TEACHERS AIBU?

[tryingtobemarypoppins2]

Mums who are teachers, AIBU?

In September I will be going back to teaching 3 days a week, leaving my 2 DS's 6months and 2.7 years twice a week with my parents and once a week at nursery.

I went back part time after my first DS was born and it was ok but I questioned then just how ideal teaching and bringing up a young family was. The stress levels in my school can be high, although I was always home by 5 and the hols were great.

AIBU to be thinking of doing something else?? My sister works part time for an airline. She is away from home 6 days a month but they are always weekends and she can take her LO to school everyday etc. She pays nothing for childcare as a result. I am considering joining her but my DH thinks I am mad giving up a well paid role etc etc

WDYT?

I would think carefully before you change careers. My frien is cabin crew and is often called in at short notice, off shift late and works really unsocial hours. She doesn't have children and still finds it hard at times.

I am a midwife in the nhs and i feel that this also is not at all family friendly. In fact it is horrendous at times. I love my job and get immense satisfaction, if i didn't i would change and do something else to fit in with my family.

all jobs have stress, cant see how teaching is higher than others

and the fact that working hours and holidays coincide with kids is a winner no???

I don't imagine it is more stressful than other jobs, but it has its own specific stresses. Every hour you are at the mercy of the temperaments/hormones of thirty individual teenagers. If you think about persuading your own DC to do somthing they don't want to, teachers have this up to 150 times a day and if they don't engage every child they are said to be failing.

For me it wasn;t so much stressful as draining. There is very little "downtime" during the day and you are constantly on show. The work also never finishes - there is always something to be marked, reported on, replanned etc etc. As I said, it is a great job, but your heart has to be in it, and once it's gone it's hard to get back.

Hhmmm. In an office you're at the mercy of you managers/CEO. The worse managers can make your life hell. BUT I can imagine that 30 children can be extremely hard work.

Can you try another job in your school holidays? It may help you realise what is important to you and where you would like to go with your career.

Even the best jobs have periods of disatisfaction and it's up to you to do something to correct it. So what is reason for disliking your current job? Is here anything you can do to recify it?

I gave up teaching (Reception) rather than return after maternity leave. People talk about the long holidays, but there is so much assessment in Early Years that I used to spend my evenings and holidays cross-referencing and filing the myriad of post-it notes and photos we were expected to take... then there are the report writing, profile filling in etc etc, added to the week at end of/beginning of summer hols that we had to spend in school tidying and then setting up classroom. Then 1 day pw staff meeting til 6 and another day planning til 6.30, and having to set out classroom for next day afterwards. Oh and having to be in school early to set up the outside area...

I just couldn't face trying to do it and keep on top of the house work etc and I knew I would miss my baby too. Oh and the added bonus that after paying for childcare I'd be left with £300 (before paying for petrol, lunches etc)!

So, I became a childminder (in North London, so pay is comparable now to teaching now I'm doing 5 days pw), the curriculum is (currently) the same and its much more rewarding and satisfying to be able to arrange my own days, meet friends and have playdates etc. Only downside is that there is no pension.

Teaching is great in that you can go back to it later when your family's needs change.

i don't think this should turn into a 'my job's harder than yours' debate, but i have done quite a few different jobs, and by far the hardest is teaching - way harder than being home with newborn dd. of course, i've never been a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, so can't compare with those kinds of pressures.

all the things of other jobs are there, the crap managers, meetings, people who don't pull their weight. but it also has the noise levels of being in a soft play centre for a day, and kids are hugely demanding and draining on you.

i also think there's quite a high guilt factor - all those 'oh no , i should have done better' feelings kick in almost as much as being a parent makes them kick in.

and there's the fact that it's kids & noise so when you get home there's no change of pace or relief. and although the bonus of the holidays is a huge relief, i regularly used to work at least 4 weeks of the holidays (spread through the year), and it's hard to find childcare for that.

it's the problems during the year that the op is worried about - my school was really strict about this. i missed so much of dd's 'firsts' at school, even though i did take days off (on no pay) for things like her first day. you can't drop your own kid at their school on your way into work, you can't pick them up.if they're sick, you can't go home to be with them. you can never just 'have a word' with the teacher to sort out a small problem.

