Teaching OMG!

[LucilleBluth]

I have been training to teach this year. I started my PGCE as a 43 year old in September 2024. I’m about to finish it-well I say that. I’m feel like I’m hitting rock bottom with two weeks to go. I have worked in schools as support staff before so I wasn’t totally blind and I have good friends who are teachers, but oh my god, it is such hard work. The workload is insane-the kids are lovely but I’m dealing with so much extra stuff like SEN, EAL is off the charts, behaviour, kids without equipment and who can’t cope unless a lesson is chunked and scaffolded so much I may as well spoon feed it.

I don’t feel I can do it full time so I applied for a Cover Supervisor role-15 qualified teachers applied for a £21000 year job, I,didn't get it. What’s the point

Teacher pay needs doubling. I’ve been awake since 1am.

Honestly it's not worth engaging with a poster who is just trying to wind up and has such rose coloured glasses. If they think teaching was that easy you can bet they did a poor job.

Oh I know they are on the wind-up, they're hardly subtle. But they could at least fake a bit more recent teaching experience.

Its amusing to see how relevant they think that their opinion is, given how far of of date it is.

More fiction than out of date

Whichever it is she's impossible to take seriously.

When I taught (secondary, mainstream, written subject so preposterous marking load - if any of this is relevant) it reminded me of TV shows I’d seen where water-boarding / near-drowning was used.

Every half term, it was like someone grabbing my hair and pushing my face in a bath of water. At half term holidays (which do come around every five to eight weeks, depending on the time of year) my head would be pulled out of the bath. I’d then spend one or two weeks regulating, recovering, getting back to normal. Then a massive deep breath and back in.

It was honestly a shit way to live.

I used to feel like I was diving into a swimming pool at the beginning of each term and wouldn't come up for air until the holidays.

Exactly this, and why I left teaching after having only just qualified, after a 2 year part-time PGCE (mature student) and a 2-year NQT 'year', as I was 0.6 contract. I honestly felt as if I were being waterboarded; it was quite simply untenable.

I did for one. And I’m not the only one.

Me too. I was effective and experienced after 16 years, but I and couldn’t do any more.

15 years in, I'm done with using good will to patch up the cracks. I've not got anymore to give.

Another one who left here.

According to the DfE's workforce survey -

Around 40000 teachers leaving the profession each year, about 9% of the workforce. (That's roughly equivalent to the number entering the profession - but then the retention figures show we're losing 10% of those within the first year, and 33% - 40% within the first 5 years). According to https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england/2022

Also here - vacancy rates/ unfilled posts at a record high.

More than six teaching posts in every 1,000 were left unfilled last year, according to the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), double the vacancy rate recorded before the Covid pandemic in 2020 and six times higher than the NFER’s first measure of vacancies in 2010.

I'm glad I'm out of it honestly, but also concerned about who will be teaching my DD if this keeps up!

I left in July 2021 after 22 years.

You are aware that people can disagree with you ? This is the wrong forum for you , if you just want everyone to agree with your point, or is everyone who has a different view to you somehow stupid ?

It comes across as someone who is a narcissistic, it's a shame

That's quite funny!

You seem to really struggle with people disagreeing with you.

I qualified as a teacher back in 2006, managed 6 years before leaving 18 months after my daughter was born after deciding I wanted to spend more time at her sports days and after-school stuff than the kids I taught. I also couldn't get a permanent post, living in an area of the country everyone wants to move to and teaching a subject that doesn't have shortages.

I loved teaching and second guessed my decision for many years, especially during the long holidays once she started school. However, I left just as Gove came in and seeing how it has destroyed DH, I am now very happy with my decision. It's become a totally different job over the last 10-12 years and I'm glad I left when I did, enjoying it and thinking that I'd love to go back.

I don't anymore 😅

Yes, nursing and teaching are not directly comparable.

Teaching is boring in my opinion, every job is. Different people have different boredom thresholds.

But you are the most amazing teacher and a better person than others I’m sure 🙄

How can it possibly be boring? Marking is a bit dull. Report writing similarly. But teaching itself and the job as a whole? There’s a lot wrong with it and I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy anymore, but it’s not boring. No two days are the same. Even if you luck out and have a class of the same ability as last years for a topic so you can basically use the same planning the lesson itself will come out totally differently.

Wow. You came back on the thread to have a snipe. 🙄

It is, after about 5 years the kids who were the challenging the first time you met them are tiresome the second or third when their clones emerge. If you still find that interesting fine, I didn’t. If you want to think it makes you a better person, then fill your boots. People have differences as well as similarities and it’s a good job at least some people find teaching interesting enough to stick at.

No, just to say I found it boring, there isn’t a right or wrong here. In real life people call it shades of grey.

Why do you think it’s about being a better person?
Better teacher, possibly, because you do have to care about children as individuals and seeing them as ‘clones’ is odd. I taught for 35 years. Can’t say I’ve ever thought a child was a clone because - what? They exhibited some of the same behaviours as another child?