How are you feeling? Any suicidal thoughts or feelings?

[Longlost10]

Having found more than half the teachers talking in a staff room I was in a few days ago admit to having had suicidal feelings over the last two weeks, I am just wondering how widespread this frame of mind is within the teaching profession?

I've been pretty down too.

I lost my mum in August due to a short but harrowing battle with cancer and I'm just over 6 months pregnant.

My Maternity cover teacher is shadowing me from the start of term to September and it's putting me under pressure to be super organised and micro explain everything that I think, say and do, as well as keep on top of all my records, marking etc (which is probably a good thing)
I plan for and manage 3 year groups and have 3 TAs to manage too (who are lovely btw)

I'm just stressed and exhausted due to insomnia.

There are so many straws that break my the camel's back each day, I'm oversensitive.

The bursar is in an office on her own all day so loves to stir things up in the staff room, making more of things than is necessary. For example she is currently insinuating that my new reception year group's parents are too clingy and that I've somehow encouraged this by allowing the transition to be gentle

Any form of criticism atm just tips me over because I'm currently going into my reserves in order to just function.

I'm so lucky that I adore the children and all the funny things they say, but somedays the parents and shit stirring staff can just eff off go away!

to December not September!

Good grief.

I am a teacher, I KNOW how hard it is. Just the same, to compare it to cancer?

starsinthedark
I'm not comparing teaching to cancer, I'm saying that as a full time teacher who has recently lost her mum to cancer and is pregnant, that these factors are making my job even harder.

Weird response.

I've left and not found anything yet. Bit of a very broke leap in the dark.

I feel anxious for my kids now starting to go through the system with stressed teachers. Id home ed or private ed if I could.

10 years ago o saw a counsellor who told me "we see a lot of teachers..." and that was before it was quite so crazy. I hate how it's destroyed my confidence.

'Weird response', is it?

Or maybe, not everything relates to you

That was me, last year. I quit. It's not going to be easy, moneywise, but I have not once fantasised about having a car accident or throwing myself into the river.

Currently doing a mix of private tuition and short term temping, and cutting back on everything that costs money. However, I am now off the anti-depressants and my children have got their mother back.

But surely, in that case, it's the teacher WITH cancer that's saying the cancer is better than teaching. I would think they could compare it if they want to. It's not someone without cancer comparing it. She's not speaking for everyone, just herself.

It's a bloody horrible thing to say, full stop. Sorry for jumping down your throat there, bumble

starsinthedark My mum said that having Leukaemia was preferable to the DWP's constant bullying, scaremongering tactics that wrecked havoc with her nerves and her life; Panels of people trained to interview her to make her lose her benefits and go back to work full time for free, despite her life limiting illness and ongoing mental health problems.
Pain is pain, no one has the right to say what is valid or not. Count yourself lucky that you find things more manageable than others in your position.

Thanks to cancer, my mother didn't see me get my GCSEs, A levels, or degree, she will never meet any grandchildren, she will never see me get married :)

Plenty of teaching mothers manage that, so sorry - I'm not feeling hugely magnanimous.

There are all sorts of ways to make the point that teaching is hard without comparing it to a horrible disease that kills people.

Stars, I think you've misunderstood. No one has compared teaching to cancer.

But they have, clam

It has been stated that cancer is preferable to teaching, and even said by someone with cancer, I think it's just a horrible, horrible thing to say.

Starsinthedark, who are you to think you have the right to get offended at someone else's testimony of their own experience. She is a teacher, she does have cancer, she has stated that to her being off work with cancer is preferable to continuing to go into school. I sympathise, having left teaching after discovering through my own personal experience that a road accident causing multiple fractures was more than a relief, it was euphoria. I do still work in schools though, and have been deeply shocked this term by the number of teachers stating quite blandly that they would rather die than continue.

The cancer comment was unnecessary and horrible. If you've watched someone die of cancer.. She'd be delighted to be alive, even teaching horrible kids. Fgs.

I teach. I've never heard anyone say they'd rather die than carry on.

If you are at a point in your life where a car accident makes you euphoric you have deeper issues than hating your job.

If you're in a job that makes you feel that way, whatever profession it is, get out.

There will always be other jobs. I do think the regime of such intense work and then lengthy hols in teaching makes things worse. It can't be healthy to swing from one extreme to another. September is such a shock to the system all round.

I recently moved schools. It's amazing how different I feel about teaching now.

I don't lose half my planning time dealing with issues about behaviour, going to pointless meetings, or listening to other staff whine.

I have the same workload or more even, but I am getting it done easier.

The school atmosphere is the key I think, and that's down to leadership.

If you're in a job that makes you feel that way, whatever profession it is, get out the problem is tens of thousands of teachers have, and there is nobody to replace them.

If you are at a point in your life where a car accident makes you euphoric you have deeper issues than hating your job.

no, it was 100% the job, and it took realising how happy I was to have an accident to make me realise I was living in slavery.

The school atmosphere is the key I think, and that's down to leadership. yes, in this particular school where I heard the conversation about being better of dead, it was definitely down to the leadership, aggression, critisism, unrealistic demands, lack of supportet. The atmosphere in this particular school is the worst I've ever felt, but I have been teaching abroad for a while, and I did wonder how widespread this is in UK schools. It was awful before I went, but has it got even worse? Or is this school just unusually bad. ( Ofsted outstanding, btw)

whirlygirl, there aren't really lengthy hols for most teachers, you can normally write off half terms and Easter completely, and might get a week or two free in the summer and a few days at Christmas.

I don't think I'm offended - 'disgusted' might be more apt.

Because when you are told you have cancer - and you are going to die, and you have two young children, and you will be in quite a significant amount of pain (that's just the physical, the emotional is something quite different) and become incontinent and so on, if someone said to you then 'but actually there is a cure but you'll need to be a teacher' would anyone actually say 'no, I'll take the cancer.'

Presumably the teacher in your example wasn't terminal but it's still a horrible thing to say and repeat and I was taken aback. It's comments like that which do us no favours as a profession to be honest.

Presumably the teacher in your example wasn't terminal remains to be seen

disgusted' might be more apt maybe you should be disgusted with an education system that leads people to that level of desperation in the first place.

I am "disgusted" that you feel you have the right to censure her at all. Her experience is that cancer is preferable to teaching. She is entitled to say so.

Do you have children, Longlost?