I am not sure I agree that Teachers have absolutely exhausting jobs - much more so than most jobs - as said by man on r4 this morning

[RevolutionHere]

i am not sure what my dh, former welder would make of this statement

this is an argument regarding long summer holidays,

@RevolutionHere ha! I'm not a teacher but had thought about having a career change to become one. A few weeks ago I taught a summer camp for 4 kids in my "career" topic and it was utterly horrendous. I had a 2 day migraine and was completely drained and exhausted. Kids were aged 9 and 10 and they were entitled brats. They refused to do things for themselves. They were rude - no please or thank you. They did not listen to anything I had to say and did not care for the consequences. Unsurprisingly I'm not going to become a teacher. I have so much respect for teachers and all they do because quite frankly kids these days seem to be bloody awful.

So are nurses, doctors, consultants, paramedics, allied health, customer service representatives, security forces, police, prison, mental health, addiction services, dentist, dental assistants, farmers, vets.... etc..

They have also earned them.

Here we go... Another post about teachers job being easy! I'm a teaching assistant. If you paid me a million pounds, I wouldn't become a teacher.

Oh and Social workers... they are dealing constantly with awful situations, and never get recognition.

Not one contributer has said being a Teacher is easy, but its is also not harder than other roles to justify the long holidays, when other professions do not have this option.

Unless you've worked as a teacher, I'm not sure how you can say this?

How do they do more harm than good?

Members of other professions are free to become teachers should they so wish. They can get their trade unions to lobby for this.

And teachers are welcome to join any other profession if they feel they are being treated harshly about the holidays.

Do you see how stupid it sounds?

The long holidays are a perk of the profession, its fine to say that. But the second you tell other people that you work so much harder than them to justify 3 months of leave you are going to get blasted for it.

Loss of continuity for both the teachers and the pupils.

Makes you cram all of the work into a smaller amount of time, rather than spreading it out.

Prevents teachers from being treated like adults when they book their leave/or need time out.

There is a financial disadvantage to teachers families as they can only go away during high cost periods.

Riiight. 🙄

So what, though?

Teachers get the long break because students get the long break. Of course noone thinks the government has simply appropriately recognised that teachers need longer breaks, when they refuse to acknowledge the needs and mental health impacts across so many forward facing sectors.

I think teachers deserve this time off. I'm not saying "comparative to others who don't", I think that's a silly game. I'm simply saying, teachers deserve this.

It's also one of the very, very few perks that entice capable, professional people who could be making more money doing less into the profession. Get rid of it, and you will lose good teachers, and our children will suffer for it.

Teaching is by far the most relentless and exhausting profession out there! Maybe on a par with 12 hour shifts in a hospital. Nothing else comes close to those. I work in construction - no one on a construction site is working at the rate teachers and nurses are. There are actual welfare breaks in construction, teachers are lucky if they have time for a wee during the day!

I’m interested to know why those who think teaching isn’t stressful think that there is a recruitment and retention crisis?
If it was that easy then why is there a FB group advising teachers how to exit the profession with 175K members?

But when you say they deserve this time off, you are implying unless clearly stated that you don't think that others also deserve that time off- thats what people are upset about, is that their role is devalued by proxy and you are creating unnecessary conflict. No-one in their right mind thinks that a teacher works harder than a prison guard, or a police officer.

I think the opposite to you about the long holidays. I think teachers are burnt out precisely because they have to cram in a years worth of work in 8 months, with a huge focus on high results rather than incremental improvments. If we treated teachers with the same respect we do other professions i.e. give them reasonable workloads, down time away from the kids, the ability to take A/L and S/L with the same boundaires as any other profession, then more people will stay for longer. Society is not the same as it was when that schedule was put in place.

Teaching is an incredibly important set of skills. It the definnition of influencing, as well as leadership,risk assessment, project planning and communications. If anyone thinks they are a leader/influencer they should test that infront of 13 year olds on a raining Thursday afternoon.

There is also a recuritment and retention crisis in nursing, police and prison officers...

Working with people is hard.

As a quick answer, mine would be that your posts demonstrate a lack of patience and an inability to to reason/debate your point.

For clarity - I am not a teacher, I’m not a welder and I also don’t have kids.

Funnily enough I believe the recruitment issue in nursing isn’t that there aren’t enough people who want to do it , but that the training places are restricted. Teacher training places aren’t even filled most years, not even the ones offering golden hello incentives.

