Gone back into teaching after a long break - oh dear!

[MrsGherkin]

I taught for around around 4 years - 2 in Secondary and 2 in primary, then left for around 8 years to raise a family and in that time I ran workshops with children instead. This was lovely but sporadic and unreliable financially.

So I went back this year and am now teaching in an Outstanding Comp part-time. I am essentially happy with the pay in comparison, my colleagues are lovely. The holidays are nice (but I so always do some work or other). I am paid to work 19 hours per week but do around 32-35 hours pw so rarely get a full day off.

I'm going in over half term again to coach (lazy) year 11's . What I find most alarming is that if those year 11's don't make their predicted grade despite my additional input, because I am the only teacher of my subject in school I am personally accountable for their success. My name will go on a big PowerPoint in September and if I'm in yellow my students (and therefore me) has passed or done better than predicted and if their names appear in red, they've not made the grade and nor have I. This is in front off all staff and the atmosphere in the hall is one of quiet smugness / utter defeat - it's terrifying. I am really worried about failure and am doing catch up sessions twice weekly (extra 4 hours per week) too. It's this combined with the constant, monitoring reports, lesson observations, hired consultants wandering in and scrutinising my books and asking the children questions about me all the time; it's really scary (and a little bit dictatorship-like at times). I am awake for hours at night worrying and wondering quite if I'll make it. My boss is only just managing to cope I think -( says the jobs got so much worse in the past 2 years.) There are days when I leave at 6.30 and the poor H0D's still there and sending emails to my home.

Anyway you get my drift, I am just not sure I can always be that Uber Outstanding teacher ALL THE TIME and so utterly accountable. But I'm sure it's no different for the police or nurses or any civil servant really, it's just essentially overwhelming. Any thoughts or reassurance gratefully received.

tbh good schools have a pastoral team that do that stuff

.. but part of a teacher's job is maintaining control and always has been. I cant fix a kids behaviour and then send them back into a lesson where a teacher is inept

It's awful isn't it? Not the job it was once. I have done lots of part time since having my dc but have hated almost every bit of it. I have just secured a move into bits of TEFL and some adult education (daytime and evening classes), and am breathing a deep sigh of relief. I hope I never step into another Secondary classroom again.

I get repeat bookings that schools because my classroom management (they tell me) is excellent.
However, I am lucky enough to have the choice to work or not work in schools, and so can decline those where the 'pastoral' team decide that they can make snide remarks about 'inept' teachers.
Sadly, lots of people are trapped in fulltime jobs in those schools - hence the stampede to exit.

Oh come on Sig. We all know there are teachers who ain't great at discipline. They might be lovely people, and great at talking about Beowulf with top sets and 6th form but have no end of trouble with yr9, when other staff have no bother with the same set. Dressing this up as pastoral being snide is just pretence.

That said, the data-driven, ever-changing results fest we work in these days is bloody hard going tbh.

agree - i don't want my kids taught by someone who is crap at maintaining discipline and if it means silently thinking they are inept then hey ho.
the era of supporting weak teachers ( and we all suffered these in our school time) is long gone, thankfully

I don't know of any inept teachers who are currently teaching. I do know of many many good teachers who are being bullied, sidelined and treated so appallingly that they are either on anti-depressants or leaving the job altogether.

agree - more have left this year than in all my years.
they were however, inept..

Well, the colleagues I'm referring to were Good/Outstanding in every observation previously.

Odd that since the new head started, certainmore expensive colleagues have been the targets of obsessive scrutiny and RI observation verdicts.

Some, more cynical folk, might suggest there are other issues at play...

Depends how you define 'inept'.

Is a teacher who can teach Bastard Hard Maths to top set A-Level kids 'inept' because they're a bit outfaced by bottom set year 9, half of whom wouldn't have been anywhere near mainstream education 20 years ago, on a windy Friday afternoon?

Equally, is his colleague who breezes through a lesson with the dreaded 9a4, 'inept' because she's great at getting kids with D targets C grades at GCSE, but didn't get an A herself & wouldn't know one if it danced up to her singing 'Look at me, I'm an A response!'

It's a bloody big ask to be both. I'm not saying you can't ask for both, but I teach a core subject in a very naice school, & we're currently unable to appoint anyone suitable to a key vacancy, which is instead being covered by daily non-specialist supply.

