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?

Agreed.

This will probably be my last comment on this, yesterday I thought if I say nothing it’ll stop, but it’s frustrating MN haven’t intervened beyond a few deleted comments. This poster has a victim mentality all the while implying teachers are somehow over-sensitive and weak and being generally offensive and goady. Now the bizarre claims about us all being the same person. MN doesn’t even let accounts change username mid-way through a thread 🤦🏽‍♀️

They’re either not the brightest spark or being deliberately goady. Either way there’s zero value in engaging with people like this.

Please if you want them to stop derailing don’t entertain them. At least one person has unfollowed the thread as a result of this, the Op hasn’t welcomed their posts and I’m sure others have switched off too. I am doing my best to scroll past most of their posts but it’s hard when so many are quoting them.

I no longer believe they have good intentions, the way they have centred themselves in this discussion is bizarre and appalling.

There’s a general consensus that their posts are over- simplistic at best and offensive at worst - let’s move on and don’t encourage them.

Phew, ok - back to ignoring them 😣

You've had your post deleted to so maybe you should think about that before pointing fingers

I am not surprised at all. I took early retirement some years ago and would not currently be here if I hadn't. My blood pressure was off the scales and I was several stones heavier due to stress eating. During my 29 years teaching I had two breakdowns due to bullying staff in management roles. I was primary based but I expect secondary to be even more challenging. I am now a governor in a primary school and children's behaviour seems to have become more challenging. I am getting involved in supporting the welfare of the staff.

I really hope your husband starts to improve with help. I had treatment for PTSD after caring for my husband until his death with a debilitating illness. It really helped. All the best to both of you.

I would absolutely give that advice but I don’t think it is that easy. As I say, I didn’t really notice the signs. My head felt fine. All of the signs were mostly physical. It wasn’t until I was forced to leave that the MH really started to show and I found that I had PTSD.

Also, teaching is notoriously hard to leave. It isn’t really seen as a job but more of a vocation and becomes your whole identity. I always laugh when we watch TV dramas, they are always about hospitals or police dramas and that is because their whole lives are arranged around their job. I always think the only reason you don’t see many teaching dramas, is because who wants to watch someone sit up until midnight marking and planning? The premise is the same and we live our lives in blocks of 6 weeks only to have a short break and start again. On that point, we never get to live in the moment (a must for MH) we are governed by our medium and long term plans and need to always be working at least 2 weeks ahead.

The long notice periods means securing a job outside of teaching is really hard. Aside from certain industries, people don’t tend to want to employ teachers for some reason. And then there is the guilt, of just staying to see the children through the year. I know that people quote behaviour a lot and my classes were definitely no exception but for every child who I dreaded being in, I would have 5 that were an absolute pleasure to teach and they were just as affected as I was by these other children. IME behaviour at the hands of parents was a larger issue in our school and where bullying of teachers really took place.

The only way that I can describe it is being in a toxic relationship. At first you know things are not great but you know the good bits are really good and you can overlook the other bits. Then one day you look up, totally broken and wonder how you got there. - sounds dramatic but that is how it was for me.

But why shouldn’t teachers be able to their job, which after all is quite important to society, without fear of assault, abuse and deteriorating mental health? Isn’t saying “Oh how silly you are to do that, be poor and work in McDonald’s! “ rather missing the point? What do you think will happen to all the (now legions) children with MH issues if all the teachers go and work elsewhere ?

Wouldn’t it be better to fix the issues rather than encouraging teachers to quit?

Don't get drawn in, there's no point trying to explain.

Wouldn’t it be better to fix the issues rather than encouraging teachers to quit?

Of course. So, how?
Why is the management culture in teaching bullying, on seemingly a huge scale, private or state? What effect does that have on the impression vs the clearly different reality for the teachers, managers, and pupils?
Is it really different, freer, less stressful, better managed elsewhere for long periods for an individual worker? If some teachers move into civil service/ charity posts/ learning and development/ organised religion/ tutoring/ office work/ call centres, and 'smash it', is it because they're no longer an element of that environment, 'that' strategy and 'that' financial model?
I am very sorry that this seems to be a rotten system that eats its own young (and middle-aged), and that it seems almost a norm - not an exception - to affect so many individuals in the same way, but if most business models are broken like this, then they fail, financially and culturally. This one is something that has X resources for Y students of all temperaments, and Z employees, of all temperaments, and it can't fail in the commercial way. It seems that it can do damage in a range of ways instead, if it is not fit for purpose. Vocations are amazing, but for a lot of people, they are not a 'given' for succeeding and they're no longer viable if they destroy you in the process.

I’m so sorry OP. As parents is there anything we can do to help our kids teachers? I have 4 kids (2 in high school & 2 in primary) I am of course always kind when on site at the primary but I’ve not been at the high school once since being shown around before they started year 7 and they are going into years 9 and 10. It’s crazy that we have no clue what it’s like in high schools other than what our teenagers tell us.

One way for parents to support teachers and schools is to not make vexatious complaints.

This will be easy for most parents, but a few really need to be told to pack it in.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/the-rise-of-parent-activism-and-how-schools-are-tackling-it/

Perhaps in the same vein, a way in which parents could support teachers is through keeping an eye on what is posted on - and sometimes amplified through - class WhatsApps or similar.

