Come and vent here!

[Nyon]

Just as the title says - what’s getting you down today / this week / this term?

Mine are:
A HoD who is refusing to help me take on more responsibility in case I somehow erode her role
Boredom with our current schemes of work and no ability to change them
Frustrated team members who are similarly looking for help / guidance and receiving none.

That’s quite cathartic, getting that all out!

Why completely change a new behaviour policy that was working for a less severe one (that no single member of staff agreed with) and within 2 weeks the students are running the show again?!

Pre-mocks Year 11s.
My top set are amazing and have nothing to fear, but they are riddled with anxiety and close to a nervous breakdown.
My bottom set couldn’t care less, have not started revising yet and neither carrot nor stick are having any effect whatsoever, which means that I am close to a nervous breakdown. Kill me now!

My targets. I appreciate that targets have to be aspirational but it would help if they were not also insane. It's not even December yet and i am running lunch interventions 4 days. After school interventions start after Xmas.

And yet a third of my class still won't make it because they areworking at a year behind. It will end up being my fault. Every staff meeting is peppered with " apart from year 6, of course" because normal expectations don't apply here.

What on earth will it be like by May?

Everything
Working my two days off to try and get paperwork completed.
Preparing for a lesson observation that's been sprung upon us.
Filling in ridiculous forms detailing those who are not achieving.
Ticking off things that we need to do for specific children because I don't have a TA to support them.
I could go on....

Had a shit day today and I'm on the verge of giving up

I have additional responsibility in dept - Y11 data so far across the board looks shit and the deputy head is apparently on the way path. HoD is equally as pissed off and now 'we all need to work harder' to improve things. We are sorting details and telling staff next week. I have a low set and nothing, absolutely nothing a are trying to put in place is making any difference. The kids don't care and aren't revising.

So now, it will be even more stressful over the next few months with goodness knows how much extra work for staff

We've had two massively difficult years in dept in terms of staffing etc. And I don't feel like I've got enough energy to do another year of ridiculously high pressure

Honestly the way I feel tonight, if I could afford to, I'd resign and go and work in Asda!

I'm in secondary pastoral and am so utterly fed up with the insane external agency thresholds (CAMHS, Social Care) and of hearing nothing but 'we [the external agency] think the school can manage this'. We are currently managing children with serious MH needs (and the wait list for even low level external counselling is months), feeding/washing uniform etc for children that we can't get seen by a social worker and it's heart breaking.

I bloody LOVE my job, despite its low pay, awful pressure and the onslaught on my emotions because the kids I work with are mostly wonderful children who need a chance and support to make their lives better, the staff body are committed and passionate individuals and SLT are, on the whole, doing the best they can in a world of ever shrinking budgets but week or week I get more overloaded and work more and more outside my jurisprudence then spend a mammoth amount of time writing emails that cover me should anything go wrong (and hoping that it doesn't!)

Sorry, that was more offloading than I realised I needed...

Oh Pumpkin hang on in there - let the deputy head go on the war path. Stick to your guns. You’re doing the best you can.

God it’s all a bit shit at the moment.

Thanks Nyon and sorry others are having a bad time too!

I don't normally feel this bad - have stuck with the dept through the last two years when things have been so difficult and all the way through managed to remain positive but this today as really got to me.

On the plus side my year 8 class were totally amazing today and that really made my day!

I just feel like the onus to do any work has been completely taken away from the pupils over time and they seem to think that their GCSE'S just happen to them and are someone else's responsibility. A colleague asked a child the other day what the teacher's job is, his response? To get me my GCSE's! Says it all!

I am planning a large glass of once DS is in bed and hopefully things will look better tomorrow.

Primary here. Hugely frustrated by dwindling TA support and increasing numbers of pupils with SEND. I love teaching but I spent most of my time simply getting through the day due to two very challenging children in my class and then having to tell other parents about the incidents in which their children were hurt (never mind the fact that the children’s learning has been extremely disrupted).

My department was the subject of a 'mock ofsted' this week. It became clear during the feedback (as if I hadn't known already) that the purpose was to create a narrative for the real ofsted (whose visit is imminent) that middle leaders (me) are shit, but that sLT have realised this and put a plan in place. Bollocks.

Zero appreciation of the efforts of my team; wilful ignoring of the various issues that really are outside our control (staffing being the main one, closely followed by awful behaviour that SLT are clueless/too lazy to address); ignoring of my concerns that I had already identified before they came in, meaning they will be harder to address because our attention will be taken by the bullshit they have created...

Total waste of time. Meanwhile, the school continues to fall apart...

