Talk me through a teachers work load… why is it so hard?

[Mummame2222]

So, I adore my kids primary school teachers, they are all wonderful. I admire the work they do, I could never, ever do their job.

I supported all the strikes and believe teachers when they say they are overworked and underpaid.

I’m just curious how their time is spent. The holidays you have off each year does this average out your working week? So say you work 60+ hours during term time, what are you doing during half terms and school holidays?

Just trying to get a better understanding of how their job is so difficult, and like I said, I believe them and support them, I would just like to be better equipped and more knowledgeable when I stick up for them as the inevitable ‘yeah they get so much holiday’ argument always comes up when I try to!

My past week.

Monday: Get to work at 8 am spend the next 40 mins trying to catch up on emails from the previous week when I was away for 5 days including a Sunday on a trip. Also trying to get organised for my 5 lesson day which means checking 5 PowerPoint presentations and updating if needed, photocopying resources if I've not had time to do it in advance, checking updates on pupil support plans I reckon I get about 5 updates a day for 'reasonable adjustments' which might involve rearranging seating plans, printing off PowerPoints, making note of who can't be put on the spot or asked to read aloud, knowing which child I cannot challenge about uniform, knowing what colour paper a child needs worksheets printing on or who needs them enlarged, knowing which child has a toilet card, which child cannot go to the toilet unaccompanied, which child has anxiety and mustn't do homework etc. All valid requests but not enough time to deal with it all. These usually come with just a name....I teach 300 students so have to remember or look up which year group class etc as well.

Run to staff briefing which overruns. Run back to my tutor group, read out notices, check uniform, do the register, do the pshe PowerPoint, deal with a million questions, respond to an urgent email from a parent about a PE kit, bell goes Run out of time. Move to another classroom. Connect laptop to whiteboard, battery dies. Start again, get all the right PowerPoint open, do the register, get the do now on the board, explain the point of the lesson and begin teaching. Open the register again for the latecomers, need to log their lateness but the laptop stalls....write on a post it to remember to do later because they are always late. Re-explain the point of the lesson, help x find their book, notice that y has no pen but hasn't mentioned it. Z puts their hand up and wants to go to the toilet 10 mins into the lesson. A and B want to tell me they weren't here last lesson and don't understand. C reminds me they missed the assessment and need to do that. Now I'm searching for an assessment and an empty room or office for C to sit in. Eventually get on with the lesson but half the mini whiteboard markers have stopped working, write on a post it to remember to order some. Realise that Z hasn't come back from the loo so nip to the office to call for someone to search for them because they have a risk assessment for mental health issues and self harm. Somehow make it to the end of the lesson and think most kids have learnt something. Write in planner what homework is...add a reminder to the post it notes to record it on the online system later because if I don't the kids won't do it. Period 2 follows a similar plan but the video clip link in the PowerPoint won't work so I have to scrabble through a textbook to find an alternative. Break duty, no time to go to the loo. Can feel a headache coming on, am about to go and fill my water bottle but some 6th formers stop me needing help with their essays and my class are already lining up. Teach the next 2 lessons then run to the loo and bolt down some crisps before spending my lunch trying to complete a risk assessment for the next trip. Teach another lesson before the end of the day. Then bus duty. Return a call to a parent who shouts at me because I gave her ds a lunchtime detention (for no homework 4 weeks in a row) and didn't take him to get lunch. The only reason his detention was at lunch was because his Mum and emailed and told me that he doesn't do afterschool detentions and I asked him at the start of the detention if he needed to go and get lunch. Eventually she demands I get my boss to ring her. Feel exhausted and then remember I have a set of exams to mark for a data deadline on Friday. Start marking. Leave at 5 to collect my daughter. Cook dinner, do washing, dh takes ds to club, get dd to bed. 8.30 spend 30 mins aimlessly on mumsnet because I am done in. 9pm start marking again.

Tuesday: Repeat but also try to organise cover for an absent colleague, have one PPA in which I try to get ahead with the copying, remember I need to plan a lunchtime revision session for tomorrow. Forget to do my bus duty and get told off.

