Stand and deliver the NC (you try it!) - teacher bashing in the UK

[bb99]

Hello all, after rambling on and seeing several other threads I've got interested in the whole teacher bashing concept.

I'm a teacher in Primary schools (a very lovely one) and have been spoken to rudely and unpleasantly by people (not from the school) who know I'm a teacher because it seems to be OK to be rude and denigrating to me as 'I should know that' or the 'don't you know - you're a teacher?' attitude takes over.

Lots of threads on here talk about crap teachers or people who disagree with teachers state that they should 'rethink their career' and it seems to be OK to just be unpleasant to and about teachers and schools and constantly judge them and their actions, even outside the classroom. This happens to the point of rudeness and could, in a classroom, be seen as bullying...

Why is it OK to be so unpleasant about and to people who do an amazing and challenging, underpaid job, with little or no support from the government?

i ised to thnk teachers had a great life with the hoks thing...did sympathose with the actual teaching thing,,, now dh is a teacher...hols , what hols,time on a night to chill - no lesson plans to do

bb99 et al, thanks for doing the job that most of us wouldn't
me i work in the nhs - another mn bashing favourite

Not for my qualifications, it isn't. Of all my friends from university, I'm the least well paid.

just as well - i cant spell today sorry
hoks - hols
sympathose - sympathy

yes wages is pants

Hotbot, thank God for the NHS and all the fabbo people in it!

Keeping dh alive and all that!

really?

now i think those who work in the NHS have a much rawer deal tbh

at uni we have a legal secetary - £20,000 (at top of scale), an engineer (22K), Lawyer (approx 21K mid of scale) and teacher (think approx 30K - dep head of primary school)

ahh mb, mutual admiring session =

Ah come on you know that you all live a Peter Pan like existance really

My DH is an engineer and he earns more than the average teacher. Certainly more than 22K. And I'm slightly at a middle of the range lawyer on 21K too.

To teach you need a first degree and a post grad qualification, 4 years of study in all (or a B Ed , which tends to take around 4 years)

Compared to all my collegues (even those in the lowely pain ranks of academic life), I'm worse off. Seriously

Maybe I have high expectations but I don't think 30k for a deputy headship is an exceptional salary - I really don't.

i think nhs is ok for wages...altho afc screwed me.. dont get me started.
i think i am old fashioned in that i really worry that if wages were amazing we really would attract people for wrong reasons. i believe nhs should be their for the right reasons, ie caring... no ,matter what nhs job they do

Posieflump - Do you truly believe that teachers have that WHOLE six weeks off??? .

oh I don't know... maybe friends don't tell me the truth

both engineer friend and lawyer friend did 4 years of staudy though

ct 30 k isnt for what you are expected to do, and the hours you put in.

VanillaPumpkin - my bf did, as I said she travelled round the US

I get paid a fair bit less than my mate who is a nurse, and another who is a MW. But I'm not complaining. They do a fantastic job and deserve the money they get.

I get paid less, but, as you poiinted out , have the holidays.

Average teacher works way more than 40 hours a week during term time, btw. I do about 50 and I work part time. But that is my choice, and I life the flexibility of being able to work when the kids are in bed.

But the pay isn't that good, for my qualifications

I think your bf must have been in the shit when term started then .

really?!! so normally do trachers go into school over the summer holidays?

she said it was just the same lesson plans year after year hence the uS trip

apologies for typos

Well, there are of course teachers who are not very good....

I am so bored of the 'blah blah teachers only work for 2 minutes a day, are paid zillions a year and get decades of holiday blah blah'.

I no longer bother trying to correct misconceptions, I just smile and say, 'yes it is a sweet racket, a license to print money, why don't you do it too?'. Invariably there aren't any takers

but by the same token I could say I'm so bored by teachers always moaning about how hard it is , blah blah, why don't you stop doing it and go and work night shifts in an NHS ward for half the money#

you see, it works both ways

My mum would spend two of the six weeks in the classroom over the summer. She also bought a lot of stuff home with her. She is a primary school teacher. She works for a private school now and I have never known her do so many hours. She is in school for 7.30-7.45 and not home till gone 6 some nights and sometimes has weekend duties and late duties until 10 pm. My stepdad hardly sees her term time so those holidays are very well deserved and needed imo. She probably works for a quarter of the time she gets as holiday if that makes sense.
She has noticed the work load increase dramatically over the years, but still maintains she loves her job. She is looking forward to retirement and time with my dsdad though.
She does have a management role in addition to her teaching duties.

I think a better response would be why don't you go and get a better-paid job then?

I don't have that much time for whinging, because when you have children, teaching is super-handy for school holidays. I'm toying with the idea of doing something else, and the thought of organising holiday childcare is putting me off.