried about being THAT parent and I'll tell them to go ahead and speak to the school. You don't become THAT parent by advocating for your child. You become it by being unreasonable in your demands, rude, aggressive, threatening and unrealistic.

@Littlemisscapable Can you even get hold of a teaching union? I never can mine!

Sorry I don't agree. I don't think expectations have changed albeit there is more accountability - essentially teachers are paid to educate and complete paperwork which evidences a child's development. I'm paid to both DO my job and complete associated paperwork.

If that was all I had to do my job would be a piece of piss quite frankly!

And this is our country’s future we are talking about. Our children’s future. They are being failed. Just telling teachers to quit what good is that. There isn’t anyone coming into the profession to replace them.