Weds: Much the same but running late in the morning as dh away and ds lost his door key. Miss briefing, teach all day with no lunch due to revision session. Staff meeting after school, spend and hour being given more jobs to do including analysing data, coming up with interventions for students not making progress many for which persistent absence is the main issue. Also asked to come up with a fun activity for activities week in July and reminded that I need to check all the exam entries by tomorrow morning.
Thursday: Lose a free period to cover absence. Spend breaktime dealing with tutor group friendship issues. Spend lunch trying to complete a costing sheet for the next trip. Last lesson of the day goes really badly due to a revolving door of students being taken out to write statements over an incident at lunchtime, none of them want to do anything other than talk about said incident. Stay late writing cover for next Monday as I'm on a course. After dinner stay up till midnight finishing the 2 sets of exams that I haven't found time to mark.

Friday: Get in early to enter the data and deal with all the emails I've been ignoring including trying to work out where I am with 2 shared classes. Also deal with loads of email messages from students. One reminding me I forgot to put their homework on the system, another who's been off sick and wants catch up work, another who is going to miss my lesson and wants catch up work and one of my tutor group who has had a falling out with another one. Confiscate 2 phones in lesson, one of the students then reufses to work or be quiet and I have to call for someone to remove her. Lunchtime is spent trying to find where my missing textbooks are, breaking up a fight and then logging all the behaviour. A member of slt comes to see me to say that a student has accused me of hitting them....I direct them to the cctv and they later tell me I was right and I didn't hit the student, in actual fact the student tried to walk into me when I was trying to direct them round the one way system. Slt don't say sorry or make the student do so but they do tell me the student is having a really hard time at the moment. Last two lessons are exhausting, shared class and I'd got the wrong lesson ready as the other teacher has been off sick and I didn't know what they'd done...or not done. Eventually make it to the end of the week. Write a weekend to do list including: Write parents letter for trip, look at info for the course on Monday, mark y12 essays, plan lessons for rest of week, try to find time to alter an exam for y9, write the bit I'm meant to do for the newsletter, update the seating plans, set the homework, mark some homework, write the agenda for the department meeting, email the non specialist about the next topic...I could go on and on. It is relentless. Teachers are being asked to do more and more with less and less time. It's not about wages, it's working conditions. I really love my job but it is relentlessly stressful in a way it never used to be. It's like having 2 jobs. One where I perform all day long and have to prepare for that and another that I have to do all the admin in the evenings and weekends. Then throw in a few unpredictable grenades and it all goes to shit.

Oh and for the inevitable grammar police who will come and highlight my typos and inaccurate apostrophes - I am typing on my phone while cooking dinner and have not proof read.

I am also not whinging just trying to convey what teachers find stressful. I'm not suggesting that other jobs aren't stressful either but the op wanted to understand why teaching is.

I wouldn't be routinely made aware who has needs and who doesn't unless SEN deem it to be appropriate.

But surely it's always appropriate? Our online registers have tags on each student indicating SEN, EAL, healthcare plans etc. We are expected to familiarise ourselves with the additional needs of any students in our classes at the beginning of the school year, read their Healthcare plans and IEPs etc and follow the recommendations for them. This can be anything up to about 10 students per class. I teach 11 classes.

We are expected to remember which students we should sit at the front, or away from particular other students, what health problems we have to look out for, which students need Powerpoints printing out (sometimes on particular coloured paper) etc etc. And we regularly get emails throughout the year, telling us that individual students' needs have changed. When we set cover work, we have to list all students with additional needs on the instructions for the cover teacher.

Private school, selective, if it is deemed the pupil needs support a charge is made for the level of support - pupils who need TAs, parents pay their salary (not directly of course)

Yep, @Blackberryjammin . That sounds about right. My brain feels like a laptop on low charge with far, far too many tabs open.

Yep, well aware of that system, none of that - bear in mind that as a selective school we generally don't have anyone with severe needs, we have a few high functioning autistic kids, but they are gods gift to Physics, they love the rationality!

Easter holidays started Friday. Today is the first Sunday I've not worked since Christmas. However, I'm going into school to work 3 days next week to catch up with paperwork. I then have 4 sets of class tests to mark, and lessons to plan for the week we come back but I'll probably leave that for week 2 of the holidays.
That's usually how I spend my unpaid leave.

