Teachers and TAs!

[NeedYourOpinion]

Do you enjoy your job? Is it a massive mistake as a career move?

Oh I see, but UPS3 is the highest on the payscale isn't it? Most teachers will earn in the 30's, unless close to/in London.

Picture this: Your day starts early because you have to prep the room where you are giving your back to back presentations and prepare all the handouts for all the sessions (you did your slides the day before after you had finished your last meeting at 5pm). For each of the 5 presentations you will give that day, the feedback you get from everyone in the room has to show they have learnt something from your presentation and the questions session after, which you yourself have to guide to steer the answers towards higher level thinking. Whilst you are presenting, you need to make sure that everyone in the room is engaged and listening, drawing people in through a question or a joke to wake them up. This includes the people at the back who have sneaked in just for the coffee and biscuits and do not care about the presentation at all.

You have lunchtime to make the last few tweeks to the afternoon presentations and check the handouts are all in order. At the end of the day, you prep for your 5 presentations for the following day.

Now imagine doing this every day of the week and dealing with behaviour, emotional, friendship and family problems at the same time. This is teaching.

What’s living in London got to do with it though, I don’t live in or near London?

The teachers in London are on separate pay scales

https://neu.org.uk/advice/your-rights-work/pay-advice/pay-scales/pay-scales-england

I've been a 1 to 1 TA for a year. My school is a small village school with combined year groups. Our maximum would be 100 kids in total.

The pay is terrible.
The system is totally broken.

There are a lot of things that could impact your experience but especially the kids and the teachers.
My kid and the kids in the class are actually great. The kids love me.🙂 My class teachers are mostly great but the way they respond to different children is very mixed. They are under a huge amount of pressure.

From what I've observed I wouldn't suggest anyone trained to be a teacher in a state school.

The SENCO in my school is brilliant but it doesn't always translate to the way teacher's practice in the classroom which drives me loopy.

Yes I know, that's all I meant, most teachers won't be UPS 3 so will be on a good chunk less unless they live close to or in London.

26 years in the job Secondary. Now based in the Middle East. On the whole have really enjoyed it. You are never bored. Husband earns the big bucks so we are not reliant on my salary. I love having the summers off. This will probably be the last school I work at.

T/A are low paid crowd control, teachers are leaving in droves.

Well, even if you can’t get onto ups, you’d be on M6 in 5 years which is £46k.

The interesting conversation and questions is all of those things - assessing learning, addressing gaps and the latest fad word “adaptive teaching”

@NeedYourOpinion teaching is not for the faint hearted. You need an endless patience for made up shite dressed up as “new pedagogy” which all amounts to teach students new stuff and find out if they understand. If they don’t, teach it differently.
it’s relentless and I found it soul destroying- I did 20 years and left in 2022. My life has improved immeasurably and although I’m still in education I’m not a teacher.

Depends on trust policy in some cases….you can be held back as long as you are deemed not to meet criteria.

English teacher here too.
I am so sick of having little to no life work balance during term time that I’ve asked to drop to 4 days from September. I just can’t do it anymore. It isn’t sustainable. If dropping a day doesn’t improve then I’ll leave.

I'm in a season of life where I really appreciate pitching up at a job and not having any preparation to do or work/responsibility to take home. I get to do that as a TA but I can't see it possible as a teacher.
A friend of mine was a TA and did a PGCE in her fifties. She hasn't finished her consolidation period...I can't remember what it's called. In the last job she had they didn't tell her that they had changed the English curriculum until the start of the term. She had to do everything. It was year 5/6. She quit because she had absolutely no life.

Yep, 34 years in and I've seen it all in terms of pedagogical innovation.
Or that is, you think you've seen it all until you realise you've underestimated the ability of the powers that be come up with even more crap.

I can't wait to retire.
Kids are kids and kids are great, but the change in parental attitude is one of the worst parts of the job.
I'm older and more experienced so I've lost a few filters when dealing with ridiculous demands and complaints from grown adults, but it's a huge drawback to the role these days.

I work 70 hour weeks as my normal in term time, and have done the equivalent of 3 working days so far this holiday (we are at the end of the second week of the Easter hols).

I love my job, but am totally exhausted most of the time term-time and have made it clear to my children that they won't be going into teaching- I wouldn't do it again.