to think teachers are constantly under fire?

[strawberrykate]

The number of negative assumptions about teachers motives, nit-picking over fine details of what they do and the general attitude towards seems to be really poor. They are held up to unusally high-standards and expected to do the impossible it seems.

Imagine the scenario, 30 children, one adult. Each child generates a small mountain of paperwork in the form of marking, reports, assessment and planning needs plus more. Each child has different needs, abilities, fears etc. You are under pressure to teach more hours than you have in the day (really, look up the required number of hours per subject per week, it adds up to more hours than there are in a school week). Average workload outside traching hours (if you do it all decently, but quickly)

• 2 hours per night marking books
• 1 hour a day collecting resources and preparing a class
• 2 hours each for literacy, planning, numeracy, foundation etc. per week
• half hour per day writing up lesson evaluations
• half hour per day with parents/ resolving issues from the day, sending collecting letters and homework feedack etc.
• one afterschool club plus tidying up and preperation/ waiting for kids to be collected 2 hours

That's a basic 58 hour week inc. the 6 hours teaching day.

Then throw in parents evenings/ report writing/ additional long term planning/ after school perfromances/ fetes/ events/ compeitions/ sports matchs/ meetings with outside services/ dealing with larger issues with families and children/ arranging special events or theme weeks/ liasing with outside professionals who come into school/ holiday clubs/ one to one tuition or extra free tutition and the million and one extras like carol concerts or parish events. Which can push the job into occupying every waking moment some weeks.

Then throw the needs of your own family.

Everyone is still shocked when your reports written at midnight have a few typos or you dont pick up or know about every child as well as their parents from memory. You get impromptu meetings where parents are outraged you don't know every level of the top of your head. Every slip of the tongue or small error is analysied to death. Every other year you may even be lucky enough to get a parents peition against you, normally over a misunderstanding (e.g. for banning books in the class was my favourite-I never did find out why they thought I'd done that). Parents gunning for a fight over a missing lunchbox/ coat/ glove, then no apology when it turns up at home or on a sibling.

AIBU to think a bit more courtesy toward teachers and an appreciation of them being human wouldn't go amiss? I've had a range of jobs, retail, law etc, and I've never been in ajob where so quick are people to attack. Even the national media has teachers and schools as a favourite gripe, rarely a week goes by where I don't see a report which boils down to saying teachers are either a bit thick/ lazy/ uncaring/ money-grabbing.

I really love working with kids and seeing the difference I can make, and I think I have done well by hundreds of children who have passed though my care. The constant, and increasing, habit of expecting teacher to be no less than saints is really pissing me off! It's huge factor as to why decent teachers leave the profession, often leaving ones who simply don't care/ can't find other work.

Bar the odd pissed of poster on here I don't experience teacher bashing at all even when I taught in a school that had hardly any parental support. People generally think that the job is much harder than it actually is , that all teenagers are feral knife wielding thugs.

If you only have 3 days holidays over the summer IOU are doing something wrong. I rarely work more than a third of a holiday and think that is about average.

"I don't think anyone in society other than the government wants teachers taking responsibility for health, fitness, creative play, performing arts, ethics, religion and so on"

MillyR you'd hope so, but watch how many threads on MN alone get people opining "surely this should be part of the National Curriculum" about all sorts of things.

OP YANBU, teachers get a shit time of it from a lot of people.

My Dad likes to play up to it. When people complain about how little teachers do, how short their working days are, how long their holidays etc. he tells them that his union has a claim in at the moment for higher pay during the holidays, "after all, playing golf all day is expensive"

I don't even do that.

I work silly antisocial hours all term, but the holidays are for reminding my own children that they have TWO parents - I play at being a SAHM, & thoroughly enjoy it (OK, I do quite a few hours worth of marking & prep over the course of a holiday, but I confine it to evenings).

Agree with twinset that teenagers are much, much nicer than is generally supposed.

I agree with twinset that one shouldn't be spending the majority of their holidays working. I know very few teachers who do and they are not effective or efficient teachers imo.

I will say however, that I often work in the evenings (lesson planning and marking)during term time, so don't apologise for enjoying my long holidays.

I think that we teachers sometimes do ourselves no favours by painting it black and equating our jobs to fighting dragons down a mine whilst being shot at by snipers, woefully underappreciated and victimised by all and sundry. There are many fabulous aspects to the job (the kids and the holidays being just two) and it's pointless to prentend otherwise.

Doesn't mean there aren't shitty parts of the job and that it's not a challenging and demanding career to be in. It's very annoying when you get the odd parent hell-bent on holding you accountable for bloody everything and blaming you for everything from global warming through to the housing market crash. But this is not unique to teaching, I suspect.

teachers are just expected to be solely concentrated on EVERY CHILD.
its impossible.
also, with behaviour, they cant seem to win.
if they ignore the child, it affects the other kids.
if they deal with the child, it takes time away from the other kids
if they spend more time working with one child because of certain needs or whatever, its negelcting the rest of their class.
if they reward their class, everyone must be rewarded. dont forget the bad kids who do one thing without throwing a chair across the room. dont forget the good kids. or the average kids.
oh and teach them about healthy eating.
oh and for gods sake, dont tell them about sex. and you should be preventing other kids from 'exposing' them to the truth about sex.
oh and if a child is being bullied, deal with parent-to parent spats, and concentrate on the important matter in hand.

oh, be superman/woman
oh but dont be a man because you'll molest the children.
and make sure every child is getting all the work they want and not being demoralised by being told theyve got something wrong.

tell little Timmy that 4+4 doesnt equal 6?
you monster, you've crushed his soul.you must be fired immediately for creating an axe murderer

Well I had an utter nightmare with dd2 at school (not in the UK).

