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,

Absolutely!

I think given so many careers now involve some kind of hybrid working, this makes a show-up-to-work everyday, no flexibility job even less attractive. The ability to work from home is definitely one to weigh up against the longer holidays when choosing a career.

I think this is a very good point - it used to be that actually teaching was one of the more flexible jobs (outside core classroom 9-3) as you could mark on the weekend or go and pick your children up then lesson plan in the evening. Now even hardcore corporate type jobs (like mine!) often have this type of flexibility plus whole days from home. One lawyer in my team picks his children up everyday and has 3 - 3.30 blocked out in his diary accordingly. His wife is actually a teacher and so can't get there.

We need, as a society, to make teaching better paid and more appealing generally or we aren't going to have anyone willing to do it.

Congratulations you have seen to the heart of my post.
I can't tell you what a GP does beyond what I have seen them do.
I can't tell what the paperwork is, what the referrals entail, whether they take time out for home visits or go to old peoples homes (it depends on the doctor and the surgery),
I also couldn't tell you what a nurse does all day.
I can tell you what various welders do because I have worked in the industry, The same with teaching and other jobs that I have had.

All this 'X job is harder' does is separate us and stop us from making things better for everyone.

And the strange thing is its people that have no idea about the jobs that start the threads about them.

Oh same! Yes, this is an excellent point. Most of the kids at my sons' school can be picked up on time by their working parents these days as lots work from home and just pop out. It's a private school, and the parents are largely lawyers and accountants (some doctors and teachers too). It's the teachers' kids that are in wraparound care the longest.

This. How many different aspects does a welder, or most other jobs have to focus on at the same time? Planning, delivering in an exciting and engaging way, assessing in small groups and overall in the class to gauge understanding and modify to accommodate any deficits on your feet (literally), dealing with behaviour in and out of the classroom with kids and their parents, being expected to be accessible at all times via email now (work and parents), pastoral element, marking, preparing reports and managing and presenting data to senior leadership and parents, parents evenings, events that fall outside working hours that you’re expected to attend for no extra money… school trips, risk assessments, bedtimes etc etc etc oh and abuse - physical and verbal that you’re except to tolerate from kids and parents and not always see them being dealt with adequately for this, but still having to turn up and face them the next day… being held to account by parents for their kids not achieving the grades they want them to, loads and loads of pressure to meet deadlines and hit targets…

Other jobs have some of these elements, but few have all of them

You're joking, right? The OP's title literally said:

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

How is that not expressing her opinion? 🤦🏼‍♀️

It’s the same nightmare for teachers with children. We have to be in school working while our children are off for the day. Even if you teach in the same school as your children. So the problem is not just for non-teachers. We were lucky to have grandparents who were willing to help.

We also need to get cover for late evenings for parents evening.

My children’s school didn’t have breakfast club & we both needed to be in school ourselves for 8ish. So that was a juggling act for many years.

It’s something you need to factor in when having children. I had to go part time to make it work.

Most of the issue with teachers being defensive appears, to me, to come from parents whose main point of complaint appears to revolve around their own convenience - they are working people (apparently teachers are not real working people like them, so don’t understand working people), and school hours and terms do not suit working people. Working people need more free childcare - unless they are teachers, of course, because they are the ones needed to take up the slack (and aren’t really working people). The whole thing about loss of learning over the summer is interesting as an excuse, given the fact privately educated children have longer holidays and yet appear not to become so dimwitted over their vacations that they suffer in any discernible way as a result. And what is an increasing amount of time in school for, especially over a time of year getting increasingly hot due to climate change, in poorly designed, inadequately maintained buildings? Apparently it’s mainly to take up the slack in parenting and failed public services elsewhere, not in academic learning: growing numbers of children who aren’t potty trained, can’t speak clearly, have limited fine motor skills, poor nutrition, rotten teeth, obesity, low emotional intelligence, limited social skills, mental health issues, antisocial behaviour, addictions, chronic illnesses.

Teachers, it appears, are expected to get increasingly involved in the minutiae of families’ lives - to safeguard and protect, to be an alarm system for other services that are too stretched to fulfil their own functions. It is, really, a ridiculous ask. Schools should not be expected to take on the consequences of all of society’s failures elsewhere. If people want longer academic terms and shorter holidays, then they need other services to function better, first, so that schools can do what schools were originally designed to do, rather than having to devote so much time and attention to problems that should never have been left to schools to deal with in the first place. Until then, it’s really not surprising if teachers really don’t want to be confronted with all of society’s failings for even more of the year, or to have a shorter summer break to recover, and teaching no longer appears to be a particularly popular profession.

Walkaround

That pretty much sums it up, I think.

Although, you forgot the part about being expected to step in and fulfill all those functions whilst simultaneously not interfering or being trusted to do it.

