to feel quite shocked that DH has PTSD from teaching?

[FunnysInLaJardin]

Its feels pretty awful tbh. He has just today received this diagnosis and has been referred for priority EMDR.

He has taught for 25 years in a secondary school, and got out last year due to clinically diagnosed burn out.

I knew it was bad, but I never realised it was this bad.

How can this be allowed to happen?

I regularly receive agency emails about jobs on Jersey and Guernsey that say most teachers who go there don’t want to leave - which makes me wonder why the agencies are still recruiting. Perhaps it’s the cost of renting there that makes teaching staff need to leave?

Not to be rude or anything. But daily verbal and emotional abuse from a child who cannot control their behaviour.... Is not a 'minor stress issue.'

Can you dismiss a teacher for underperforming. Like after a performance consultation? Or is it like the civil service where the unions make it incredibly hard?

It just seems to me like loads of teachers are saying they were bullied because management ‘wanted them out.’ In the private sector if someone wants you out because you’re not performing you’ll have a review then an ongoing consultation for a month or so then you’ll be gone. Usually in that time the person resigns to move to another job as they’ve got the message. Seems to me that this isn’t able to be done and leads to bullying out as the only option.

To get an official diagnosis from a physchiatrist a Diagnosis of PTSD requires exposure to an event that involved the actual or possible threat of death, violence or serious injury. So although name calling isn't nice. Ptsd is very different

Can you dismiss a teacher for underperforming. Like after a performance consultation? Or is it like the civil service where the unions make it incredibly hard?

Of course. But my performance is judged on the performance of a disparate group of teens who may or may not perform on "the day". So it's not, and shouldn't be, as simple as you suggest.

Today, for example, one of my y13 students got a grade 3 below target. Should I be dismissed on that basis?

Cost of living is horrendous. Can't buy unless you have quallies or are eith a local born/someone with quallies. Getting off the islands is a nightmare

That's some of the reasons I've been told why people don't stay

Of course underperforming teachers can be dismissed.
Management wanting you out isn’t connected with performance though. A bullying head wanted me out despite my line manger pointing out I was very effective. I went on to get promotion to another school. Often it’s because a bullying head or line manager doesn’t like you for some reason. It’s also easy to manufacture evidence someone is underperforming .

It's not 'name calling'. Why are you being so rude and dismissive? A teacher being diagnosed with PTSD doesn't take away from your diagnosis does it? It's not a competition!

It's constant, ever present risk of being attacked, of being threatened, of being accused of violence or worse, from both students and parents, and then being blamed for not dealing with it all properly.

All while trying to, you know, teach stuff.

I do not have PTSD, though I do suffer from anxiety, which became acute after a child threatened to hit me with a cricket bat, with no other adult close enough for me to call for help. Does this count as ‘threat of serious injury?’ And I am lucky - though I have been hurt by children throwing chairs and tables in mid-meltdown, I have always taught in ‘nice’ primaries and the cricket bat incident was the only time I have directly and intentionally been threatened with serious injury. I can imagine that daily or weekly threats of this type could indeed induce PTSD in teachers, and in many schools they are daily or weekly.

And yes, in common with the experience of others, when I reported it I was told off by the senior leader I was talking to because I had obviously ‘said the wrong thing’ to set the child off. The child with the bat had no consequence.

Edited to add: the threatened attack incident was prolonged - probably about 15-20 minutes in all. It was not a single ‘I will hit you’ and then resolved.

This is very sadly true.

I’ve witnessed staff being bullied out who were excellent teachers but new management came along and decided they wanted old staff out and new staff of their ‘own’ in. I’ve also seen it happen to great teachers whose ‘face doesn’t fit’.

Until I went into teaching (later in life) I had never experienced such bullying - even in my own school days. There is a very toxic environment in many schools that parents often don’t see.

Older and more experienced (therefore more expensive ) teachers are often targets, because, especially before the latest round of NQT payrises, a school can save a significant amount by replacing an experienced teacher (with independence if thought) with a cheaper and more mouldable NQT.

I don't have a ptsd diagnosis so I think your replying to the wrong person. Ptsd is a serious diagnosis. Unfortunately any job working with the general public will always put you at risk. People are arseholes and have gotten worse

I wouldn't of thought that would be enough for a ptsd diagnosis unless you truly believed they was going to beat you to death with it. But obviously anyone can get anxiety and depression and staying in a job your unhappy in will make that worse.

I think we should take it from the OP, whose OH HAS been diagnosed with PTSD, that the daily lived realities of teaching CAN cause PTSD. I was merely saying, to the poster implying that nothing in teaching could meet the diagnostic requirements, that ‘actual threat of serious injury’ is in fact relatively common and within the experience of many teachers even in very ordinary nice schools.

