To think Primary School Teacher could be a great job?

[greyskiesandcarpet]

I hear so many negative things about teaching nowadays, but I wonder how bad primary teaching is, in comparison to any other demanding corporate job? This isn't me washing over the fact that some of the job must be really tough, but I want to hear some positive stories. I know a couple of people that couldn't deal with the stress of corporate life, but have excelled in teaching.

I went down to 4 days years ago. The only time I have ever worked on my day off was to do reports.
And that was very rare.
I spent my day off resting, relaxing or doing stuff about the house, going out, spending time with my DC when they were younger etc.

I’m sorry but if you reduced your hours and then worked on your days off, that’s on you.
I stopped doing tons of unpaid work many moons ago and my classes progressed just as well.

This is spot on @ThrallsWife . But I expect you've had or will have somebody post to tell you to leave if you don't like it.... There is a huge lack of understanding about what teachers do as well as teach and prep lessons.

Teaching assistants. Displays are a waste of time. It should be minimal and non distracting.

I would say that people stay in professions more than five years.
They don't stay with the same company.

@Machiavellian my teaching assistant arrives at 8.45am with the children and leaves at 12pm. I am only allowed to deploy her to work with the children to support their learning. There is no time for displays. So I do them because otherwise I get pulled up on it.

@Stradlater it's totally my choice to do it unpaid! I can't stay mega late at work due to picking up my DC (age 6 and 3) from childcare (after school club and nursery). I also run an after school choir on a Friday, and every second Thursday is a meeting, which sometimes leaves me one day (Wednesday) to get a significant amount done! I don't ever work at weekends now though, which is great!

@Machiavellian No way would I expect a teaching assistant to work on displays on top of everything else they've got going on. Our teaching assistants don't have a moment to spare and are time-tabled for interventions every minute of the day.
Also, ours is quite a zen, austere display-aesthetic (so definitely not distracting) but it is expected to reflect and support current learning so needs to be updated regularly and be pedagogically on point. I could not ask my TA to take that on.

I am a teacher in Ireland and it is mostly still amazing. The big fear here is we will go the way of the English school system. Some of our teachers trained in the UK and did a year or two and burned out big time and came home. A few of my friends did this and are happy out teaching here now. A few key differences:

For primary we have a 5 hour and 40 minute day. You are not required to be in school outside of this time unless you have supervision duty. So you can arrive at 9am and leave at 2.40pm every single day. In practice most teachers would arrive about 8.30 / 8.40 and leave around 3.30 / 4 depending on what they need to plan or prepare. We have 32 hours a year to do in addition to this. In some schools this looks like a one hour meeting once a week but not every week or it might be to do some additional training.

There is a national curriculum. There are good quality textbooks to support this. Teachers use these textbooks and workbooks to support their teaching. They do not make endless power points or worksheets. That's not to say we are slaves to the textbook/ workbook either. But teachers use a text book to teach English, Irish, maths and some use one for history, geography, science and sphe also.

We have a 182 school day year. Outside of those 182 days we are on holidays.

There is a payscale for all teachers in all recognised schools based on how many years service you have. You are paid by the department of education not by the school.

We can do a 20 hour course in some area we are interested in during the summer online or in person and this entitles us to 3 personal days to take for any reason at any stage of the year. We can take 5 days a year if a family member is sick. We have decent sick leave. We also can take parental leave in week blocks and most principals are fine about this been taken.

We have a lot of autonomy in our classrooms once fully qualified. I have never seen a principal or member of management team come in to observe a teacher in my 20 years teaching.

On the negative, parents are getting more aggressive and behaviour can be challenging but nothing compared to what I am hearing from the UK. The paper work for sen is crazy and it is nigh on impossible to access support for pupils with sen.

All in all a very family friendly job that I love.

Fair enough, if it suits you to do so.
I also stopped working at the weekend after my first year of teaching.
Occasionally, I have written some reports at the weekend although I was more likely to be up for most of the night doing them.

There are no bursaries available for primary school teachers.

