To retrain as a teacher at (just turned) 50?

[MyPearlCrow]

Just that really. I was a solicitor/partner in a law firm for my first career but burned out /got bored and cynical, so gave it up. luckily we can afford for me not to work which I realise is such a privilege.

I volunteer in a primary school now several days a week and essentially do an unpaid TA role. Here, TAs here are essentially teachers without all the planning/prep/responsibility, as in they actively teach the curriculum to small groups of children. They are highly skilled.

I have considered being a TA. I have been offered a paid role at my current school. But I’m still considering my options and it’s desperately badly paid. And all the TAs here are technically over qualified (all degree educated, or ex teachers, but don’t want the ridiculous workload of a teacher; entry requirement for TA role in England is just passes in gcse English maths and science) but they are paid peanuts. But it’s such a rewarding role and I love it. I think I could really add value.

Complete honesty here: I also realise that I’m used to running the show, in my old job. I suspect that in time I would want to make my own decisions on how to deal with my class, rather than carry out someone else’s instructions. I can already see ways I would want change up the teaching/approach for some children who are struggling. I am acutely aware that teachers just don’t have time to individualise the curriculum for 30 kids though, so I’m aware I might be looking at this from the 6-8 kids I currently take responsibility for in lessons and the ability to do this with a whole class might be much more limited.

i really love being with kids, I value education, I’m a good ‘teacher’ - as in I love to explain things simply and differently to children (or in my old role, to adults too).

Teachers - am I mad? I know too well how hard the job is these days. The primary curriculum here is crazy complicated. The breadth of ability and need is jaw dropping. But I truly believe in state education being a passport to a better life and would love to be part of that.

or do I just take the TA role, qualify up as much as I can in TA courses and accept I’ll be minimum wage forever but trying to make a difference?

important point: I have kids, so want to work part time. And train part time too. I know there are options for this but it will be competitive (I have top grades academically which I think might help). If I do a part time pgce, could I do my first year as a newly qualified teacher part time or is that not an option?

I don’t underestimate what a massive, difficult, demanding and at times (currently) desperately frustrating role teaching is. Am I too old for such a huge challenge? I’d love some wisdom from teachers and ex teachers please.

You “only want to do normal working hours”?
😂😂😂😂
FORGET TEACHING, THEN!

They don't really. Unless TA training has changed a lot, pedagogy is not part of their training. As for knowledge of the curriculum most of it is covered in INSET because it's constantly changing. Sadly, there's very little autonomy in teaching

This is true in the primary school I have worked in for almost 20 years. Behaviour takes up so much time for TAs/pastoral care. Learning behaviour is poor too with more children unable to sit, listen, keep their attention, stay focused. It has changed significantly in the last 5-6 years.

So to answer a few of your questions, I don’t get paid for working more than my contracted hours. I very rarely have a lunch break that is not me eating at the computer while planning/ prepping resources.
As for knowing what to teach, that was actually the hardest part, and I wasn’t really taught that in teacher training either.
Some schools buy into schemes which you can adapt, others will have online data management systems from which you can take statements derived from the National Curriculum and turn them into lesson objectives. Local Authorities run training for specific subjects ( although you don’t actually get to go on many of these ) and you can use last year’s planning and update it. If you do formal HLTA training, you’ll get some help with that, and you’d get some with ITT. But 2 classes on teaching eg maths doesn’t really tell you how to plan it, or what content to include.
Colleagues help, and might point you in the right direction, but really this is why planning takes so long, particularly to start with, because trying to establish what it is you’re supposed to be teaching is actually very difficult. And of course, you want it to be engaging, and interactive, and differentiated where appropriate so that all can access it, but the more able are sufficiently challenged!

To become an HLTA you need either QTS or you can train on the job and do specific HLTA qualifications.

To be an HLTA now, all you need is to work for a Head that decides you are an HLTA!

I’m a tutor for the LA now. I work school hours and earn the same as I did as a teacher. But I work actual school hours; not 7-11 like I used to, I start at 10 and finish by 3.30. I choose what I teach and how, I adapt to the needs of a child and my planning takes a couple of hours for the week. You would need a teaching qualification to do this but it’s so much better in terms of actually helping the children in need and work life balance.

I worked in a completely toxic school with low turnover. Sometimes people can’t move for other reasons, or because management won’t give positive references, or because their confidence is shot. It’s a lottery.

The national curriculum is available online and each school's schemes of work describe in more detail how/when they will teach this content to each year group.

You have to learn it for yourself - there aren't any courses for it. Teacher training courses don't actually teach you the curriculum.

I'm a retired teacher and my DD is also a teacher. I thought the pressure was bad when I was teaching but it's so much worse now. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

I mean office hours. My normal office hours were between 8am-6/7pm, often longer. what I don’t want to do is work only evenings and weekends tutoring.

