Is teaching really that bad?

[letmepeeinpeace]

I'm looking into training to be a TA which may lead to teaching (not sure yet). I'm finding mumsnet does not find teaching a positive career and I'm finding posts saying 'don't do it' 'I teached for a few years and it was hell'. Is it really THAT bad?!

In general, yes. But a lot depends on the age range, subjects and hours you teach. Whether you have kids yourself. What senior managers are like. Attitude of the kids in your class.
Maybe for someone still enthusiastic about teaching and learning, who has time to prepare well and teaches a nice class in their specialist subject, it's a joy. Unfortunately, I haven't come across many situations like that.

I'm presuming TA work is easier but mumsnet (again!) say the pay is shit!

Surely you don’t need mumsnet to tell you what the pay is like!?

I would very much suggest you volunteer as a TA whilst doing your training to get a feel for what working in a classroom is like. I love working with children, but it is one of the more emotionally demanding jobs I've ever done. It's not just about education, but about supporting kids through the tough times they face as they grow older (and with that the behaviour that spills out in the classroom). Teaching staff also have to do more than just teach these days to continually show progress year on year. See the #nobservation thread too to see some of the pressure staff are under.

Politics in the workplace exists everywhere pretty much, as do the long hours, but in other companies you can look forward to bonuses and pay rises and maybe overtime pay, which you don't get in education.

I'm not a teacher but judging by some of the ridiculous comments and complaints that go up on our parent run facebook page I do think I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than deal with wanky parents and their precious children.

I never post on the page at all now for fear of being associated with them!

I think being a TA only offers a partial insight into the life of a teacher, tbh.

If lessons are well planned, then the TA will see a well-planned lesson which should go smoothly, especially if the teacher is really on the ball and gives the TA something specific to do.

A lot of the stress of teaching is unseen - planning and assessment - and some schools have systems which are onerous and unreasonable.

Obviously behaviour is something that TAs see and it may be one of their main roles to mitigate bad behaviour and allow learning to happen.

It's good in a few ways. It's monumentally shit in lots of ways. I'm looking to go back to work full time now dc are older. I've only ever been a teacher (for 20 odd years). I would love love love to find a different job, but nothing else will pay me as well because I've got no experience in any other area and am top of teaching payscale because of long experience in teaching. I feel sick at the thought of full time teaching again tbh.

I adore teaching. But I’m on 0.7 and I’m a nervous wreck.
It’s not sustainable
And certainly not when you’ve got children.
I don’t know what I’ll do next but I’ve got less than a decade of teaching left in me for sure

I'm the same Eolian. I'm frightened of going back after half term. I've worked for most of it anyway!

I realise that although I enjoy the teaching I hate the rest of it. I hate the data. I hate the constant judgement.

I can't think what to do either. I know I'll have to take a pay cut, but the fact that I cry when I think about going back to work tells me I have to. I can't resign this February, but I will resign for the end of the year. Just saying that makes me feel happier. And I've been teaching for decades and thought I always would be. But it's not sustainable now for 95% of people past 5 years.

Good things about teaching (IME):

Holiday (esp if you have young children)
You stand up all day so it's good for your back
You never have a minute so you don't snack all day
You can start early then get home by 4pm (which may suit for DC activities)
Sometimes some students are lovely and appreciative and brilliant

Bad things:
it's so stressful
You can never get the work done
Everyone blames you
You get home at 4pm, take DC to dance class, then spend three hours marking books at 8pm
You spend at least half the holidays marking and planning
The kids behave so badly (note: this varies depending on SLT and other factors - but ultimately this is what did me in)

What ladloo said.

I teach secondary and love it. No job is perfect but I'm in a good school, have a high but not insane workloar and have a good work life balance on the whole.

