Am I too old??... 49!

[Brighteststars]

Am I wasting my time / too old to start a degree at 49 years of age to become a primary teacher (qts)... 53 when qualified!!!... help!!... your thoughts please!

Rude, OP.

At best, at this point, you are coming across as a rather naive dilettante. At worst as quite a goady fucker.

Give it a go by all means! You might be rather good & love it (I do, & I'm not an obvious teacher type - drifted into it as a stopgap 20 years ago & found I was good at it), & if not, you'll be a warm body.

In the current climate recruitment & retention crisis, that's enough to keep you gainfully occupied until you move on.

I'm beginning to wonder if you're posting from a very different perspective from that of many other posters. Many teachers are trapped later in their career as they can't afford to quit without significant financial implications. I note you have another thread asking people if they'd work if they didn't need the money. Perhaps this in some way explains your seemingly rose tinted view of teaching.

How about looking at something like speech & language therapy? Shorter training and really satisfying. The SALT that comes to our school loves her job - has a busy, varied week, sees real progress and although she has lots of paperwork she's not drowning.

I’d say there’s no need for rudeness but I think that may be lost on you. You say you are genuinely interested in training to be a teacher. You think it would be a nice job for a mum. You’re shocked when you’re told that teaching is tough, tougher than it has ever been. You dismiss the opinions of experienced teachers as ‘too much negativity’. And there’s no need for sarcasm? I wasn’t being sarcastic. You have as much experience of schools and teaching as the current education secretary, and you are exactly the sort of deluded trainee that the DfE (or whatever acronym they are using this week) are hoping for.

Today 22:51 PurpleCrowbar

Rude, OP.

At best, at this point, you are coming across as a rather naive dilettante. At worst as quite a goady fucker.

Give it a go by all means! You might be rather good & love it (I do, & I'm not an obvious teacher type - drifted into it as a stopgap 20 years ago & found I was good at it), & if not, you'll be a warm body.

....condescending kn#b

I suspect you might struggle with the degree of scrutiny that goes with the job, if you think I'm being a condescending knob. I didn't intend to be; I genuinely think you aren't listening & would find teacher training not quite what you seem to expect.

You'd encounter an awful lot of condescending knobs on a daily basis, I'm afraid. They'd be expecting you to evidence what you were doing, how effective it was, & why nonetheless a member of your class whom you hadn't seen since Christmas hadn't made expected progress.

& they'd be doing this in a condescending & knobbish fashion, I promise you.

If you aren't cut out for sucking that up, again, you might struggle.

I'm a teaching assistant, work full time, cover classes throughout a range of year groups. I love my job, love working with the children.

I am starting a degree in September, which will open lots of doors to me, but I don't think I will qualify as a teacher. Purely on the basis of seeing my colleagues coping with the ever changing goalposts, paperwork, meetings, blah blah, and that is before planning, marking, training etc.

I don't know if you gave experience of working in a school, if you haven't I suggest you volunteer, go in with an open mind, it's not all roses.

Good luck with it if you do choose to apply.

It might work out brilliantly for you for all I know!

It's probably a lot of investment in training time for something that really might not be for you; but it's your time & money.

Teachers on this thread have explained why they'd hesitate to unconditionally recommend it & why you seem a bit uninformed.

At this point I would say go for it. Find out for yourself. & if it works out, great.

My favourite is always when people talk about 'their friend who left the City and loves teaching because they are used to hard work.' I've known a couple of them - one lasted 5 years, the other 7 or 8. Funnily enough being absolutely bombarded all day was easier to cope with when you were in your childless twenties getting very well paid and could spend your leisure time in clubs or on someone's yacht in the Caribbean, rather than marking and planning. It also meant they had the financial security to walk away. I've worked in other sectors too. All jobs are work no matter how much you love them but teaching is uniquely draining when you're doing it well. I still have days when I love it but I've cried in the car too many nights this year. I wish you luck OP.

Brighteststars You do sound quite naive about the realities of teaching, so it might be a good idea to spend a week or two shadowing a teacher in a primary school (you will need this for a successful application, anyway).

I don't know if it's the same for B.Ed, but at my recent PGCE interviews, I was asked about time management and resilience- the admissions tutors want to know you can deal with stress, because it is a stressful job at the training is stressful and demanding too. They want to recruit people who have at least some idea of what they are getting into, as they do not want people dropping out from the course!

Also, I really do think you should research the reality of being on a B.Ed degree- as well as the reality of teaching- and see if it would really fit in with your lifestyle. In some ways, it is more inflexible than being a teacher, as you do not get to pick your placement schools, you may have three different placement schools in one year (with potentially long commutes). It is a course with a heavy workload (although not as intense as a one year PGCE). In some ways, the course may be less family friendly than actually teaching as you will have less autonomy over how you manage your time on placements and you won't have the option to say, switch to part time, if it is too demanding on your time.

I'm not saying this to put you off, but this will be your reality for three years before you get to the actual teaching part- so it would be a good idea to know what you are letting yourself in for!

Thanks for the advice. Yes I've had some in depth chats with the course advisors at my local uni. It is absolutely a huge commitment, and I'm really excited about it all. Love a challenge!! 😀

Good luck! Have your local uni confirmed they still have spaces available?

Flame, and my personal favourite is people who think that if you work in the city you earning loads and spending your leisure time in the caribbean🙄That is the problem with many teachers isn't it? Noone else works hard, long hours, with impossible targets and for not great pay. Ridiculous.