Yes, there’s always the worry we’ll indoctrinate them in something or other in the odd spare millisecond…

Well, I mean I have introduced my children to some good music... 😁

@Frederica4

I appreciate that and am sorry.
Ds1's girlfriend is finishing teacher training. I have concerns, re exactly what you say.

I've worked in industry, in banking and as an manager in business, as well as teaching. I can tell you that teaching was harder by at least 50%, if not more. In the other jobs, yes, less holiday. But no more than a few hours a week of overtime, ever. Maybe 1 week out of a month, I had to work earlier and leave late to start / finish a project or a presentation etc. In teaching those conditions are every day of the week. And working in the unpaid holidays too.

You're right. The pay is OK. But the working conditions are awful. It's why 90% of teachers leave before retirement.

Teaching is a killer. It literally made me ill. Migraines. High blood pressure. Anxiety.

But the same argument stands. If you think the perks are great, apply to do teacher training. They are DESPERATE for new teachers.

I've laboured on construction sites, I've worked behind a bar, I've worked in a fast food outlet, I've been a teacher, and I've had professional desk jobs outside education. Being a teacher was much more full-on than anything else I've done.

There will surely be specific individual examples of jobs which are more intense than teaching or require longer hours. But do I personally believe that teaching is "absolutely exhausting, more so than most jobs"? Yes. Absolutely.

Same! I've SO many different jobs and none of them have even come close to teacher exhaustion. I'm not saying teaching is THE most exhausting job in the world - that would be a ridiculous claim for anyone to make - but yes I would agree it is up there with the most exhausting jobs - in this country at least. Especially now so many office-based jobs are now WFH (my friends brag to me about taking a nap during the day, or popping out to the gym!). Why is it such a crime to claim that teaching is one of the most exhausting choices of job? That's not to say other jobs can't be exhausting too; there is, though, a good reason why people are leaving teaching in droves and we can't recruit. Nobody wants to do the job!

Exactly. All the people on this thread saying how teaching is so great... become a teacher!

I certainly don't think being a teacher is so great. I just think teachers moan too much about their lot in life. There are plenty of people who find their job hard or don't particularly like doing it. Most of them don't fish for sympathy or act like martyrs. They just get on with it or quit and find another job,

Quitting is exactly what many teachers are doing.

How much moaning would be OK in your estimation?

But that's exactly what is happening. 1000s of teachers ARE quitting, just as you advise... 🤦🏼‍♀️

If you want to come and manage thirty plus unpredictable young people, who change over every hour to a new group, and be held fully responsible for their behaviour, physical and social-emotional wellbeing and learning for a full day five days a week, plus all that goes along with preparing for that, plus deal with regular unhinged requests and responses from their often entitled and/or irresponsible parents, come and be my guest.

I liken it to spending a day in the spin cycle of the washing machine. Bet you couldn’t do it!

In the vast majority of cases that I have seen here and in RL, teacher "moaning" is actually teachers defending their job from people moaning about it.

Since I have left teaching I have seen a massive drop in friends and family whinging about teachers, schools and education in general.

And lets be honest, whether the OP admits it or not, this was a thread to goad responses from teachers and as a type of thread is seen far to much on here.

There are are around 460,000 full time teachers in the UK. (Plus part time, but I can’t be arsed to find out how many)

94 million worldwide. (approx)

How many do you know, personally, to make the sweeping statement that “teachers moan too much”?

Or are you basing it on threads on here where we are responding to endless goady fuckery?

And lets be honest, whether the OP admits it or not, this was a thread to goad responses from teachers and as a type of thread is seen far to much on here. @FrippEnos

i will not admit it as it categorically wasnt intended to goad teachers, it was in reference to exhaustion, felt in manual workers, but this site is heavy with teachers with a distinct lack of manual workers, typically as it is mainly female.
no one has convinced me by the way

Which part are you not convinced about with what the man said?

Do you agree teaching is absolutely exhausting? Those of us who are teachers have mostly informed you that it's absolutely exhausting. Some have told you they've left teaching and found other less exhausting professionals. A couple of posters have said they've left teaching and it's no more exhausting than their other jobs. Personally, I don't think those posters could have been working with 30+ 6 year olds, as there's not a tiredness like it. I worked other jobs before teaching and teaching is definitely exhausting and the other professions weren't.

The second part of his statement was "much more so than most jobs". Most isn't all. Given a list of every job possible, teaching would have jobs below it on the list that are more mentally/physically exhausting. But there would definitely be many many more jobs above it on the list that are less physically/mentally exhausting. Isn't that the definition of more?

As another example XH used to come home and declare himself absolutely exhausted. He'd sat in a car driving for a few hours. He went to a few people's homes and had to talk to them about inconsequential things. He then came home and worked on the computer for a couple of hours. That made him absolutely exhausted. He then went out every other evening to pursue different things he enjoyed. Meanwhile, I was falling asleep on the sofa with my laptop on, trying to get my work done.

I always wanted to experience his "exhausted" as it looked a whole lot better than mine.