Here's hoping we all have a restful weekend.

yum the lack of support/resources for SEN children is shocking isn't it! Even though I'm secondary, we lost half of our TAs last year and they are not being replaced. Result is that there are children who despertaley need support who aren't getting it - it's awful!

duchess that sounds awful! We are not due Ofsted thankfully but this thing with Y11 is likely to mean that we have similar levels of stress coming. We had it in the run up to our ofsted a couple of years ago and it nearly broke us.

I managed to sleep quite well last night so at least that's something.

Been awake at 5am every morning this week. The stress is horrendous. We’re due inspection literally any day and the pressure and workload is nearly breaking us all. I haven’t had a ‘normal day’ this term, there’s been observations, meetings, book Scrutiny, open morning, extra parents evenings, extra twilight training, extra online CPD training etc etc etcetc. A lot of our processes have changed which haven’t been communicated to us very clearly so trying to organise anything has just been almost impossible. Was awake at 6.15am this Morning. What a lie in

I just want to go to work, teach my lessons, go home.

I am forcing myself to detach more. You need to look after yourself, @Teacherlikemisstrunchball, nobody else will!

duchess - that's so shit! But that's how everybody above you keeps their jobs, even if the school gets RI.
Repeat to yourself every day that you are worth more and you are fab. They are all about covering their arses.

Ditto @ElleMcFearsome - we are holding some really vulnerable kids because they don't meet the threshold for social care. But feel out of our depth and totally lacking the resources to adequately support them. Feels like waiting for the inevitable to happen - one of tonight's jobs is to send an email begging for support for one of these kids.

Other than that - it's the relentless unpredictability and having the deal with everything that is thrown at us plus the backlog. Feeling like I'm letting kids down.

Mocks to mark, 90 (humanities lots of writing) an observation tomorrow am with the head.

I could have written myself the ops departmental issues, dreadful ks3 leading into a new dreadfully dull ks4 meaning I'm not in any way teaching what I signed up to teach. Hod unwilling to change.

Oh and Ks5 being challenging as I dot see them enough and the new a levels are so content heavy that the kids can't do any of the extra stuff needed as they're just getting through the basic of all their subjects.

Planning for the full age range of 11-18 meaning I can't spend time properly jazzing up anything I just need to get basic lessons together (new school this year)

Not having a classroom

Not having any money for copying or glue sticks.

Marking for the benefit of those checking my books and not the students.

I worked most of today and I really miss my 2 & 3 year old.

My husband is fed up with me teaching

Clear theme throughout these messages is that SLT and HoD's are an issue above even the lack of money in schools! Having been out today (sick) I feel completely fed up with the thought of having to go back in and face it all.

I'm sick of the entitled children behaving like it's feeding time at the zoo in all the corridors. Shouting, screaming, wrestling, shoving, barging through doors (broken glass in the same two doors twice last week), jumping up to see if they can slap the ceiling, knocking on the staff toilets, dropping their food all over the floor. Other kids, heads down on phones walking into us and strolling three-abreast expecting staff to jump out of their way. Occasionally SLT stand making soothing noises.
This is a supposedly nice secondary.

Ah, being told that we’re all overpaid as most of us in dept are ups and that we’re not marking/teaching/managing behaviour well enough. We were all at least ‘good’ last year and since the mocksted suddenly slt are shitting it.
Being directed as a staff to take marking home at the weekend. Constant fucking observation via show my homework/student learning portal of our lessons. £150k found from somewhere for new whiteboards (unnecessary) and no fecking library. Or TAs hardly. Or books in general. 🤬

Spending an hour trying and failing to create a happy/harmonious lunchtime environment for one hundred children with only one and half adults for support, then spending my 20 minute lunch break writing behaviour reports.

to you all. I got out of teaching after 8 years (and that was before Ofsted, targets and league tables were invented). I salute you.

Posts on Mumsnet moaning about teachers. The latest gem on here is school trips being described as a 'jolly' for teachers. I am on maternity leave at the moment after 9 years full time, and I'm not missing it!

Being told that the child I have bent over backwards to help is struggling so it's my job to mitigate her mental health problems by effectively tutoring her through her GCSE. She needs proper mental health support. I already give up at least an half an hour a week for one to one help and I simply do not have the time to help her anymore without letting down the 15+ other students who also really need support. I feel desperately sorry for her and I hate having to choose between providing vital support for different students. And I don't even have kids, so have more time 'spare' time than most. I salute those who manage this job and their own family.

Getting that off my chest really helped.

Sorry to hear everyone's woes and sending loads of sympathy to you all; these are all horrible, depressing situations which none of you should have to be in.

I feel grateful to have a relatively OK situation at school at the moment, no major gripes, and some colleagues who are just wonderful and really cheer me up day to day. (Not all colleagues, but a good bunch of them!) I just hope that I do the same for them.

I think that colleagues make all the difference. In a small primary school it's hard when there's a clique and slt form half the staff