How Stressful is the PGCE Really?

[DudeDudeson]

Hi, I have a place on a PGCE but have had cold feet about it ever since being offered it. I've been teaching English as a foreign language for too many years now and really want to get out of it as it feels like a trap. I'm decent enough at it after an initial few years of being absolutely rubbish at teaching. I've taught at university too while doing my PhD. I was ok at that but not great according to my former supervisor.

Anyways, long story short, I actually went and checked out two schools and it was ok? I mean the behaviour was pretty meh, nothing majorly awful. And yet I read a flood of stories about how awful teaching is the in the UK. My concern stems from this and also the workload. I'm ok with a steady amount of work but would not be able to withstand an avalanche of demands and zero work life balance. I also suffer from IBS and insomnia, exacerbated by stress which are not good for teaching. For reference I did teach full time in ESL, teaching 6 hours of classes a day but couldn't keep up with the pace. I'd get overtired and make mistakes. The reason I'm considering teaching is that it's a meaningful job and my CV is solely in education as that's all I've ever got jobs in.

I have an offer of an Instructional Design course as well, and am eyeing that but have major doubts about landing a job after it as many ID firms want corporate experience which I don't have. Conversely if I managed to survive the PGCE, I would be confident about landing a job. However, my lack of confidence stems from the actual surviving part. Given that my school visits appear to contradict what I'm reading on the internet, I'm at a bit of a loss in gauging just how demanding the course is. If it's fair, I think I can pass it. On the other hand what I'm reading is seriously spooking me and I can't afford another course that doesn't work out. I need to make whatever course I do actually result in a step up from what I've been doing for years.

I think it's a little bit OTT to say that you have to have massive passion to be a teacher, but you don't really seem remotely keen on teaching. It sounds like it's all about the security and money you can get out of this job and not at all about what you can put into it. People who become teachers for the wrong reasons generally hate it and do it badly. The way you describe yourself makes you sound very unsuited to being a school teacher.

Teachers aren't all amazing and we aren't all brimming with super skills and confidence, but what most of us do have is a desire to teach, a genuine enjoyment of working with children and a personality which thrives well on 'performing' all day. Wanting a secure job and a decent salary isn't enough.

As I said during the pandemic, I was pretty content with life because it was a break from the human world.

Having to be in rooms full of 30 children all day is the very opposite of a break from the human world. You need to enjoy that interaction and group dynamic. You need to be able to manage and control a class full of children, sometimes very difficult ones. And be prepared to be judged constantly on your ability to get them to make progress in spite of their behaviour or effort.

The very fact that we are 7 pages in and you don't want to listen to the dozens of posters who know what they are talking about, says a lot.
It is also another reason why you won't make it through a PGCE.

It's not that I don't want to listen but I don't trust my narrative of self, I can talk myself out of anything or convince people that I'm x or y when the polar opposite is often true, which is what I may be doing here but unaware of it. I have a reasonably good work ethic, I try to be professional and courteous, I have decent self-control and a forward planning brain. I think I could make it. The only negatives are - nightowl IBS sufferer and a bit sensitive. But I've read about other teachers having depression, BPD and autism. If they can get through it, I have no excuse.

And yet, perhaps interaction with the human world is exactly what is beneficial. We are a cooperative species, to go against this is to invite misery on account of evolutionary programming.