So are the 48,000 new colleagues joining the profession secondary, primary or both?

I have no idea.

Are the 40,000 old colleagues leaving the profession secondary, primary or both?

I'm a member of that FB group, and it seems to me that both primary and secondary colleagues are voting with their feet. In droves. If they're able, they leave with nothing to go to, or accept new entry level roles in other sectors with 15-20k pay cuts but better work life balance.

Like I said; I've yet to hear a teacher who's left education say they miss the holidays. No word of a lie. They're not worth it.

@TheCentreCannotHold exactly. No one goes into teaching for the holidays. We go into teaching because we want to make a difference to young people, to inspire them and from my personal experience, to show them that they can achieve and break a cycle.
I was brought up in a very working class background - I was the first to pass the 11 plus, 1st to do A levels, etc. If I could do it, so could they. I know I inspired many, because I still hear from them.
It is a great career, unfortunately it's too hard now because of the aforementioned shit !

You said ‘teachers think their job is the only stressful job’

this is a post about teaching so teachers are commenting. And you are annoyed about it? It’s odd.

I have noticed on the many threads about teaching on mumsnet is that the OPs are asking the opinions of teachers. Teachers then comment on the stress of the job. Teachers do not claim they have the only stressful job just that their job is stressful. Other people like you then get irrationally annoyed by this

The OP of this thread specifically asked for positive stories of teaching.

The OP also said they wondered how bad primary teaching was and in their next post said thank you to those who highlighted the positives and gave some of the downsides too.

please don’t try and hate on teachers for commenting on the stressful aspects of teaching in a post to teachers about teaching that asks about how stressful teaching is. Some have given positive stories as requested, some negative and some a mix of both. You didn’t then need to come all exasperated and say that teachers claim their job is the most stressful job when I don’t think any one has actually said that there is no worse job than teaching in the world ever.

I know of one primary and one secondary teacher who love their jobs and while there’s little annoyance like every role they really do like what they do. They said it’s all down to management and the SLT, which makes sense as in any corporate role line management can make / break a role.

There are some happy teachers but I fear there’s more in the other basket unfortunately

I'll feel how I want to. I think that teachers complain way too much on mumsnet. It's annoying. As other people have pointed out on this thread.

What I can't understand is teachers who seem to think we don't know the stressful parts of teaching, and seem the need to share the stressful parts of the job over and over again.

We know that you have to work outside the school day, have to prepare lessons, have to mark homework.

Everyone knows!

maybe stop clicking on threads aimed at teachers about teaching then….

Are you telling me what to do now?

You're not my teacher love.

You don't dictate where anyone goes on mumsnet

Please don’t call me love. Making a suggestion isn’t telling you what to do. You carry on clicking on posts for teachers about teaching and getting annoyed about it if you like. I really don’t care. I’m going to stop responding to you now because you really aren’t adding anything useful to the thread as you’re not a teacher and so can’t answer the OPs question. You’re just posting annoyed replies to the teachers who have commented which is no good to anyone. So I will stop answering you- it is pointless

I've done a range of different careers and teaching was the most thankless, for the longest hours, worst pay when you calculated the hours, worst bullying problems, least respect for disability and reasonable adjustments and least respect for personal life. I would never, ever go back, not for any amount of money. Many former teachers, me included, now live with PTSD.

Would I encourage a mn posters to advise her dc to? No. In the olden days yes. But not now, it's too awful, too pressurised, old teachers leaving in droves tells you that it's no longer the job it once was.

I love it, but I am very fortunate to work in a lovely school with a supportive head, a trust that is light touch in terms of ridiculous expectations and largely well behaved children who want to learn - the holy grail!

Despite all of that, I still work around 50 hours a week term time and it's an extremely intense job - you can't ever have an 'off' day. Sometimes I'll do 3 hours work in the evening after a 9 hour day at work. But then sometimes I'll spend a day doing something really random, like dressing as a Viking or going to the theatre or making paint out of berries - I've done so many strange and amazing things as a primary school teacher!