Teachers I need solidarity before I leave the profession

[Soniastrumpet1984]

I love teaching. I have done it for 22 years.
I am sick of parents moaning. Today has put the tin hat on it.
Here's my situation (this is not exact but an approximation as close to similar as I can get it without putting actual details.)
Let's say I've been teaching French bakery recipes to my cooking club. A local French bakery has offered to host 5 students( in its tiny kitchen) on Saturday morning at 7.30am before they open so they can watch the pastry chef making the items. This is a total favour and just a nice thing they do not have to do. They did this as on my way to work, I was chatting whilst waiting to get my coffee. I as a teacher have agreed to give up my Saturday morning to take them. Every child in cookery club was offered the experience, by email with their parent copied in. It was NOT first come first served, they were clearly told if there's more than 5, we will draw out of a hat. There were more than 5 interested , so I wrote them all on pieces of paper and trotted next door to a different teacher, who came and drew 5 names out. Now I have Two parental complaints demanding to see photos of the slips and why didn't I video the draw and provide evidence. I know it's Friday and I'm tired but fuck I want to leave.

It’s very sad. There have been rumblings that our Head will pay staff to do it as it’s become that desperate, but no one want to volunteer anymore.

I’m so sorry to hear about these awful experiences. I wouldn’t dream of emailing my DDs teacher directly. We’re in the last year of primary and have never complained about anything. The teachers all do an amazing job and I take my hat off to them. I am shocked at the extent of the rudeness and entitlement I’m reading here. I knew it was bad but not this bad. Seems to me people need to get a grip or I’ve no idea how their kids will survive.

I think parents sometimes forget we are human beings. I went from a funeral of a friend 6 weeks ago back to work to an email about how a kid was very upset by a totally ridiculous thing the parent could have dealt with.

Parents expecting the school to step in on parents squabbling on WhatsApp was this week's nonsense

Exactly the same for me. I’d just say maybe you’ll get to go next time. Recently my DD didn’t get picked for a netball match and we said just keep practising and let’s see how things go. Not everything can be instant. It’s ok to feel disappointed. I hate the word but kids do have to develop a sense of resilience. I can say from experience that young people starting out in further studies or work often simply cannot cope when things don’t go the way they want.

There are some crazy entitled parents and kids.

However, in DC1’s class it was the same 5 kids who got chosen for every single thing. Activities, opportunities, awards, etc….They became increasingly precocious and would brag about it, whilst the rest of the kids ( many quiet & well behaved) would remain hopeful, but would rarely get a look in. A few of us eventually moved our kids because of this. I’m not saying that this is the case in every class or school - or in your instance, but playing devils advocate it’s understandable if parents get fed up in these circumstances.

On the flip side, there are obviously many tiger parents out there who push for their kids to be at the centre of everything, kids could do no wrong etc. The kids mentioned above all had this type of parent.

Rest assured that most sane, normal parents do appreciate hard working teachers and the extra efforts that they go to. It truly is a vocation, not just a job. We also appreciate that managing all of our little treasures en mass is an enormous/ impossible task. Personally, I’d like thank you to all of those who continue to do their best to teach & include all DC’s and ask you not to quit!

Exactly my point. Helicopter parents take note.

@BoringPackedLunch

I always thanked teachers after a school trip. If I was a teacher, I honestly do not think I could go on any school trip, never mind it was a residential one.

Sadly this is rare - most parents just grab & go without a word. They must think it's a jolly!

All your kids going to be unemployed then? They can't all get the job so don't bother going for an interview.

I have heard of parents taking adult children to job interviews and expecting to be part of the interview process.

I think you're a saint for sticking with it for this long, OP. My kids are much older but you only have to read a few threads here to see that parents now believe they should get to tell teachers what their job is these days. You must have the patient of a saint to put up with them.

We are raising a generation of pathetic snowflakes going by what I see parents posting about how teachers should deal with their darling children. Sorry that I can't be any help. I just get completely how you must be feeling. Best wishes..

Hats off to anyone who stays in pastoral. I too quit. Constant complaints; my child has got into trouble for recording teachers (secretly) but she wasn’t told she couldn’t do that so it isn’t fair, my child wasn’t the only one doing it but the only one who has been punished (99% of the time not true), my child didn’t do their homework and received a punishment but it isn’t their fault (they have had 3 weeks to do it), the teacher is picking on my child (usually involves child being really rude and the teacher being unwilling to tolerate it), my child missed the bus and was left with no way to get home, my child has to wear trainers because they once had an ingrown toenail so it isn’t fair they are getting into trouble for wearing them, my child isn’t doing an after school detention because they live too far away (don’t send them here then or even better tell them not to be naughty!), teacher buys class breakfast out of their own pocket and child arrives late so parent complain they didn’t get a croissant etc etc. I could write a book. It is soul destroying.

They do think it is a jolly. I've been asked if I had a nice holiday!

