Anyone else desperately counting down the days

[WombatStewForTea]

I've had enough and I'm officially done. Friday and the Easter break can't come quickly enough! My class have been incredibly hard work and I'm not sure I can take another snotty email from SLT or about data reviews. This has been a short term that has felt like it's lasted a life time. Someone pass the gin! Surely I'm not the only one feeling like this?

3 days to go. I'm going to bed now. Utterly knackered. Have 2 sets of GSCE papers and Y13 coursework to mark this weekend, so obviously will get minimum rest!

SIgh...I also recklessly brought set of Y10 books home with lots of marking and 2 test papers answered in it. That one is sliding down my list on priorities to do.

Teaching is very different from frontline NHS. One is not harder than the other necessarily BUT teachers are always “on”. It’s literally a performance and the audience is permanently wanting you to trip up (I’m talking secondary here). That’s hard when you’re not feeling well or have just returned to work after a bereavement. Kids can be cruel when they detect you’re feeling vulnerable.

There is no breathing room, no time to gather your thoughts when it’s literally one class coming into the room right after the other one has just left.

Frontline NHS Staff generally work in teams, they always have colleagues on the end of the phone or down the corridor when they need advice there and then. Teachers are on their own.

Yes I know jt’s shit that a lot of NHS nurses and doctors don’t get proper breaks, but neither do teachers as there is always a break/lunch duty to do or a behavioural issue or pastoral issue to sort out, or someone comes to find you because they are struggling with your subject and they are very upset and feel a failure. You can’t turn those kids away because you want 20 min peace.

I am not even a teacher, just support staff, but I see what teachers go through each day and wouldn’t wish a lot of the shit they put up with on my worst enemy.

I'm going to do private tuition and also have recently started freelance writing and consulting for 2 educational publishers. I should clear the same pay each month but obviously no pension but far less hours and crap to put up with.

4 working days left here (FT primary teacher). Nearly 23 weeks pregnant and shattered! I have loads of work to do in the holidays though.

Absolutely spent! So is everyone else.
After school yesterday, 8 of us collapsed in the staffroom in a big heap and compared truly awful days.

I thought I was the only one constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown and swallowing anti depressants like smarties.

Turns out that more than half of us are similarly medicated.

4 excellent teachers have resigned in the last couple of weeks - all for roles that aren't class teaching.

One is an NQT and it has been really sad. She is absolutely brilliant. All she had ever wanted to be is a teacher, but she has decided it's not for her. She feels swamped and like she can't carve out a life outside the job. She's only young and is worried about the future if she sells her soul and her free time to teaching. She is devastated, but there wasn't much I could say to her. She's right.

Tough times.

I am an NQT (so extra planning time) in a lovely department with lots of support. I think this is as easy as the job gets and I'm absolutely exhausted. I can't wait for next Friday and the start of the holidays.

3 days to go still here but then 3 weeks off (I'm pt in an independent).