I left two years ago after twenty years as a secondary school teacher. I left because I was burnt out, anxiety at its worst and I wanted to be more present for my own two children. Do I miss it? Yeah I miss the kids and the buzz of teaching my subject which is a major passion of mine. But I don’t miss the constant anxiety, the constant scrutiny and the absolute poor behaviour of the kids. It is soul destroying to put all your efforts into preparing lessons day after day, week after week for them to be torn up by constant low level disruption. I’m not talking about major behavioural issues although of course that did happen. But the constant, drip drip of having no equipment, chewing gum, rocking on chairs, phone out, AirPods in, talking over me, shouting out, no pen again cos the one I lent to them has been chewed and broke up, water bottles being messed with, water everywhere, can I go to the toilet, can I use my exit pass, can I see Miss so and so, can I go and get a drink, rinse and repeat. The behaviour system was three strikes and they leave. So that’s what I did. The usual offenders would be gone every lesson and repeat the same thing every lesson in that day causing the same problem with me then with their Maths teacher, then in PE, then in geography. Then at the end of the day we had to have a chat titled ‘restorative justice’ otherwise known as bullshit about them not doing it all again, for them to, wait for it, turn up to the next lesson and do it all over again. There are no sanctions that kids give a shit about anymore. Staying at home for most is a holiday and if not, they can just stroll the streets looking for trouble out there. One lesson about five years ago, a Year 10 lad had stolen a pen knife from the technology rooms. Was flashing it about in my lesson refusing to hand it over. I called SLT for support. We eventually managed to get him to relinquish the knife. Consequence? Day in school isolation then back to normal the day after that. Another kid caught dealing cannabis. Same punishment. Another kid who had the wrong shoes on, same punishment. We are doing these kids no favours by molly coddling them with snowflake consequences. Then in amongst all this chaos is social media, cost of living, poverty, gender questioning children, kids with SEND and NO support from external agencies cos they are saturated. Leaving it down to schools to be front line support.
I miss the classroom and the kids despite the chaos but I value my wellbeing more. I’d picked my tree and was close to driving into it. I fell out of love with the job and had no more shits or patience to give. The retention and recruitment crisis is massive and it’s going to take generations of change to fix that not just Bridget shuffling a few papers about.