So I do wonder who's actually going to haul themselves to their hindlegs & teach, if you get rid of all these 'inept' teachers. My experience is that it's not, in fact, the crap ones who leave - it's the ones like our lovely & brilliant 20something Oxford grad NQT who think 'fuck this for a laugh' & get out whilst they can.

Good post, RavenAK. It's all very well parents or the general public describing teachers as inept when they simply have no idea what is being demanded of them. And I suspect many in senior management roles would now find it pretty tough to handle being back full-time in the classroom.

The thing is, teachers are just people doing a job. In any job you are going to get some people who are amazing at it, some who are a bit crap, and the vast majority will be somewhere in between. Expecting all teachers to be outstanding is just not logical. Government and schools can either try to support teachers and help make them better at their jobs.... or hound them into bitterness, depression nervous breakdowns. However, continuing to make teaching a harder and less rewarding job to do is not only going to drive away the weaker teachers. It is going to drive away the good ones and the brilliant ones too.

However, continuing to make teaching a harder and less rewarding job to do is not only going to drive away the weaker teachers. It is going to drive away the good ones and the brilliant ones too.

Spot on. The two proper 'outstanding' teachers from my last school -as in superb every lesson from my own open-plan vantage point, rather than pulling it out if the bag for an observation-were the first to go.

The ones left will not be Good-they'll just be cheap.

*i looked it up

The UK has one of the youngest teaching workforces in the world. 20% of teachers are under 30 and 50% under 40.*

As I thought Datahub - I'm in the 40+ age group and there's hardly any teachers of my age left, they've gone. Gone where i'd be interested to know? What are they doing with themselves? It's expensive to retire in your early 50's and they can't all have won the lottery?!?!

our place is like the Hotel California - loads of oldies

No oldies at my school-well, I tell a lie- one in their 50s minutes away from early retirement.

No oldies at my kids' primary school-oldest is probably 40, most in their twenties.

I'm in my 50s, intend to do supply for the rest of my working life.
Most schools round here seem to have a majority of young teachers, or jobshares

Oh yes-I forgot jobshares. Parents at my old school were always moaning about jobshares until someone posted on the school Facebook page, 'at least with jobshares, you know you'll get one of the two of them all year whereas with Mrs X or Miss G (both full time), they went off sick with stress and left us with endless supply teachers!!'

Can you pay into your pension on supply?

I've been meaning to check on that, but I've got 30 years full-time banked already.
I'll get round to it at some point. Or someone on MN will pop up and tell me.

I suspect that many of those quitting the profession are, like me, very much the second earner in their household, and that is why they are able to quit. I am very thankful that I have been able to do so.

I've just started doing supply, 43 years old, 21 years in the same school and had enough of hoop jumping, oh and yes, second wage earner in house.
You can only pay into your pension if you work for a local authority supply agency, I checked with pensions. So my 18 years ( as did 7 as a job share) is frozen. Luckily I have done some work for my LEA and will be able to keep contributing, but only as long as that agency runs, talk is of it shutting as it can't compete with non authority agencies, they're cheaper, pay experienced staff less and sadly more and more schools are opting for the bargain basement when buying in supply.

I'm fifty four. I left at Christmas after twenty four years. Have just started doing some supply. I was UPS3 with a TLR so I've taken a massive cut in income. But so far so good. Leaving was definitely the right course of action for me.

I'm stuffed then-I only ever taught for 3 years full time before having children and have been a jobshare for the last 10. I also had 5 years out completely.

Which will come first

1. Being able to afford to retire
2. Being sacked for being too old and crap to teach
3. Death

I think 3 is looking pretty likely. What do I do if 2 happens and I can't afford to retire. Are there many jobs left for ex-teachers (whose pension is shite and who've been sacked) in their 50s!?

No, we earned the same for the last 15 years, but we are very modest in our spending and our children are independent now.
I plan on working FT as a supply until I'm 60, then still working but being a lot more selective about the schools, and probably dropping to a couple of days a week.
But who knows? I'd rather live on next to nothing than return to a FT classteacher job. Fortunately, things are looking good at the moment.

I'd rather live on next to nothing than return to a FT classteacher job.

My sentiments exactly.