What's it like to be a teacher?

[JuniperJenkins]

What's your day like? Do you find the workload manageable? Do you enjoy it? I'm considering teacher training but when I mention this to people I get really discouraging responses. Thank you for any replies :-)

Can anyone advise whether primary teaching might be more manageable than teaching the older years? (In terms of pressure and workload)

General perception is that Primary is worse. You have to keep up with all the changes in 10 subjects, and teach things you might feel you know nothing about or are incredibly under- confident about (Music, French, PE, Art, etc etc). The dc are usually less intimidating but you get more aggravation from parents in some schools.

Mainly though, it depends a LOT on the individual school.

The actual teaching is great, but all the other crap just overwhelms most teachers in the end (or in some cases, from the start).

Reading this I totally agree with every post. It can be and should be the best job in the world if u love kids and believe education is the equaliser in society

The reality is the the teacher is the first line of responsibility for every problem associated with kids. I loved teaching primary and coming from industry wanted to teach them something they could relate to but senior leadership and mentors always could only agree to what they knew. Although I also have to say even with longstanding teachers, there was an appalling gap in English, Maths and esp science. I do think in ks2 there should be specialist. Also personality conflicts, gossip and Politics (at least the school I have was in) was amazing. senior TA who would make a Trump look like a pussycat. Solely because of longevity.

And as trainee, you have to accept.

I have so much respect for a lot of teachers who are doing it for the right reasons. The dedication and ability to change lives deserves the highest gratitude. What I hate is the system that encourages schools to become ineffective, perhaps poisonous institution for teacher and kids, and political vehicles through pressures of Ofsted ratings, Successive governments pulling the rug to mark their arrival and the training is properly imbalance.

Forget your family during training.

Hello

Best job ever!!!
Super stressful to begin with- but that does settle down, and depend on your school.

I think that the answer to this question very much depends on the school you work in nowadays. Your PGCE and NQT/RQT years will be hard going, for sure, but if you end up in a good school it gets more manageable as time goes by. The actually teaching element is amazing, as long as you are prepared to moderate your expectations! I am lucky to work in a great school and am usually in at 8:15 and out sometime between 4 and 5, rarely taking work home, but I hear horror stories from some other schools!

Sounds like a lot of luck is involved re the kind of school you end up working for

Schools change depending on who is in charge. I've seen multiple changes in leadership and it always has an impact.