there are, of course, lots of jobs that make it difficult to do these things, but many offices or shops etc, will let you switch hours if your kid is ill, or make up time, or work from home for a day. schools can't do that, so teachers can't do that.

i found that the only way for me to cope was to slightly reduce my hours - just enough that i got to the school gates to pick up dd twice a week, so i didn't feel completely left out. if i'd been able to work just three days a week i think it would have been even better.

having said all that, i am now looking at job hunting from scratch (we moved to the US & I may be getting a work permit soon) and i'm beginning to think seriously about the demands of other jobs, cost of childcare here etc (there's a 12 week summer break, so childcare would be huge). i'm faced with the same dilemma, during term time an office job would be better, but during the summer & other breaks, teaching would be better.

tbh, once you've had kids, there are no such things as 'easy choices' any more, it doesn't just apply to teachers.

Thanks to all for your thoughts and advice.
I have had a really long talk to myself and I think that the looming return to work isn't helping my feelings however I do want to get much more of a balance.

Firstly, I get PPA time for an afternoon, every other half term on a Tuesday. I am going to use it really carefully. When the children are at nursery I will get as much done as possible in school and as many 'extras' as I can think off done too. However when they start school I think working from home that afternoon is reasonable and then I can pick them up......what do you think?

On a Monday I am going to be much more religious in leaving and getting home by 4:30 (I don't live far away) and really be 100% mummy until they are in bed at 7pm. Then I can work, work, work.

On a Wednesday I can be anywhere in the county in the afternoon as I do advisory work as an AST but if I have a 'paper work' task I will again try and work from home.

Thursday and Friday I will be 100% mummy until the evenings. I can try and get as much done as possible and then do very little at the weekends.

I will get a cleaner!

I will keep looking for another role within education though for when the boys start school so I can use flexi time. I looked at September 2012 which is when my DS1 starts school and yes, its a Monday

How does that sound??

While I appreciate the stresses of teaching I do think you have an arrangement there that mostvparents would be envious of. Good luck

'It just doesn't seem right that teaching should only be for those who are childless. '

So there IS a silver lining to the fact I apparently can't conceive....at least I get to keep teaching til I drop dead in harness at 75. That's cheered me right up, that has.

oh sorry Armi ((((((hugs)))))

I have noticed at my school that the women who excel don't have children or they have children who have now left home. I am alone I think in being part of the management team but with a young child.

daisymiller I really feel for you over the flex working. What have your union said??

I am a full, time teacher with DD (3) and DS (1). See if your school can accomodate you as an out of class teacherb- much less stress. PPA or intervention programmes work well

Sounds like very little PPA time to me. You should have 10% of your teaching time. Full time that tends to be about 3 hours a week, so if you work 3 days a week surely you should be getting around 2 hours a week.

An afternoon could be two hours.

We have no union presence at our school and those teachers that call on their unions see their careers fizzle quickly or realise they have to move on.

Night shift at our 24 hour tesco pays £100 I'm told, that's always been my back up plan if things go tits up for my job!

This has been a very interesting thread to read.

I am returning after maternity leave to a 0.6 (3 day) contract. DD will be 1.

I am hoping all will be well but teaching is so all encompassing I know that things I enjoyed doing before (mostly after school and extra curricular) for the school will have to stop as I will be doing as much work as I can in school hours so it doesn't impact on family life.

In some ways my spread of days (one on, one off) might make this easier. I hadn't considered what would happen when DD starts school, had always imagined returning FT (or maybe being on maternity leave again if I can convince DH!)

Also reading this with interest.

I returned to secondary teaching job on pt 0.4 last September. It has been fab to spend so much time with dd but it has made the job more difficult. Out of the loop, no classroom of my own, all my groups shared with other teachers.

I'm returning to full time contract this September. Dh is giving up work to be full time sahd. I intend to, as someone else further up the thread put it, work smart, so that I have to bring work home as little as possible.

Although dd is not yet at school, I had always assumed that teaching was the ideal career for a parent of school age children, mainly because of the coincidental holidays.

I thought that not dropping off / picking up / constant juggling and tiredness was the lot of most ft working mums. I don't see that teaching is any different really.

