Teachers : what's the worst thing about the job now?

[Floursacktabletop]

I've name changed , but been here many years and teaching for 22 years.
Dreading going back on Monday. For me , the worst bit is the increasingly poor behaviour of students and the continual parental complaints and allegations.
Anyone else dreading it and fancy a solidarity thread?

Absolutely! I really disagree with my current school which actively tells students not to sort out disputes themselves or to approach someone they've had a falling out with, and that they need to use an adult (usually in the pastoral team) to mediate. They're usually separated into different classes as a result as well.

Plus students have been allowed to walk out of class to go write a statement about teachers - it's happened to me with students announcing to the class what they were going to go and do, because I was following the behaviour system with them. My issue is the fact it's entertained by the staff taking the statement down plus that students aren't sanctioned for walking out of class to do it.

Won't matter.
We had cctv.
Parents still refused to blame their child even when serious assaults were captured on clear footage.
Police not interested. (I live somewhere with an accepted very poor police force)
Same with myconcern/cpoms or similar. Parents just deny meetings or phone calls/emails took place 🤷‍♀️

Because we let them do it day after day. Smashed up your classmates clay pots? No problem, you can miss English and play basketball with the pastoral team instead. Trashed half the ipads and told the TA to fuck off? That's not ok. Help clean up the mess and you can have a sticker on your chart.

It's totally ridiculous but SLT's are totally indoctrinated. The otherwise good kids see this crap so a little bit of low-level disruption or rudeness doesn't seem like a big deal to them. Everything gets progressively worse.

But it does matter.

Individual body cams capture far more sound & visual detail than CCTV. All transactions can be recorded throughout the parental engagement processes. There will always be those pupils & parents (not always in the same set) who will kick off or disrupt however reasonable or firm the approach taken. But the majority of people will adapt to a more straight forward robust approach as their concerns are addressed promptly - just not by teachers & TAs - & outcomes/resolution is case managed. Improvement is possible.

The problem with SEND and keeping all of them in mainstream at all costs is you're forcing square pegs into round holes. Not fair on teachers, not fair on students.
I'm an EOTAS Tutor now (previously a primary teacher) so I'm hopefully doing my little bit to help ❤️

I hear what you're saying and there should be CCTV in school, but if my child told me they were getting screamed at, I would want the school to give me a response and investigate.

Slightly different scenario but a tutor actually harmed my minimally verbal child and it happened over a long period of time because the provision happened in a place that was not a registered school and had no CCTV. I only found out because I had lots of suspicions and actually eventually burst in on them to catch them in the act.

So, what I'm saying is that parents do have to be able to ask about their 'allegations'. However, I completely understand you, as an ex teacher I heard some right corkers!

I read your title @Floursacktabletop and without even reading your post, I said to myself behaviour and parents! Oh and shit SLT.
I wasn't a teacher but an additional needs TA and after nearly 15 years, I walked away. Honestly, when I tell people about some of the behaviour that we're all expected to tolerate, they think I'm joking. I'm not. It's appalling and this was an infant school.

And some of the parents 🙄😩

'Little Jonny is being bullied by Adam'. No he isn't. It's little Jonny being a little shit and antagonising Adam until he lashes out.

'My little Ruby hasn't got any friends at playtime and nobody will let her play with them. Can you watch her every playtime?' We'd reply that she always seems happy at playtime but yes sure, one member of staff will watch her solely and ignore the 150+ kids all charging around like loons. Lo and behold, little Ruby is as happy as Larry and having fun. Will the parent listen to us? No. They believe their little Ruby who is spinning them a complete yarn. And on and on and on it goes.

Together with shite SLT who couldn't give a shit about your wellbeing and that's why school staff are leaving in droves.

I meet up with several ex colleagues and not one of us misses it one iota, which is a shame because at times, I absolutely loved my job.

It's not just parents who make unfounded complaints - I was told by a senior colleague that little Johnny felt I was picking on him.....
When I had a parents' evening recently and spoke to his parents, they went completely blank when I said that little Johnny and I had turned a corner after I had spoken to him and said all that I wanted was for him to come in and get on and that I wouldn't be able to moan at him because there would be nothing for me to moan at him for (read just wear your uniform properly and stop answering me back).
It turns out they had no idea what I was talking about.
I had been 'called out' for want of a better expression on the student's say so only - no asking other students, no approaching me with a 'what's going on?'.
Little Johnny was never spoken to about the possibility that his complaint resulted in me having my professionality questioned.

