Teaching year 1, no partner teacher and no previous planning, planning everything from scratch. Furious, tired and stressed. It’s only the first week back.

[Se12345]

Started a year 1 teacher role at a new school. The school has no previous planning from the year before. They follow white rose but English is a new scheme so PowerPoints are made from scratch.
History, geography and science from scratch. Re and PHSE is jigsaw but needs reading through long plans. Their phonics scheme is new to me let alone the sounds they learn in year 1. I come from EYFS. I found myself working every night planning and all weekend. To create 6 week plans from scratch looking at medium term plans, to then make PowerPoint lessons, learning objective files, worksheets. I feel stressed. The previous year- they had too many teachers and they said the supply didn’t plan well and didn’t put planning up. They are waiting for ofsted and are requies improvement. I cannot go further back as all their schemes changed. Anyone ever did this? One form school.

I agree with the Teachmate.ai suggestion as it’s linked to the National Curriculum. It can create basic (quite boring) PowerPoints but you can then use them as a basis and jazz them up. It will write lesson plans, WAGOLLs and lots of other school specific stuff. It’s definitely not perfect but in your situation I reckon it might be worth £6.99 a month.

Use AI! I know a history teacher that uses it to get worksheets from

There must be another teacher who could help you ... in a local school or on-line. Its madness teachers doing prep that's been done thousands of times previously

Is this not standard? I haven’t taught for a long time now but when I started (similar age group) 20 years ago this was expected. It’s was really hard work but I assumed it was the norm.

Things have changed A LOT in the last 20 years!

I actually voted you're being unreasonable because....this is what teaching is. I had to do the exact same when I was an NQT, and then again when I move year groups the following year. There were absolutely no plans or resources for me and I worked for 3 hours every evening and most of Sunday.

Obviously it shouldn't be like this. But it is.

Buy twinkl. Honestly, it has everything. You can then slowly adapt the stuff into your own worksheets and PowerPoints if you wanted so it looks like your own stuff.

I started 6 years ago and it was exactly like this. I did everything from scratch and it was utterly insane. I was working like 70 hour weeks.

Not a teacher!

Why haven’t the Unions stood up to this ridiculous nonsense years ago and proposed a central planning portal to oversee this so that everyone is teaching roughly the same info. and not wasting energy re-inventing the wheel every year?

They do it in other countries very successfully. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Unless a school has just radically changed their curriculum there shouldn't be no previous planning. That suggests to me that something has gone wrong.

I've been in the making everything from scratch position and it isn't sustainable nor does it lead to better outcomes. In my current school we are now expected to put all planning on a centralised system. We use a lot of schemes we've adapted and workload is manageable. We just got a great ofsted (not that that is the only measure of course!). I've bought stuff off TES before if it's making resources from a scheme. It's much better to spend energy on delivery and adaptations for individual children then having to completely plan something new.

I feel bad for you because you are struggling and stressed, OP, but I am also really shocked that times have changed so much. For Oz teachers in 80s to 2000's, every teacher was expected to write their entire annual programme alone - every single lesson plan for every single day of the school year, encompassing all the required topics etc. There was no such thing as TAs or people who did your photocopying for you or helped you put up your back wall (full of children's art/projects/learning aids created by the teacher etc). That was just the job. That being said, I don't think it's right for a school to expect a supply teacher to prepare a programme. The principal should step up if they can't get a permanent teacher in time for the start of the school year.

I stopped teaching about 12 years ago because it was like that. I gave up counting my hours (60+ per week) because it was too depressing. And as soon as you'd got schemes of work and lessons plans and resources in place, they'd change something and you'd have to start from scratch.

Because the teacher will pay for TeachmateAI etc out of there own money.

Look at the comments on here any time there is a strike. That’ll tell you why.

Oh- we do completely different schemes. That’s a shame. X

Ooops. Wrong their ! I’m eating lunch!

Sorry, very aware that a lot has changed in teaching in 20 years (and that was only when I started - I stopped about 10 years ago), I just assumed that it would still be the same in terms of having to plan everything and make most of your own resources.

Except for one year in primary school (when I made no progress), I was educated up to GCSE entirely via textbooks and chalk and talk, with a very little bit of audiovisual/practical work.

They were expensive, and some of them were ancient. 15 years after decimalisation, I was answering questions in £.s.d.

But they were solid and worked pretty well. Division of labour improves productivity!

@WonderfulSmithI absolutely agree that the OP shouldn’t be paying for this out of her own money. She should definitely ask school to pay. However we were told on the first day back that our school has to make £130,000 of savings. When everything is already cut to the bone. So if her school is anything like ours they’ll say no.

Workload is one of the main causes of teachers leaving the profession, so some people have taken the decision to save their sanity by paying for Twinkl, or teach mate or whatever themselves. It’s absolutely not right but the alternative is worse.

This. Surely there’s a better way?
Is it really beneficial to have burnt-out teachers working 70 hours a week ?

I agree. I pay for Twinkl and CGP plus myself. I also buy countless resources for the classroom. But I know that people who think that teachers are workshy whingers will be reading this and I want them to know.

Again, read the comments any time there is a strike. People think that teachers knock off at 3.30.

Get a subscription to teachmateai. Creates lesson plans, PowerPoints, quizzes, exit tickets etc? It will ease the pressure for the first term and you can focus on the next term a little more personally if you wish. PowerPoints don’t have to have a lot on and in year one, they don’t really need them. I try and teach without them as much as possible in year two.

Not allowed in my LA, serious breach and disciplinary.

There is a huge concern about information sharing.

'Get a subscription to teachmateai'

Any other craicnetters who read this out-of-context as Matty's house 😂