Thank god we do it for our students not their parents because the kind of attitudes you see on here towards teachers would definitely not keep the already short number of teachers in role or attract quality candidates to the profession.
Thankfully most parents in real life are so much nicer than the very vocal and entitled minority who fill so much space on mn. I should know, I'm a parent myself and I get to read the emails of and have phonecalls with parents (generally of the most challenging students) on a regular basis and the vast majority are nothing like the vocal ones on here.
Our HT regularly shares with us the emails from parents thanking us for all we've done to keep their kids in school, to accommodate kids with very challenging needs, to support and keep in touch with students who are off due to covid etc.
Our students too for the most part, even most of the children of the more challenging parents, are polite and express gratitude. I get to share a fairly warm and amusing and engaging relationship with the majority of my classes despite having to teach them, administer discipline, introduce and enforce standards and expectations that in some cases they only encounter in school etc. Even after a lesson of nagging and moaning and having to give out a few warnings many will still say thanks Miss, have a nice day Miss. Many of them know that the nagging and moaning and pushing means we actually give a shit. They're also capable of recognising that sometimes we're in there sick and knackered when we should probably be in bed but still turning up for them and giving them 100% of our attention and energy and bothering to nag and moan.
We work on a restorative model. Not always popular with teachers I know and with good reasons sometimes but we're committed to it and for me personally that means going out of my way to try and build relationships even with kids who've behaved in ways that in normal life would see them sacked, ostracised and potentially even prosecuted. And it works a lot of the time. It means I seek out and spend time with kids you'd cross the street to avoid or write off with a few choice adjectives.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that even the most challenged of our students (think witnessing domestic physical and sexual violence from an early age, never having developed impulse control, never having had emotional regulation modelled to them and instead only having seen shouting and screaming like toddlers from the adults in their lives prior to school) demonstrate more capacity for basic empathy and ability to recognise that other people have needs too than some of the parent posters on here.
Those posters will also be the ones banging on about how their child must be in school and manipulatively citing the 'vulnerable' kids whilst not actually giving a damn about those kids or the toll that it takes on teachers to have to take care of those kids, know their circumstances and worse still send them home to environments that we KNOW are not really safe let alone good despite a million safeguarding alerts and reports that we have submitted collectively and sleepless nights knowing we've done everything we can do but the child is still being left in an abusive environment.
They'll then also cynically use the death of one of those children for their Us4Ourselves agenda to show how schools must stay open as if that child would be alive if it wasn't for lockdowns. They'll ignore the fact that child had a school place and should have been in school and teachers reported to the authorities that they weren't and that they were seriously concerned. Not because they care about that child or the thousands like them who we know are in danger but can't get anyone to do anything about other than praising us on an ofsted report for providing an opportunity for them to come to breakfast club and give them a hot chocolate and a slice of toast in the morning but because they're a convenient pawn.
We are apparently lazy, lefty, workshy, shit at our jobs, sunbathing in the garden, gin swilling, overpaid, have too many holidays, hysterical because we don't want to be packed into an unventilated building with a massive unvaccinated population who clearly ARE a massive breeding pool for infections in a pandemic despite gaslighting and no apologies when that gaslighting was proved untrue, lying, doom mongering and disposable blob. Yet they are strangely keen for us to have their children.
I can't imagine why we either can't recruit trainees or end up recruiting absolutely unfit for the job recruits via private goverments mates companies that only give a shit about the commission.
As I say, fortunately we do it for the kids not the public. The public telling us we should lose our holidays to sit in lockdown in January when we're not allowed to go anywhere and then work through summer can gtf. Trust me the kids don't want that either. Not that these people generally give a damn what kids want.
I really have to hope that there are reasonable decent parents and people who are the silent lurking majority on these threads and who do genuinely give a shit about kids and know that it's not the teachers trying to hold things together on a shoe string that deserve their angst. I'm told there are countries where teachers are actually appreciated and held in high esteem.