Teacher register - who are you and what do you teach?

[noblegiraffe]

Having seen loads of teachers around on various threads I thought it would be nice to find out who's who and what you do.

I'm a secondary maths teacher in a comp, been teaching for 12 years, part time for about 8. No TLRs which gives me plenty of time to post ranty threads about the state of education.

I hate Gove and like to picture him in his wellies inspecting pig farms, which is what I like to think his current job is all about.

Hi history hod at a private girls school (currently on mat leave). Dumbledore & socks I feel very guilty now as we have max 12 in our VIth classes but it's more often 6-8. No more than 20 at GCSE.
NEA is a new A Level specific term - non examined assessment.

Morning

Teacher of Psychology...trained in primary and taught primary by day ..psychology FE by night. Trained in London 1990...now in the South West..teaching in city comp....counting down to magic early reitirement day...will do anything else..love my subject and year 12 &13's ...no energy left for KS4..

There are CATs tests for all age groups noble

My DS just did them for year 12. Never given results of course!!

Teach primary, mainly EYFS for 14 years. Hold a TLR, working full time as I’ve been refused PT three times!

Sorry to jump on your thread, I'm a Medical Secretary. I'm also a dreaded school governor and want to say I had no idea how hard being a teacher is until I became a governor. I admire you all!

You beat me, storynanny. I was born the year you started teaching.

storynanny

Am I the oldest?

Started teaching in 1972. State secondary modern until 1974. Hated it, even then. Nothing like teaching practice, which I really enjoyed. Left, and retrained as a driving instructor. Much less stressful.
In 1979, went back to teaching in small indy boarding school. Loved it. Stayed fifteen years before moving to international school for five years. Then two indy girls' schools until retirement in 2012. Teaching was great fun, with classes typically 20 for (I)GCSE and 10 for A level. But the admin was starting to have an impact, even there, with targets, book inspections, results analysis (hour long session with the deputy head where I had to justify exam results), etc.

Went back part-time to cover maternity leave. Two terms at 3.5 days per week - every Friday off and no responsibility, just teaching. Bliss!

English teacher here, did six years in a (lovely, actually) comp in the NW and now starting my fifth year at an independent school in New York. Average class size 16, I can teach what I want pretty much, but there’s a lot of pressure on the kids - they get a lot of homework from every subject, ever night, and the extracurricular demands are, to me, ridiculous! (E.g. training for a sports team for two hours plus, every night) There are very few external exams, which was both liberating and terrifying when I first started teaching here, but the standardised year culture (SATs and ACTs) is intense - again for the kids, not the teachers. It’s been a very interesting experience!

Yes lots of changes, most for the better overall. I would love to still do more practical and creative stuff with little ones though instead of token gestures of art, music, leaf collecting etc! Everything is so rushed, no time to develop children's interest in a topic before rushing onto the next " challenge" and "target". I used to have a whole day'of activities develop from something interesting a child brought into school to show, maths, science, a song, a story. Haven't been allowed to do that sort of teaching for years.

I think an incident in recent years which told me it was time for me to semi retire was having performance management observation in a reception class. At the follow up feedback I was told that I should have been asking the children (4 year olds remember) how they could have got better at what they were doing. They were playing in the sand pit.

My knees have put a stop to full time on the floor with infants, not something our state pension age ( 66 for me) takes into consideration!
What goes around.......... Makes me chuckle reading the often heated discussions on the primary ed board re phonics! Come back in 5 years and phonics will be out again and another method back in.
Best wishes to all you full time teachers out there, nobody else really understands how hard the job is. Someone I know at jive classes has just married an infant teacher. He said to me that he was amazed at how hard she works and for how long each evening. I just smiled knowingly and sympathetically.

Saw this and thought of you, today re: Gove @noblegiraffe

webofwooders.com/forum/gove.htm

Here! late as usual Secondary English, on my eighth year now in a small school. Shite day today, SLT sticking me with my millionth cover since we’ve been back seriously, 6 covers in five weeks?! But who needs to actually plan their lessons, mark books or complete the useless admin tasks demanded of me

I know its a long shot but does anyone know a psychology teacher looking for a maternity cover job in SE London/Kent? The school has got some bad publicity but its a 6th form job and the 6th form is great. Please PM me if you know of anyone.

Primary Maths Specialist - recently landed myself an amazing job in a primary school so large it can afford to pay me to work with the teachers in the school to improve their maths teaching, so no class responsibility any more. Just multiple demonstration lessons with classes of children I've never met before and 3 or 4 teachers watching. A bit like having a PM observation every day....

Maths HOD in a secondary academy.

Hi fellow tired folks!

Whose idea was it to have us back to school on Halloween then?!

Secondary Maths, used to be HoD at state grammar schools. Now at an indie girls school. Much less paperwork, much more marking.
Less total working hours compares to previous job :) but very busy during term time :(

Sorry I was late Miss! NQT English here, changed from a non-existent career to teaching, so am now the second oldest and second most junior in my department. Absolutely loving it compared to last year, though I do wonder/ worry about the sustainability of the workload...

That's brilliant Kitty! Must be a union member

We are having an off timetable day themed around "the masque of the red death" on Halloween.
Art, science, history, English and PE activities based on the story. Whole school divided into 4 groups (we only have 40 students).
All staff dressed up as guests at the ball.
It's going to great! I hope. It's the first one I've organised

Just caught up. CATs in my school are 'common assessment' tasks. Basically just tests used throughout the year to give a current grade and predicted grades for reports. Y12 have them next week which means I will be making an end of year prediction for students I've known for 5 weeks

Common Assessment Task instead of 'test'? Dear god.

Is it just me that gets a nervous twitch whenever anyone mentions 'Pre-Public Exams'? We're not allowed to call them mocks anymore in case the kids don't take them seriously.

'So your Pre-Public Exams are in November'
'You mean like, mocks, miss?'
'Yep.'

To be fair, In Scotland they were always called Prelims. I thought mocks was a bizarre word when I came to England!

Haha! They call them the same at my school. I only moved here 1.5 years ago so it's taken some adjusting not to use 'mocks'- the kids don't know what that means! They also banished the use of key stages, so i am 'post-16 leader for maths' now which is quite a mouthful . I like the school though.

Where I teach they are called 'Trial exams', instead of 'mocks'. However I hate students referring to them as 'tests'. Arrghh a test is writing 1-10 on a bit of paper and peer marking.

Special needs primary teacher. No way will I be doing this until retirement. Love the kids though, just need to find a non-teaching job...

Our mocks are still called mocks. We have a "first mock", "second mock" and sometimes even a "third mock". That's right, Year 11 do mock exams in November and March before they do the proper exams in May/June. It does show progress (or lack of it), but it stresses the kids out completely (and me as I see my marking piling up around me).