Being yelled at / complained about by a parent shouting ‘EVERYONE is saying that….’, based on the echo chamber of WhatsApp amplifying what a single child has reported to their parent is a deeply undermining experience. I am forever grateful for parents who have quietly alerted me or senior staff to threatening / aggressive WhatsApp posts, so that the appropriate people can be spoken to quietly and incidents investigated before getting to the ‘yell at the teacher at the door’ stage.

It absolutely would be better but it's been like this forever and never improved hopefully you will all have a better time under labour

Why because she agrees with me that health is more important then a job which is all iv actually said

Exactly! That’s my point. unfortunately I have seen it used as an excuse for behaviour which is very unfair.

My daughter was subject to bullying and this was the reason I was told and expected to accept the rationale. The child causing the behaviour (which included pinching items from other children) went unpunished due to them having ‘adhd’ rather than their behaviour challenged. Funnily enough, the items were never returned by the either parents or child.

I think as @noblegiraffe says, it's more about what you don't do than what you do.

Children go home to their parents and tell them a soundbite or something completely out of context and the next thing the teacher is being pulled up in front of the headteacher because something that wasn't even an incident in the classroom has been blown out of all proportion.

Or a minor mistake the teacher made or something they handled in a less than perfect way is treated like a criminal offense rather than just evidence that they're a human being and sometimes get things wrong, especially in a very stressful role. I read somewhere that teachers make 1500 decisions a day. Some of them are going to be the wrong call, it doesn't mean they are awful, malicious people who hate your child and want them to fail.

If parents knew what their children told their teachers, and how often teachers tactfully do not let on how much they know about their marriages, their bad habits and their less than-proud moments, they'd think twice about judging them based on what their children say at home.

Yes you can , but you go through a process, to get there.

To dismiss a teacher it's a long process but if management want them gone it's just a matter of time.

The usual process is:

• "Support" plan (usually a set of unreasonable targets with ludicrous timescales and zero actual support)
• Informal Capability (teacher put under intensive scrutiny and rigorous monitoring that makes the job unbearable- most leave at this stage)
• Formal Capability (same as previous stages but all pretence of wanting to "help" them stay in the job is gone now and the gloves are off, SLT will be doing everything possible to prove the teacher is incapable.)

The teacher is expected to keep the entire process secret from colleagues, so will have no support, the Unions are mostly useless, and any attempt to defend themselves is seen as being unwilling to accept criticism or improve. Of course, most things in teaching are subjective so they can throw anything at you. You can be told that one lesson was too hard and another had insufficient challenge, that you were too strict with one pupil and too lenient with another. Hard data to prove good progress is not enough but if it shows poor progress, you will be blamed, regardless of outside factors that could have caused it. Bad behaviour of the pupils is also entirely your fault and will be used against you.

If you are UPS 3 you are probably more likely to be put on a plan. You cost too much money.

Most teachers I know who the school wanted to get rid of were not dismissed, rather, their lives were made intolerable. Crap timetables, constant scrutiny etc.

It's particularly easy to get rid of an ECT as you just warn them that if they stay at the school they are in danger of failing and encourage them to try a 'fresh start' at a different school.

In my experience, older, more experienced (more expensive), more conscientious and self-reflective teachers (often the best teachers within a school, but equally not always malleable when confronted by a new MAT management team or young head) are usually broken by early stages of the dismissal procedure. The constant scrutiny and unpleasantness is enough to feed into their own humility and drive to do better, and they either leave or have to leave with MH issues.

Genuinely poor but arrogant / non-reflective teachers, who see no reason why they should improve and lack the experience to recognise their own weaknesses, often remain in place because the school
has to work through all the stages of the dismissal process, and in many cases (especially in very stretched primaries) this is simply too onerous .

These days we don't get rid of terrible teachers because we couldn't get anyone to replace them. We have to just suck up the complaints.

Primaries have not, in general, reached that stage.

I have seen this exact thing happen too many times to colleagues. Usually older experienced staff as someone else has pointed out. It’s heartbreaking.

The bullying culture in schools is disgusting. It’s one of the reasons I left to EHE my own DC. It was terrible to watch happen even though it didn’t directly happen to me. At the time when I deregistered my DC from school I did so because of the ridiculous curriculum expectations and the ‘one size fits all’ style of education. But when I reflect on my teaching days, I know that deep down my decision was as much driven by me not wanting my own children to be IN that environment 5 days a week.

Many parents do not realise that this staff/SLT bullying is common in schools and as someone else upthread has pointed out is for sure linked to bullying amongst the students. It creates an unspoken toxic environment that the students/children would never be able to articulate as it’s difficult enough as an adult to see it for what it is until it’s too late.

💐 for teachers everywhere.

I couldn’t agree more.

A new HT means out with the old and in with the new (& cheap), irrelevant of how good they are.

Any PiP should be supportive in getting an improvement (not that one is needed), instead it’s used as a tool to torment, demean, and bully out.
Usually, they go off with WRS and are attendance managed out before (fake) PiP is completed any way.

As was planned months in advance by HT.

It’s not, but it doesn’t mean and is no excuse for mistreatment and workplace bullying of the room staff is it?

User8646382 · 15/08/2024 19:30
Don’t forget, the management have to deal with the parents. It’s not for the faint hearted, to say the least.

This isn’t even true. Teachers have to deal with parents evenings and emails.