Hmm, I don’t know whether teaching is the most exhausting job in the world above all other jobs. But, what I do know is, that teaching is far more exhausting that most people realise or can imagine.

I haven’t always been a teacher. I have worked in a bank; in Boots Opticians; in a supermarket; in an office environment and cleaning houses. I actually worked two of these jobs at the same time, doing one job Monday - Friday and the other at the weekend. But teaching came as a shock. How could planning a few lessons, teaching a class and marking a few books be as tiring as it is.

Well, teaching comes with constant deadlines. There is a significant amount of computer based work which can leave your back aching and your eyes tired. This is particularly true if like me you’ve arrived into school at 7 am to try and get as much planning done as possible. Equally marking a few hundred books can really take its toll on the hands and wrists and it’s not unusual, particularly around coursework time, to end up with repetitive strain injury, or just mental drain from reading the same information written by different children, over and over again. A school day is largely longer than that of the kids. As previously mentioned, I’ll usually aim to get into school for 7am. I am having a good day if I can leave at 4pm. Often I have meetings that go on until 5pm, or parents evenings, options evenings, open evenings, awards evenings, collaboration evenings, transition evenings etc, which can go on until 7 or 8pm. Making a 12-13 hour day quite normal. And that’s if you don’t add in any time at home for marking. In addition to teaching the children, staff have other performance management goals to fulfil. Work to do alongside teaching, meaning it’s quite normal to work straight through break and lunch - that’s if you’re not on duty. And then there’s looking after the learners. As a secondary teacher I see as many as 120 children a day. Some of them with behaviour issues, mental health issues, learning disabilities etc, each that require additional planning and a different teaching style. Behaviour issues can be particularly draining. Defiance is commonplace. Swearing is standard. Disrespect is sadly a default. Keeping on top of behaviour management, demanding high expectations, commanding respect takes a lot of energy and focus.
Then as a food technology teacher, I’m often baking or cooking with 24 children. Trying to monitor them using hobs or knives; dashing around the classroom trying to get scones out of the oven on time; cleaning up; prepping ingredients; shopping and lifting carrier bags full of bags of flour, sugar and margarine. I have no technician, I’m on my own. Bringing in 10 bags of flour; 10kg of sugar; 6x2kg tubs of baking spread; etc is no joke.

This just a snapshot of my job and I haven’t covered everything I do. But when I get home at the end of the day, it’s all I can do to try and keep my eyes open. I’ll often skip dinner, as I just can’t summon the energy to make anything.

So is it harder than a labourer? I don’t know. My job is physically, mentally and emotionally draining. No need to compare to other professions. I am exhausted. I am so pleased to have 6 weeks ahead, to recharge. But, I do love my job and the kids keep me young(ish).

You would need to have done all those jobs, in order to confidently assert that. You certainly can't evaluate the difficulty of being a teacher, when you have never been responsible for a classroom.

I can't comment on nursing but I was a physiotherapist and there is a huge retention issue- something like 50% leave by the 10th year. Either completely (like me) or retrain into medical to get that higher wage. I can say in an NHS hospital, no matter how hard you worked it wasn't enough, and then you had to do it all over again the next day.

The point that I keep repeating is that I think the working conditions of teachers need a review. They are given an impossible task and now that education is completely standardised, there are always targets and noone has looked at the extra work that generated, but this governence also happens in other professions too- just ask nurses about their paperwork.

Part of that will be a review on the leave that teachers get. Does it work, is it valuable. The problem is when ever someone asks a question about it, the response is "Teacher work really hard though".

This. A pity it wasn't the first post as it nails the utter pointlessness of the OP's thread.

Again, this point is circular because you could say that about teaching.

Because even teachers themselves hate doing it and schools are poor employers? I don’t think it’s the idea of exhaustion that puts people off, just how miserable it is.
I couldn’t tell you one advantage or good thing about teaching is supposed to be. ie… why you’d want to be one.

But when you say they deserve this time off, you are implying unless clearly stated that you don't think that others also deserve that time off

I disagree that this is the obvious implication; that's like saying when junior doctors say they should be paid more they're saying because they deserve it "more than" others. People usually aren't talking about their jobs comparatively, they're talking about them personally.

The rest of what you wrote is definitely interesting and a way I'd never thought of it before. I can see the theoretical logic though I suppose I struggle more with how it would work in practice, particularly because I think kids really do need school holidays, to be kids. But definitely an interesting idea!