What are you doing now @Skipthisbit?

It's just a sign of the selfish society we are living in these days. The constant "it's not fair" about anything and everything in life. Nobody gives a shit about the good of others anymore and it's all about them and their true/authentic/real self.

The stories here are all horrific. Teaching in HE means that I don’t have parental complaints. Though, those entitled students retain that sense of entitlement as they move up through education. If we didn’t laugh at the ‘feedback’ on our teaching, we’d cry. Many do.

However, I don’t really blame the students. In every single facet of work going back several decades now, there’s a growing tendency to complain. In some cases it emerges from the good intentions of the ‘every child is a winner’ movement in North America (later proved to achieve the opposite), to governments deliberate shifting of responsibility to schools to meet targets, to the clear commodification of education, to our ‘rating’ society started by Facebook with its thumbs up or down.

Everywhere we are trained to be outraged, to be indignant, to feel aggrieved but crucially with the right to complain ‘it’s unfair’. Unfortunately, this is what an atomised late capitalist modern society looks like. We’re all rats in a cage with limited resources marketed the myth that we should all be living influencer’s lives.

Read Putnum’s ‘Bowling Alone’.

I'm a teacher and not surprised by this at all sadly. One of my key frustrations is the lack of resilience in some young people when things don't go their way/ they fail and it starts with exactly this kind of parental entitlement. Those parents are doing their poor kids no favours here.

I vividly remember working as one of many volunteers on a heavily subsidised and oversubscribed summer play scheme. I was shocked the first time I got a vitriolic email into the generic play scheme email from a mum I knew from my child's school (whose child hadn't got a place). It was awful and totally opposite to how she came across in the playground. When I replied with my actual name she apologised saying she hadn't realised it was me fielding the emails as a volunteer! I definitely judged. Sadly every summer there were several similar emails.

As a teacher I think we can use this as a learning point. I give up on some parents but most kids accept that there is an element of luck in life and you don't always get what you want or deserve but you can choose how you respond.

You sound like a lovely teacher so please don't let something like this pull you down.

Was this a job interview?

I used to organise a big residential trip for year 9- usually taking 200 of them away in two groups. I would never do it now!

That’s awful. My brother and both did it and it really helped our university scholarship applications. So depressing that some entitled ‘gentle’ parents are ruining it for everyone.

I never came across this but twice with girls who were an exception who gould be ignored. Litle miss I've got to do subtraction by equal addition not decomposition, and little miss I'm going on holiday before the end of term so I'm going in your cupboard to get my books. And the parents who went to the head because their son wasn't going to grammar because of my work.
But I'm wondering. Time was when the brightest in the village went off to learn more than the village could provide to return and teach. See Gilbert and Anne in Anne of Green Gables, and I understand various Scottish accounts. The parents knew the teachers knew more than they did and respected that. Now every one and his dog thinks they know more and treats the teachers as employed servants. That's why they think they can home school. Anyone can do it.
See also the way that people are portrayed speaking to police in programs like Morse.

@Philandbill
I work for a charity - aligned with education but not directly. I had to take a pay cut but it was so worth it and I discovered you don’t need the holidays (not that I ever had 13 weeks off or even close) when you aren’t exhausted. It’s literally been life changing

@Philandbill turns out getting punched and spat at by out of control children and then being screamed at by parents telling me it’s all my fault isn’t a normal working environment and no where else other than some areas of the public sector do you have to put up with it. The rhetoric on here is all about evil Tories austerity ruining the public sector (despite us now having the highest DWP bill in history) but those of us in the sector know that the public are ever bit as culpable. You can double teachers wages and I don’t know a single one of us who have left who would go back

No word of a lie, my DH told me about a mum who was sitting in the training her son was supposed to attend to join the emergency services. When his absence was noticed and she was asked why she was there, she said he wasn’t up to attend so she would feed back to him. She was hastily removed. Unbelievable.

And that’s the sad part. Some of my best memories are of taking children in residentials. We did some awesome ones camping at the seaside, adventure ones in the new forest and we even took a whole key stage to a welsh seaside town for a long weekend.
Now endless fucking drama from parents demanding what room their child is put in with whom, who they sit next to on the bus, endless drama over what they will and won’t eat, endless expectations that the teacher takes pictures ever hour and god forbid a child isn’t on a photo. Endless complaints that they can’t take mobile phones (which apparently means they aren’t ‘safe’), complaints about the activities (too difficult /too challenging / my child felt uncomfortable because everyone else did x but they didn’t want to/ they got wet /they got muddy) and then the final load of shit if the bus doesn’t arrive back at the exact time given. I stopped them all in the end.

That’s very interesting. My DH is retiring next year (early 50s but a job that pays a decent pension) and wants to move areas. I will obviously go with him but I don’t think I’m ready to retire. I’m starting to wonder if I can do without the holidays and do something else entirely.