Go for it! We need good teachers, especially ones who are passionate! I’ve been teaching over 20 years and still love the job. Get the right school and it’ll feel like a work family. Don’t get me wrong, there’s times when I’ve had enough but I think about what I went in to do (teach children and make a positive impact on their lives) and I feel like I’ve done this.

I retrained when I was almost 50. I'm 3 years in and looking to get out. It's insane. I'm not afraid of hard work. But the lack of support, resources the increase in expectations/ behaviour / send is unreal. I cannot help all of the children in my class. Some need so much more than I can give. I worry about that. I'm trying to be a perfect teacher in am imperfect system. My mental health is shot. I don't sleep, I can't switch off.

There's a reason there are loads of us trying to get out.

So teachers just know about the intricacies of crazy year 6 spag requirements?! I don’t buy that, it has to be learned somehow. It’s a level of knowledge no one learns by accident. As a lawyer, I knew how to use the subjunctive and the passive voice, but there is no way I could have identified a fronted adverbial from an embedded one or explained what a coordinating or subordinating conjunction was. We all use them in normal communication, but we wouldn’t know their names. I doubt many people outside of primary education would. That level of crazy detail has come in comparatively recently, and certainly way after my schooling.

Teachers go home and learn the intricacies of the curriculum.

It is one of the many workload complaints that this is done in the teachers own time.
It may get touched on during an inset day but the vast majority of teacher learning is done in their own time.

But they are teaching it from day 1 PQE. How can you teach it from day 1 if no one has taught you about it?

It's up to the individual teacher to ensure they are familiar with the curriculum and to update their knowledge as things change. Yes, it must have been an absolute PITA for primary school teachers to learn to teach full-on SPaG when none of them had learned it themselves at school. I'm an MFL teacher, so SPaG is my bread and butter. We are probably the only people who rejoiced when the new primary SPaG curriculum came in - it's a lot easier to teach foreign grammar to someone who knows at least a tiny bit about English grammar!

I'm assuming the primary PGCE, like the secondary one, teaches you how to be a teacher, it doesn't teach you the content of the curriculum. My subject knowledge came from my degree. I didn't learn any French or German during my PGCE!

That's what happens to teachers already in post when the curriculum changes. But my daughter definitely learned about the national curriculum when she trained as a primary teacher.

essentially do an unpaid TA role. Here, TAs here are essentially teachers without all the planning/prep/responsibility, as in they actively teach the curriculum to small groups of children

The trouble is, a teacher's job is never just actively teach the curriculum to children. It should be and it's the best bit, but what you call all the planning / prep / responsibility is what's driving people out. I'm thinking the fact you've said it means you have a sense of this, but it's so much more then what you've distilled it down to. The 'responsibility' is for things well out of your control, more than any one person should be asked to do, and completely and utterly expected, rather than appreciated.

Ok that’s good to know. I’ll investigate, thank you.

It seems super scary that TAs are actively teaching small groups when they haven’t been ‘taught’ the content. So much room for error? Especially when the content is so complex and dense.

I had fully expected the TA courses to teach the basics of how schools teach English and maths (rather than teaching English and maths, if that makes sense?)

inset days I have been on in a few schools (governor and other capacities) there has never been any curriculum teaching of any kind.

what you call all the planning / prep / responsibility is what's driving people out.

This x 100.

When people say TAs do 'exactly the same job as the teacher', it really underestimates what the expectations of a teacher actually are.

The TAs are trained by the teacher, who has to explain exactly what is needed from the task they've been given. They don't have to understand exactly what's gone into the thinking behind the lesson plan, they just have to understand the task, and what they had to look for from the child/ren.

As I was in special ed, I generally had three or four TAs in my class. So you can imagine the level of my planning to ensure that each of them knew what they were doing and how to do it.

Fortunately I didn't have some of the time consuming tasks that mainstream teachers do though.

They will not have taught her the national curriculum on her course - she will have been expected to learn the expected content prior to teaching it.

@MyPearlCrow
I think what the poster was trying to say is that teaching is nowhere close to office hours.
You can expect to be in school 7:30 - 6 and then have another 2-4 hours of work to do in the evenings. Then you’ll be working at weekends and during a lot of the holidays too. This is not an exaggeration. In particular the May half term and Easter holidays are very busy with workload, report writing etc. From a young age my DC have always said that the one job they would never do is teaching and this is purely down to the amount of work they saw me do at home while they were growing up. My youngest DC is a solicitor and she does put in a lot of hours but even she says this doesn’t compare to teaching. Remember as well that teachers are putting in these extra hours on top of dealing with difficult parents and awful behaviour, not a day in the office.