There are teachers here who are expected to accept abuse, have abuse against them minimised and have their livelihoods threatened by children practising DAVRO on them. It’s gaslighting them to say this is not abuse.

I have a CPTSD diagnosis (cue to abuse) and I absolutely believe given what many teachers have written here that going into these environments every day could give them PTSD. It is beyond cruel to have a set of people doing a specific job to be told that they can’t possibly be experiencing difficulties with their mental health. I would not accept being sworn at, threatened, physically assaulted, bullied by people I work with. If i was expected to do that for years damn right my mental health would be in the toilet.

That threat, btw, is not necessarily the fault of the child involved.

The total failure to provide enough specialist school settings for those with high levels of SEN affecting behaviour means that many children are in wholly unsuitable settings.

This makes them more explosive, and whether or not a child in meltdown has an intent to kill or seriously injure someone with the furniture and objects they are throwing, the fact remains that the leg of a chair thrown at full force is a dangerous weapon. It is a daily risk for the very many of us who have such children in our classes.

I actually don't agree with this @Blankfaced, I've worked in both the private and third sectors before teaching and many teachers are career changers. I think more schools should be run like businesses but unfortunately you find people are promoted to management or leadership positions with zero training in people management, and often they have only worked in teaching or even in that one school. I've seen a large proportion of leadership who speak to staff in the same (I would say disrespectful) way they speak to students and haven't known an alternative. (They're also seriously inefficient with how teachers' directed time is used but that's a tangent).

Things like shouting at staff in front of students, calling 30+ year old women "girls" then admonishing them. My old head was known for insulting staff who voiced that they were thinking of leaving, calling them a "disgrace" and saying they were traumatising the children. IME so much happens in schools that could never happen in any of my previous workplaces that had functioning HR departments. Usually HR is the headteacher and then the head's PA for admin.

Op still hasn't even managed to answer pp about where her husband even got his diagnosis from. Let alone what led to this diagnosis

The OP's DH has quit their job. Keeping going on about how they could quit their job is rather irrelevant.

The OP was questioning how it could have been allowed to get so bad.

Teachers are saying 'yes there's a lot of this sort of thing going on'

And now others are questioning the diagnosis, because of course it can't be that bad, it's only teaching. The suggestion that a teacher could have PTSD is just making a mockery of PTSD.

More gaslighting, dismissing, and minimising the concerns of teachers.

I'm really sorry to hear that. My DS is the same and we start formal home ed in two weeks. I'm nervous about it but so relieved not to have to send him back into the school.

Good luck to you and your DH with his recovery.

I still stand by that if anyone is getting to the point of being diagnosed with ptsd due to a job they absolutely should leave like I said previously I was raped regularly as a child before being taken into care and it's been 10 years since the last time I was raped and I still have flashback and can feel like I'm being pinned down and strangled. Iv attempted suicide multiple times as i cant handle the flashbacks as their so vivid its like its happening all over again repeatedly, I can also still randomly smell him. Iv been under secondary mh services most of my life and been sectioned on a few occasions and my physchiatrist won't give me a ptsd or cptsd diagnosis or emdr so I dread to think what's happening in schools that means multiple teachers are getting these diagnosis. you need to leave for your own sake.

The system is absolutely the problem because we have teachers burning out, becoming seriously unwell (mentally and physically) and generally, under immense pressure and stress that goes above and beyond “normal” work stress. On an individual level, if a friend told me some of the stories on this thread, I’d encourage them to leave the job. I am aware this doesn’t resolve the systemic issues but you are only one person and you have to take care of yourself. So, I don’t think it’s unhelpful to suggest an individual makes plans to leave their career if they get really unwell and I don’t think everyone is shrugging and saying “just leave”. I think we genuinely mean it for the sake of the person.
I really hope this government steps up and proves they value education which includes the teachers and all other staff who work hard to keep educational establishments running. People are so shortsighted; society cannot function without well educated and well rounded children. Teachers cannot provide this in a substandard environment. We need excellent educational establishments and we need to invest in it for the future.

Teachers should be allowed to teach. The fact there’s even talk of a diagnosis of PTSD - whether it is or isn’t - shows the dire state of things in education.

How have we reached this point?

Why are so many kids so violent these days?

We had it in our primary school. A boy from care who was adopted but was already so damaged he could not be controlled.

Hed randomly jump on other kids and pin them to the floor. He threw a laptop out of the window.

He got a load of music stands and hurled them around the room at the music teacher, at other kids.

He stabbed a kid with a compass in his class.

He got a one to one intervention but still he’d kick off. In the end he was excluded permanently and sent to a special school. He was 10 years old. I’m pretty sure the teachers were on edge who taught him.

I’m shocked that you’re shocked. I don’t work in education but I know plenty that do.

A couple of generations of gentle parenting and we are raising a society of obnoxious entitled teens who gave no respect for their elders.