I have worked in some schools that could have seem me leave teaching too so I have no doubt the horror stories are also true

Good things:
Getting to teach my subject
working with the children
Extra curriculars
Planning new books to teach
Pastoral support
Seeing pupils 'get it'
The majority of parents who are sensible, reasonable and supportive

Bad things:
Being asked (even in good schools) for endless data so often that I'm sure the data becomes
Low level disruption and the time it wastes until you get on top of it (even in good schools)
Dealing with a loud minority of unreasonable abd unsupportive parents who refuse to accept their DC has done anything wrong so they won't be doing a detention / weren't talking /will be wearing trainers etc. (Probably the people who on MN who think going straight to the head abd threatening ofsted over a break detention makes them some kind of warrior for children rather than a total arsehole 99% of the time).
Ridiculous targets culture
Some schools staff are doing more and more and more
The culture in places of 'i want a grade 6 so you have to get me it' / 'my child isn't on target so what are YOU going to do about it?' ... umm... well your child needs to work and do homework and i run a revision session. 'That's not what I'm asking. What intervention can thru do?' Um... none until they work. 'I'm reporting you because YOU are trying ti stop my child passing'.

The idea of eleventy billion priority groups where you have fi document what you're doing. The obvious reality is just teaching your group as well as you can.

Read the thread now, Bobbins has it.

In my new job, nobody spits, swears or throws things at me. And everybody has a pen 😀

I am genuinely glad to see people posting who love teaching tho. Because our children need you, they really do. Please keep loving it. I just couldn't.

Maisy yy I forgot to say I love my subject too, I do miss that.

Yes

I taught for a while before taking time off while the dcs were preschoolers. I then went back to work as an LSA. It was much less stressful as an LSA, plus I had my evenings and lunch breaks to do as I please. I never feel as if I’ve got on top of all the work as a teacher.

Sorry but if you say "teached " instead of "taught" it might be hell.

This.

I did have some lovely experiences. I taught for a while in indie and it was great. The move back to the state sector did me in; it had become so ugly and even worse than when I started. PGCE was awful as well; never have I done a course which had such crap teaching and anti-intellectual bias!

Sorry but if you say "teached " instead of "taught" it might be hell.
It has nothing on some of the gems I hear from trainee English teachers.
I once spent a term trying to explain that children in KS2 know the parts of speech so she really needed to up her game for subject knowledge. Apparently I was being too harsh.

Another had to be told that using dialect phrases and non standard grammar is fine in colloquial speech but we use standard english in the classroom. They didn't get that 'yous' is not a standard english pronoun.

One told a class a comma is a breathing space. The class corrected them and said they are used to separate units like phrases and clauses or to make a list.

80% of trainees in recent years are great. 20% I would be unhappy having any child of mine taught by then.

*them
Fat fingers aren't ideal on yhis thread

MaisyPops you should see some of the TES threads! There are some shockers on there too.

The thing is bobbin I don't get irritated so much by mistakrs on forums etc (not really ventured into TES for many years. It seemed to be starting to turn into a moaning place for disgruntled people who seemed to hate education & think anyone in SLT must be about to bully you out a job).

I know when I type on here it's more typing how you speak rather than perfectly punctuated sentences but that's fairly standard online language (loads of research into it which we use at A level). I also don't get that wound up by non standard grammar out of the classroom. But I do get irritated by people not using standard english in the classroom or other settings where it's expected.

I’m with gin tbh.

I’ve never had any run ins with parents either. One slightly shirty one at a parents evening seven years ago. That’s it!

I have been feeling really flat today, and it's because I've just had half term where I've felt mostly human and I've got to go back to school tomorrow :(

I love the bits with the kids (with certain notable exceptions of particularly bad behaviour). Is everything else that's killing me. The marking is never ending, whenever I think I've caught up I collect another set of books/homework. Then there's reports to write, parents evenings, twilight inset (we only had one day inset in September rather than our usual two so we've had 3 extra twilight's to make up for it), every week this year we've had something that's extra to our normal working week. Add to that teaching a new A level syllabus (anything new takes longer to plan) to a large group (large groups makes marking take longer), and planning/leading a residential trip (with all the associated paperwork and hassle) and I'm utterly, utterly exhausted and don't want to go back, but I have to. I would like to go part time, but the head won't allow that as we've already lost a member of the department that we're not replacing so he wants part timers to increase their hours rather than full timers to decrease hours.

Never mind, I'll go back tomorrow and it'll be fine. We're never more than 8 weeks away from the next holiday, which is the silver lining of the term time cloud.

I think we all dread going back after holidays

It’s never as bad as I think it’s going to be!

Teachers seem to think that all other jobs are somehow less stressful and better paid