The teachers said she did nothing all day, she probably had ADHD and they would not keep her in the classroom unless we medicated her which wasn't going to happen. Skip forward two months of HE and she's writing beautifully and she happily produces more worksheets, spellings and comprehension in an hour than she produced in a week at school.

I think teachers work very hard. But I'm not convinced by school. I think the whole concept of school is becoming outdated to be honest. Even more so when I read about ridiculous 'punishments' and petty arguments over uniform and religious assemblies and so on. The school culture is a waste of time and energy and interferes with learning. Teachers are the agents of that culture and have to spend time on crowd control, upholding their side of the rules, uniforms and all that nonsense rather than facilitating actual learning.

YANBU. Especially on MN. I was told I was 'bringing my profession into disrepute' just for arguing my point of view on MN the other day! I kid you not.

YANBU. I am in my first year of treaching and I have never been more stressed in all my life. I have got to the end of term and I am ill with exhaustion. I came to teaching later in life having freelanced in lots of different jobs but none that left me feeling so worthless as this one. Already wondering how I can get out even though I love the pupils who are the only thing that keep me going.

YANBU at all.

YANBU although Social Services gets a bashing too

chocolatestar - hang in there, it does get better once you get through your first year. I can remember a fantasy I had in my 1st year about a nice little job in an office where I answered the phone sometimes and wrote things down..And I was 23, no kids etc. I take my hat off to those who qualify later in life.

I always thought that this poem summed up what teachers make

And I'm not a teacher

LOVELOVELOVETaylorMaliTiggaxx

YANBU- I totally aggree- can we also add social workers and police officers to the list?

'Teachers are the agents of that culture and have to spend time on crowd control, upholding their side of the rules, uniforms and all that nonsense rather than facilitating actual learning. '

This is simply not true! I think that most teachers love the job and being with the DCs-they don't like all the paper work that goes with it.
The upholding of rules etc is important. I supply teach and I wouldn't go to a school where the rules are lax and uniform is flouted-I know that it would be hell-the children wouldn't learn anything -it would be crowd control and it simply wouldn't be worth the pay! I wouldn't go into a school like that for 4x the pay!
If the ethos is kind and caring, pupils know where they stand and the little things matter, then I will have a great time with polite, interesting and lively children. Children like boundries, they love to know where they stand. You find bad mannered, out of control DC who are a pleasure in school-their parents can't understand it and ask if you are talking about the same DC!

I was looking at a workbook of DGD from her first year at school.

At the end of a beautifully written story was the comment "Nice work but hurry up please"

The next page, also beautifully written said "keep trying".

Three pages on and DGD wrote " and I foll over" instead of "I fell over". The correction by teacher was written as "I feel over".

This went on for the whole year and you could see DGD getting quieter and less confident as the year progressed.

DD didn't complain or make any comments to anyone else (she is a primary teacher herself) but at the end of the school year she moved her to a small private school.

DGD has just turned 7, loves her school and doesn't get any negative comments, only constructive ones.

Many years ago when I was at Uni doing Bachelor of Education (Primary teaching) we were told that in the future Teachers would no longer be teachers, they would be facilitators.

Education should be lifelong learning not crammed into a few short years in a persons life.

My DN home educates his two boys. Worked out that at school they probably do about 2 solid hours of work per day. The rest of the day is taken up with admin work, lunch, passing out reams of paper etc.

This isn't the fault of the teachers it's the system.

herself).

Totally agree well said ! I have noticed just by reading the threads on here about people being up in arms about really trivial things over something the teacher in their eyes has handled wrong. I just think we should all support our teachers as much as possible.

The majority of teachers do a great job and are very dedicated. Some parents may have hang ups carried over from their own school days. YANBU.

"Worked out that at school they probably do about 2 solid hours of work per day. The rest of the day is taken up with admin work, lunch, passing out reams of paper etc."

How strange. The majority of children receive way more direct teaching and time to work than that.

"Worked out that at school they probably do about 2 solid hours of work per day. The rest of the day is taken up with admin work, lunch, passing out reams of paper etc."

It also depends on how you define 'work'. Children often learn better through fun and interactive activities.

Why do I get the idea that coralanne's idea of 'work' is sitting down filling in endless worksheets?

DW and colleagues have been told that if "all pupils" are not "engaged" at "every minute" of "every lesson" it is the teachers' fault.

They've also been informed by the consultant who has come in to help their "failing" school that - wait for it, this one is a killer - if a child misbehaves in their lesson, the first thing this consultant would do is go to the teacher and ask what they (i.e. the teacher) were doing wrong.

How did we get to this point??!

Do parents no longer take responsibility for little shits being little shits?