I think it is good to stick with teaching. Working for an airline is very precarious so you might easily be in a tranche of redundancies. Being away from home is hard, and you could easily get stuck somewhere if there are weather problems/mechanical problems/industrial action.

The main downsides of teaching is 1) you don't have control over your own time so cannot be flexible, so you have to make all routine appts in the holidays, and 2) you might have to bring work home regularly.

The major benefit is, of course, the holidays. There is also career progression if you want it.

Like any WOHM, you have to have childcare in place, including contingencies. You are very fortunate to have a family member to take care of your children. You need to have a plan for inset days and illness.

I am not personally a fan of part-time working as there are many downsides - however, if you think you want this for work/life balance, then teaching is a job where you can often find this flexibility.

Think about how much you want to take your children to school. This gets old really quickly, imo. It is really quite a chore.

One thing to know is that it really does get easier as your children get older. It can be hard to see the wood for the trees when they are little, but each year it gets gradually easier. My youngest is now 8, and I have only very faint memories of the juggling that used to consume me.

I've found this thread very interesting.
I'm a part-time secondary school teacher, went back part-time after having DS2. Am currently expecting DC3.

I have a good set-up - I work Tues,Weds, Thurs so have a long weekend off and I know I am very lucky to have this.

However, I feel that my heart really isn't in it.
I fell into teaching - it was never my plan and I've always said that I wouldn't do it forever, but it is very hard to think of an alternative that would fit my life at the moment.

I enjoy teaching but do find it very stressful and am finding the workload much harder recently (we have a new head who is imposing all sorts on us at the mo). I actually find it harder being part-time as there just doesn't seem to be enough time to do anything, as well as not having a classroom (have been timetabled into 8 different rooms over a 2-week timetable this year), I miss out on meetings (all on a Monday when I don't work) and find it hard to catch up with HOD etc.

Have been thinking of taking a step back and looking for a TA/PPA cover job but I just don't know if this is the answer.

Daisymiller,

Thought OP said she gets her afternoon of PPA once every other half term which seems like a very small amount.

I really think it depends on the school.

I have just returned to a secondary shool teaching post, tlr 2 (is that right? only the most basic point) - since half term, I have been working f/t and going back three days a week in Sept.

I have 40% A level from Sept - classes of less than ten; only two out of six full days, the other four I have one period ppa. My hod has managed to organise that I teach from one classroom, which I can more or less consider my own, as the other people using it are teaching English as a small % of their timetable.

I was told that the sooner I let them know which days I wanted the more likely I was to get them. I got the days I requested (let them know in Jan).

I am lucky in that my mil is doing two days' childcare a week, so I could have been flexible, if necessary, but I do feel that my school seem to have been pretty relaxed and accommodating.

Though I do feel I'm 'stuck' there now, till my family is complete and I'm ready to go f/t there, as moving closer to home would entail moving counties, which may mess with any future mat leave, and as others have said, p/t jobs not easy to come by.

Re. advisory roles - country advisors round my way (E Anglia) are all being made redundant from next year - is that not the case nationally?

Oh, and f/t is a frigging nightmare, even WITH gained time

lindy100 yes lots of country advisors her are all being made redundant from next year too

Does my PPA time sound wrong. I am 0:6, although I teach until Wednesday morning then have AST outreach time Wednesday afternoon. I get PPA every Tuesday afternoon for half the year.

My head hates this as I always miss staff meetings. He wants both job shares to be at them! Without extra pay etc. He has only just agreed to paying us for INSET on our days off or being allowed to miss them!!

I went back ft to my secondary English job when DS was 9mo, with the help of my amazing parents and DH going pt.

It's been bloody hard work - and the standard of my teaching this year has been 'good' at best - but it fits reasonably well into our family life tbh; I love having my weekends home with DS, even though I do have to work while he's napping on Saturday afternoon. I can't wait until he's a bit older and we'll have our holidays together. I am currently looking for promotion which'll mean that DH can drop another day.

I have a colleague who went pt after her first baby and she said that she has ended up doing the work of a ft sahm and a pt teacher. TBH I think I'd miss the adrenalin if I did something else;I'd certainly miss the holidays, the job security and the pension!