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.

When sats were brought in my uncle was on the board of governors at his local school.
A very wise man also on the board said ‘you don’t fatten a pig by keep weighing it.’

Mind boggling - for pushing buttons.

And you’re a teacher @Dangermoo ? 😦

Totally agree with this. Its also about there being some respect for and trust in the professsion which should start with government. Michale Gove so obviously looked down on teachers and that has carried through right to the present day.

I took a very big pay cut and went to work for a charity, in various projects including drug intervention, offender management and education, training and employment. It was brilliant. I left to concentrate on self employment.

The government plan is allegedly to try to get schools to set up SEND classes and resources based for ND children instead of asking teachers to meet a number of individuals' needs via EHCP in ordinary classes.

Working in SEND I think this is a good idea, but over 100k people are trying to force the government to change its mind via petitions.

I think it’s a mixture. Lack of support and a lot of pressure through bureaucracy. Parents with unrealistic expectations. Children with behavioural and complex special educational needs being mainstreamed because of a lack of provision elsewhere. Workload.

I’m support staff and I know I couldn’t manage in a million years the workload and organisational needs of a teacher. I’d be overwhelmed in a day.

I remember one parents evening, the dad not agreeing with something I said (disagreeing with teaching phonics in general actually, because he learned his ABCs 'properly') and telling me, "The difference between us, Miss X, is that we're very educated people and you're just a teacher".

I wish I'd come back with a killer line but I think I just spluttered something about taking it up with the Department for Education if he had an issue with the curriculum.

Get your pgce then do and teach part time, as a supply teacher, at a nursery, or at a private school

I moved to the civil service, into a role in the Government Science and Engineering Profession that makes use of my subject knowledge. I'm happier because I work half the hours I did, for more money, and with only the tiniest fraction of the stress. I can go to the loo whenever I want, and nobody ever looks over my shoulder while I'm working and blames me for someone else's unreasonable behaviour.

Even in terms of holiday, I get more real time off in my current role than I did in teaching. Yes, I had 12 weeks a year of 'school holidays', but I'd spend every half term and the last week of the longer holidays on lesson planning, marking, report writing and other admin tasks. Those weeks would be less intense than termtime, but I worked as hard as I probably do in an average week now. I reckon as a teacher my real holiday time was around 6 weeks a year. In my current role I get 30 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, and when I take it I'm not expected to think about work at all.

Let's not forget how SLTs can damage teacher morale. I've met plenty, with egos. Talking of egos, the soul destroying Ofstead visits...

It is so sad reading this thread how many good teachers have left the profession.
I did.
You go into teaching as a vocation. I began over 30 years ago, young and full of energy, and the workload was heavy but nothing like what my teacher friends have now.
I would be dead on my feet now.
I left just as smartphones were appearing. Before then it was the odd phone going off in class, but it was a call or a text.
How you occupy kids now when they have their whole world in a device in their pocket I’ve no idea.
I do remember a corner in my first staff room, largely female, all over 50. Every lady seemed to be called Joyce and they used to joke they looked forward to having a hysterectomy for the time off. Now I am Joyce.
I don’t know how I would cope now with people being able to reach me by email 24/7, either.

I certainly never missed the holidays when I left teaching. With the charity I got 27 days of annual leave, which rose to 32 after I'd been there a while and I could buy 5 more. I also got TOIL.

It was the SLT in my last school that destroyed me. I should have got out long before I did. Management and staff morale makes or breaks a school.

I agree it’s not the pay, it’s the workload.
I know a few of primary school teachers (it’s seems a lot my friends I used to dance with ended up in teaching!) I ended up in nursing!

They found their first few years especially tough… new to the role (which is expected), managing expectations, workload etc
they have said the key is to find a nice school, supportive headteachers and not a high turnover of staff (which is difficult) 😥
They are 14/15 years in now (some done PGCE) and they are still at their original schools and have young families (some are married to other teachers) but they seem to have found that balance.
My daughters school is the same, they are the same teachers, same head teacher and deputy (who seem supportive to their staff) and staff seem to enjoy their jobs, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hard job.

Being newly qualified in any profession you will have doubts and worries. It is daunting!!
I’ve been qualified 15 years as a nurse and applied for a different and job and I’m like aaaaaa ill feel like a student again!! 🤣

Academies as well, running a school for profit....

Look at the top 10 Academy Trusts in the UK and see where the money has gone!

I’m dealing with so much extra stuff like SEN, EAL

the mistake is thinking this is ANY way EXTRA STUFF. Mainstream education is for everyone and in our country that includes SEN and EAL. If you didn’t want to teach a huge section of society why on earth did you go into teaching?

What's your subject, @LucilleBluth?

Phone it in for the next two weeks. Satisfactory is enough.

It sounds horrendous, but you can get through this week and you are nearly there.

Take advice and find support. It sounds like you're trying to do too much, when the task is just impossible. And I hope you sleep better tonight - sleep deprivation is a killer.

That doesn't take into account how much has changed in teaching over the years.

The OP sees the value of SEND, it's how teachers are expected to incorporate it, without bending like a gymnast. Unrealistic targets are the norm.

Hear hear.

Pay doesn't need doubling. Contact time needs drastically reducing. It's not possible for a full time teacher to deliver the education needed and deserved and fulfill all of the admin, assessment, training and pastoral requirements expected by the school when they are teaching 300 kids a week. Teachers in the European schools we do exchanges with absolutely boggle at our workloads. And they earn more than us.

The only time my job feels sane is now, when my exam classes have gone.

We moved home, and I got a job closer to where we moved. I have never experienced anything like the bullying that went on in that school, led and encouraged by the SLT.

I'm a strong person who has been through a great deal in life and always shown resilience, but the brief time I spent there almost broke me. My one consolation I suppose is that another teacher started at the exact same time as me, and experienced the same. We left together after 2 terms. If I had been on my own, I would have assumed it was just me and my fault I think.

The person who was appointed to my role afterwards later contacted me (found me on FB) to say she was signed off with stress due to the SLT.

I went on to find another job in a lovely, very supportive school. It was healing in a way, but honestly my heart was never quite in it the same after that experience. My confidence never really fully returned either - I should have been pushing for some career development but I no longer wanted it. I'm not saying I would still be teaching now without that happening, I may still have left, but it definitely was a factor in my ultimate decision.

I had a similar experience when I trained as a teacher in the 90s. I felt like I was breaking. Absolutely awful. Ultimately I chose not to become an actual teacher. I earn a lot less now but I would never ever go back to that.

But its not about how much teachers are paid. They could be paid £1 million a month it still wouldnt give them enough time in a day/week to cope with everything thats on their to do lists.

Well presumably OP was looking at what teaching involves in the last couple of decades?