That is the problem with many teachers isn't it? Noone else works hard, long hours, with impossible targets and for not great pay. Ridiculous.
Except nobody has said that.
I love how often that line gets trotted out on school threads.
It's almost like you can't express negatives in Job A without it being taken as some silly generalisation like 'People who do job A think their job is the worst most stressful job in the whole world. Job A people think nobody else works as hard as them'

Reality - People who do Job A are just sharing their experience of Job A (whilst people who have no actual experience of Job A try to argue that 'I don't like chips' is the same as 'chips are the worst food on the entire planet')

@Brighteststars good for you! I'm 32 and have been teaching since I was 23. It is bloody hard work, don't get me wrong, and term time is ridiculously intense, especially with a big class (I've got 31 Year 5s this year). I'm writing this message in bed, as I'm shattered by 9pm most evenings! It isn't very family friendly if you're full time, as work life balance is poor overall, but if you are lucky enough to work in a supportive school like mine with great kids, it's not too bad a job. The actual teaching side of things is great, and I still really enjoy it. In an ideal world, I'd be part time so I wouldn't have to do work at the weekend, but we'll see what my options are after I have my baby! Good luck with it all!

It must vary alot. I pick GS up from school between 3 and 5 times a week, depends on mum's shifts. I had to go in one day to help him hunt for a lost pe kit and I mentioned to him that I didn't see his teacher. He told me she leaves 5 minutes early every day as she has to pick her own children up from school so the TA is in charge of the end of day routines. My neighbour looks after her GS while her daughter teaches, she never seems to have him past 4.30 pm, although sometimes it is the dad that picks him up.

I don't doubt they do stuff at home but clearly being able to leave work 5 minutes early every day to pick your kids up is family friendly.

That is a very unusual situation. Leaving five minutes before the kids do? I’ve never heard of that in twenty years of teaching. She must be a brilliant teacher if they let her have do that.
Rest assured she will not be getting paid for that arrangement.
I bet the teacher who picks up her kid at 4.30 is struggling to cope with her workload, but if you have kids you don’t have any choice. As usual, it falls to the mum to drop off and pick up. Dad’s job is far too ‘important ‘. The earliest I can get to work is 8 - I used to get in before 7.30. I have to leave at five to pick my kids up. It would be far less stressful if I could stay until 6 when school closes, which is what my colleagues without children do.

Really it’s funny. So many people think teaching is easy and that we’re all slackers.
I wonder why so many people are leaving teaching? It must be because it’s not enough of a challenge.
I had a wonderful parents evening the other night though. The last dad of the evening made a sort of speech thanking me for all my hard work and praising teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. to say that what we do is so worthwhile. It means everything to hear that.

Nuffaluff, she is a brilliant teacher and everyone loves her. She has got more out of my GS since September than the previous 6 years at school. I would gladly cut her slack if I was making the decisions so I have no issue with her going just thought it was an interesting contrast.

With my neighbours GC I am sure the mum does work at home and goes in early, in this particular case it is dad who drops him off so I think they balance it up with her probably doing an early start (obviously I don't know but it seems likely) and pick up and him doing the opposite. Helps that he is self employed.

Both of these are village schools with 30 children in each year, don't know if that makes it easier or harder but just for clarity.

I'm a 57 year old teacher and I'm exhausted. I arrive early and leave late - the only way I can have any chance of keeping up with the ridiculous expectations! I qualified at 50 so I'm still relatively cheap and have not yet merited the usual attentions from SLT that would feature at my age. I take teaching very seriously and believe that anything less is unacceptable but ...I do wonder how much longer I will be able to cope. As an older teacher and single I feel trapped in job that owing to the 'reforms' of the last 10 years I can no longer respect.

Everyone probably has ten years before it really starts to bite, so I’d say the OP will have entered and left before she reaches that point.
The attitude that if we all had enough enthusiasm and just showed our love for our work more that it would all be worth while - well plenty of movies have made it seem that way, and I think the OP sees herself as a bit of an Erin Gruwell.
Good luck to her. Let’s hope she’s a bit nicer to staff in her first school than she’s been to posters on here.

Thanks so much for all your encouraging advice. Some great positive words.
ROMANRITA - huge thanks 👍

MISTRESSGIGI..!! 10 years out of it.. fabulous, that would be absolutely perfect.
I guess 'enthusiasm and love for work' is subjective. We all, as individuals, have totally different factors influencing our own personal outlook and attitude towards work and life in general (glass half empty / full kind of thing). Everyone deals with stress and challenges differently so I don't know if it's like the movies! I would think that enthusiasm could make the job more enjoyable? Does enthusiasm affect how children learn / pay attention? I'd be keen to know. I've no idea but you will be the expert. No clue who Erin thingybob is... sounds interesting though. As for staff in staff room, I'm sure they're all mature, lovely people all supporting one another, some lovely, positive ones on here. 😀

Tone down the attitude a bit if you want to have friends in the staff room though. If you were really god's gift to teaching you'd have done it as your first career. You are very condescending to those who have been there and got the t-shirt - maybe we were all like that once it's hard to say! Without enthusiasm none of us would get up and go through the gates in the morning. That's not to say that we haven't tempered that with some realism and experience.
But you'll find it all out soon enough, there's no substitute for doing it yourself!