@vipersnest1
100%!
I’ve seen this so many times! I was also accused of picking on little Johnny. (Bless him, all these evil teachers picking on him!) 😂 Little Johnny was a little shit, he was in year 8 so SLT were well aware of him, he was always in the top 5 in terms of behaviour points. I was pulled out of a lesson and asked why I was picking on lovely sweet little Johnny by a vile AHT. He was such a quiet lovely boy and now was apparently too upset to come to my lessons etc. I let her finish before informing her that I wasn’t currently teaching little Johnny because his class was being taught solely by our lovely PGCE student who was certainly not picking on little Johnny and I was a witness to this because I was observing every lesson! Her face was a picture. She hadn’t even bothered to check who was teaching the class in her desperation to have yet another go at me.😂 My crime was having a different opinion to her in a meeting once a few years before! This is how petty some schools are!

Just leaving this here: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-teacher-ilford-sacked-whacking-joke-b1213051.html

Key points: teacher was sacked after 35 years' service (4 in that school) after making a joke about whacking a Y6 student - which almost all kids understood to be a joke. Apparently the student felt threatened (but still attended her after-school club that day).

And THIS is why teachers have to watch their mouths at all times.

Wow the judges quote that if even one child is feeling upset its a safeguarding risk is terrifying.
We have so many ND students who this would apply to. One of my students a few years ago was upset by being called a hamster in a group exercise where the class were split into groups and given team animal names. Does that mean that was inappropriate?

Truth always comes out in these threads. If a poster made a thread about deciding between state and private, Mn would be trampling over each other with how much better state is over private, how kids get an 'all round' experience, how they never would choose private even if they could afford it.

You can get bad private schools, too.

Yes it is totally ridiculous! I also find the discrepancy between primary and secondary in this respect jarring. At primary: smashed up the classroom; hit a teacher; bitten a classmate? Oh dear poor little Johnny, all behaviour is communication, go and have hot chocolate with the head and talk about your feelings. At secondary: Johnny! Your tie isn’t done up properly! Have a detention! How do the little Johnnies who have been cosseted through primary school cope with the regime at secondary?

Little Johnny is still smashing up classrooms, hitting teachers and biting classmates, and is still being coddled by the pastoral team and probably defended by the SEND and inclusion team as well for not having his tie done up or they do it up for him in the morning as he is allowed straight in to school 10 - 15 minutes before the other pupils are allowed in.

At secondary: Johnny! Your tie isn’t done up properly! Have a detention! How do the little Johnnies who have been cosseted through primary school cope with the regime at secondary?

The kids at secondary who were smashing up classrooms in primary are generally not the ones being shouted at for their tie not being done up. They are often spending most of their time in some sort of SEND room, in EOTAS or school refusers.

Very true. The otherwise good kids who do all their work and behave well in class but get pulled up on minor uniform infringements understandably get pretty hacked off when they see that, at secondary school, the real troublemakers are still treated with kid gloves and showered with merit points for doing the tiniest thing right. I mean... I get why, and I know lots of those children have real problems. I'm a teacher. But I hate the pettiness of the uniform rules (I'd ditch uniform entirely).

No one is given a detention for not having their uniform. They get detentions for not sorting it when asked politely and for being rude and unpleasant when asked to.

I'd ditch uniform entirely

Me too. We have so many pupils with ASD in primary now requesting reasonable adjustments for clothing for sensory needs, that I think it would be easier to just wear jeans/jogging bottoms/leggings, trainers and a jumper-especially for EYFS/KS1.

When I was at school (very high achieving grammar), uniform was much more relaxed-there was a clear uniform but we didn't have to wear a blazer and there was no uniform in the sixth form. That same school now has very strict uniform rules and the kids wearing uniform right up to 18.

Exactly the same. And interestingly (although only one case not really evidence of anything) the grammar school I attended’s performance has gone done since they became stricter on uniform (and a few other things) and more girls leave for sixth form elsewhere.

@metellaestinatrio
In secondary not so little Johnny is still being mollycoddled. He’s much bigger now so he’s physically assaulting teachers and other students. It’s fine though because he’s got a time out card now and he can go to a designated room where he can have staff listen to his stories about the nasty teachers picking on him, be allowed to stay there all day and be given snacks manage his anger. He won’t have any consequences to his actions because he has ‘issues’ you know. In the last school I worked in (the one that made me quit teaching) there were 4-6 little Johnnies in EVERY class I taught.

Eventually, he'll go for the wrong person (probably a male SLT) and they'll try (and fail) to PEX him. But he'll have fucked over many students and staff on his journey. And eaten a lot of snacks.

@Foostit this is just depressing. And what becomes of grown up little Johnny when he is out in the real world? Presumably he is nicking people’s phones, terrorising the neighbourhood and - even if he is caught - getting a light sentence because of his “issues”. Meanwhile, as you say, the well behaved kids who happen to have their shirt accidentally untucked get draconian punishments and end up hating school. I don’t blame you for leaving.

I guess at least in this scenario they are not ruining school for everyone else.

Well, not all the time. In the average secondary school, many lessons are probably pretty much constantly disrupted by poor behaviour though.