At the moment I'm trying to plan tomorrow's lessons, set 8 hours of cover work for Weds & Thurs (when I'm doing my second lot of mock speaking exams all day), mark a set of assessments and deal with final arrangements for the trips and visits for the exchange group's week-long stay with us (I'm hosting 2 teachers at my house for the week). They arrive the day after Y8 parents' evening. Those are just a few of the things on my current 31-item to-do list.

Yep, well aware of that system, none of that - bear in mind that as a selective school we generally don't have anyone with severe needs, we have a few high functioning autistic kids, but they are gods gift to Physics, they love the rationality!

Mine is a selective school too, but we have ever-increasing numbers of students with additional needs.

Can I ask, assuming you're teaching the same subject without curriculum changes, how much of last year's planning can you re-use or does it have to be done again from scratch every time?

Nothing has changed here yet, but it may well do, who knows, will bend with the wind as and when!

Every week, outside of teaching hours:

• Marking books (at least 2 sets per day, sometimes 4, so potentially 72 books - and I have a small class)
• Preparing resources for the next day's lessons
• Planning lessons for the week - 5xmaths, 5xEnglish, 5xreading, plus science, history, art, music etc. for a mixed age class of 3 year groups plus 2xSEND pupils who need personalised learning
• answering emails, organising trips, which involves a stack of risk assessments, updating class Dojo (parents comms), preparing displays, etc etc
• preparing and reviewing plans for SEND pupils

In holidays:

• planning the next term's overview of lessons
• writing reports

Many colleagues also go into school to prep their classrooms, but I try not to. I will work for 1 or 2 days over Easter, maybe 4 or 5 days in the summer when getting ready for a new class.

I can't lie, the holidays are great, and I refuse to be a martyr and work too much in the hols (although I could) but term time is relentless.

I was a secondary teacher not primary and I taught all GCSE and A level groups. I got 1 free period during school time for all planning, preparation and marking. I tended to use this for photocopying resources and printing out worksheets or crosswords etc. The A level students were set 1 long essay every week and some short responses. Each essay took about 12 mins to grade and offer advice on how to improve. Short question about 5-6 minutes and occasionally I got them marking each others work using mark scheme but I still had to do a 3 minute check. Each lesson took 15 mins to plan and 5-10 mins to prep. 2 A level groups of 16 in each group. Then I had 3 x GCSE groups with average of 24 in each group. Lessons took longer to plan as their concentration was lower so I needed 3-4 activities for each lesson. Homework every week for 1 hour which took about 10 mins to mark and advise on improving. Then there were report writing and mock exams which took hours to mark. On top of it all I had to go in during Easter break for 1 week to do a full day of revision with each group. I also had to go in during summer break on A level and GCSE results days to help my tutor group in case they needed to go through clearing. On top of this I had to do an overview of the Curriculum in my subject as HoD and monitor and sample marking of team members. Honestly there were never enough hours in the day. I arrived at work at 7.30am which was earliest doors opened and did not leave until 6pm except on Fridays when I left at 4pm with a large pile of weekend marking. When I was trying to do reports as well I marked essays and my DH entered their marks onto my work system for me to save me a few minutes. He'd also often do some photocopying for me or cut up A 4 sheets into 2 A 5 so they could stick diagrams into exercise books. I retired early. I escaped. 🥂👏👏

Here's another one op. I use to work in social services. I had a caseload of roughly 20 children at any given time. The majority of the children needed to be seen weekly (approx 20 hours) I then had to write up visit do any referrals/plans (approx 10 hours) with my remaining 7.5 hours I had to -
Teach parenting class for 4 hours once a fortnight
Have supervision 1 hour every 4 weeks
Attend support meetings for each school age child (roughly 5 a month)
Man the phones 4 hours every fortnight
Do any training
Attend weekly staff meeting- 2 hours
Do assessments (roughly 3 hours a week)
Do any admin/emails
Do emergency visits
Write up all assessments/ emergency visits/referrals/meetings
And that was if everything was running smoothly

And that is without break duties, lunch duties, leading an assembly once a month, Sixth Form meetings every week, GCSE meetings every week, lesson observations of your team once a term and if you had an NQT in your department even more time guiding them.

