For teachers- do your pupils learn something new every day?

[jasper]

I am asking this due to the thread about taking kids out of school outwith holidays, where some of you explained it disrupted the teaching programme.

My question is do you really teach your pupils something different every day? This is a genuine question, not intended to provoke or criticise. I admire anyone who chooses teaching as a profession and the friends I have who teach are , to a woman, remarkable and inspiring individuals.
It's just that my memory of school (particularly primary school ) was of weeks and weeks of repetition of the same things.

That was my biggest compliant about school - it was boring and repetitive and I felt I hardly ever learned anything.

We were taken out of school for a week or two most years and there was never any notion of having to catch up or missing anything. Have things changed or am I suffering from false memory syndrome ? Might I have gone on to acheive greatness if it hadn't been for those fortnights in Harrogate?

So to repeat my question,which was not intended to rehash the holidays issue, do you teach a different thing every single day?

[popsycal]

I know HMB. I too chose to be a teacher. I spent yesterday evening planning for next week and preparing for two lesson observations where your boss then an lea advisor come and watch you teach and pull you to bits. That's not stressful at all. I am now sitting down marking 34 maths books (yes, 34 in a class) and 31 science experiment write ups. That's just for starters.
I must be so bad at managing my time if I have to work right through my lunch hours, most evenings and weekends and even on a Friday evening of all things!!

[popsycal]

Sorry to be sarcastic but aspects of this thread are starting to annoy me.
Imagine a similar thread aimed at other professions?

[popsycal]

That is a classic Hulababy!!!
It must be true if she said it though!!

[popsycal]

In most jobs, you go to work and the work comes to you
In a few jobs, teaching included, YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE WORK BEFORE YOU GET THERE!!

[hmb]

Ohh, worse than me! I've 'just' got 26 science books and 26 poster homeworks to mark, and 10 Adult Education examinations. Oh, and I need to work out a new seating plan for Y8, because they will not shut up for five minutes sitting where they are, and a report on the boy that carved his name on my lab door.....and I should make a start on the 40 school reports I need to write on year 11.

And tomorrow I have to spend doing OU work that I obviously don't need, because anyone can teach a class of kids.

Goodness, listen to me whinge, I must be a teacher!

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving teaching.

[popsycal]

Hehehehe!!
I thikn I may gracefully bow out of this thread as it is starting to really wind me up!

[hmb]

I think the problem is that because everyone has been a pupil, everyone think that they know what teachers 'do'. They go into a classroom and talk for an hour, hand out some work sheets and do a bit of marking. I went into teaching later in life, and that was my attitude. Now I am a teacher I know that it is a bit like watching a duck swim. On the surface all in calm, and underneath the poor duck is working like that clappers !!!

That said, I still think that the holidays are good value, and nothing would fit in as well around my kids.

[robinw]

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[popsycal]

Robin - have you ever seen a national literacy strategy video????? You probably haven't but they are quite amusing!! 'Inspiring' teachers showing obviously the rest of us uninspiring teachers how to teach literacy. They have class sizes of 10, amazing resources to use, and kids who speak like adults.

[popsycal]

PS robin - i agree with a lot of your points. However, the radical reform which you suggest is the future....we have to make the best of how things are now.
And as for sharing good practice, our authority have a bank of 'leading' teachers which people can go and watch/get advice from etc

[robinw]

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[hmb]

Advanced Teaching Skills teachers go to different school and share best practice.

I'd love a re-think for the whole government stratagy on teaching. I've never met a teacher who didn't, but as others have said, we have to to what we can, with what we can, at least for now.

To my mind that largest issue is class sizes. I have a 'bottom set' year 8 of 18 (12 with special needs) I have a top set of 26. The bottom set did almost as well as the top set in the last set of tests because I have a TA with me and a sixthform mentor. You can work miracles with a adult to pupil ratio of 1:6. Its hard to do as well with a ratio of 1:26, especialy when one of them is a poor lad with ADHD, and I have to spend time in the lesson stopping him from head butting his desk.

[robinw]

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[robinw]

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[hmb]

Teachers do say it, all the time! Then we get branded as moaning teachers who make excuses.....

Have a look at the Times Educational Suppliment. This weeks front page is all about freeing up teachers from admin so that they can spend more time on the kids. It is supposed to be happening but for most of us it isn't. Page 6 tals about underfunding under this government. Page 8 talks sbout the shortages of science teachers. Page 11 talks about more training being needed to make 'circle time' productive. page13 looks at the shortage of head teachers. Page 21 looks at how primary education is being affected by underfunding, 23 about how there are too many exams, 24 about how to imprve lessons etc etc. And on page 26 there is a letter saying that teachers feel undervalued and resentful.

[robinw]

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[hmb]

But you'd know all of that already, because everyone knows what it is like to be a teacher

[robinw]

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