But do schools have to follow this? There is literally no one available to do displays where I am as all the TAs are 1:1 except 1, who does interventions. She'd spend most of her time on displays if she had to do the entire school! There is no one to do bulk photocopying. There isn't even anyone to answer the phone for over 50% of the school week.

I only know one currant teacher well. He’s a head of department; living the life of Riley and frankly not well qualified for his job. He has ridiculously long holidays.
I remember so clearly talking to a nice lady a while back and she told me her daughter had gained all E’s in her A levels . I really didn’t know what to say about such horrendous results but mummy was delighted! This apparently was sufficient to get her a place at teacher training.
I am shocked at how uneducated those who many rely on to educate their children often are.

A friend of mine goes skiing with her husband. He skis and she spends the week writing end of term reports for the kids. I was shocked when she told me.

@Ibblin - the trouble is all those tasks need doing and there is no one else to do them if teachers don't. I'm in a small primary school with a part time admin who is also the premises officer and lunchtime supervisor, and TAs who all support SEND children with EHCPs 1:1.
So I would say I do pretty much all the tasks on that list, not because my head doesn't care about my well-being, but because there is literally no one else.

Sounds about right.

Nope! Just makes you tired and stressed and harder to do the real job of teaching the children.

Why? She's getting the job done, isn't she?

I think the shock was more that she is having to sacrifice her holiday with her husband.

Maybe she's not bothered.

I think one of the things that never comes across in the answers is how physically tiring teaching is too. For primary teachers particularly you are teaching every single curriculum area including PE and music to 30 children, managing behaviours, SEND, medical needs, family needs on top of your average Joe's basic needs as a 5 year old... shoe laces, telling tales, top buttons, zips, starting to peel the orange and banana etc. we all know how draining that is with your 2 kids at home, let alone 30. On top of that you also have safeguarding responsibilities. Once they've gone home you are really, really tired mentally and physically... Similar vibe to when your baby finally goes to bed, you just wanna chill and not use your brain but, hang on... oh yeah, there's 120 books to mark from that day but before that you have an hours curriculum meeting so the marking doesn't get done that day. The next day you have the same issue but this time you've had a parental complaint and you've had a little cry after school and you also have 240 books to mark now (because you didn't mark them from yesterday) but tonight you have to run your imposed after school club and tonight is the night you have to pick up your own kids by 4:30 from after school club, you get home and then your husband gets home and he's got issues at work and the baby has a temperature... marking doesn't get done that night. You're now up to Wednesday, you're 360 pieces of work behind and now you have staff meeting after work.......... I could carry on and on and on but you get the drift. It's fucking knackering.

I’m a part time primary teacher.

On average, I get in at about 8am and leave at about 5.30pm. I rarely take work home. I don’t really work in the holidays either. This will partly be because I am primary and the marking workload is greatly reduced. My lengthy experience also allows me to do this. I am efficient after school & know exactly what really needs doing and what can wait. I’ll whisper this bit for fear of sounding arrogant but I’m a really, really good teacher.

So, hours wise, holiday wise, doesn’t sound bad I guess? I agree, the holidays must sound fab. But here’s the rub- the hours you do work are EXHAUSTING. I’m good for nothing after 5.30pm. Often fall asleep on the sofa, have developed a stress related autoimmune condition & I am honestly considering quitting (see any of the teacher related threads regarding state of education as to why).

The best way I can describe it is like sprinting a marathon for 6 hours of the day. The back to back 6 hours a day I do teach are somewhat like being on stage for that length of time. You are ALWAYS ‘on’. No moment for an idle daydream or an amble to the loo. Your job is to get 30 children of various academic & behavioural abilities listening to you, then understanding you, then able to access the independent task, then make progress and feel enthused and happy to learn. On repeat for x 6 lessons a day.

Each of those 6 lessons will have had to be well planned, resourced and ready before that day begins (that’s mostly what I am doing after school ready for next day). Each of those 6 lessons then creates more workload in terms of marking/assessing/data entry (also what I am doing after school).

You are literally dragging yourself to the holiday by the end of term. As I said, I don’t really work in the holidays. However, I have young children so, understandably, I am the one who entertains/feeds/cares for them. Every. Single.Holiday.
So I don’t ever feel like I’ve had a rest but that’s not about the job itself.