Anyone else fed up of criticism?

[Msgiggles30]

I hate the nature of teaching in that it makes you feel constantly not good enough even though i know criticism is a part of the job and part of improving. However anyone else fed up of consultant type people coming in and pointing out all the negative whilst also giving 'helpful suggestions' that dont really work for your setting?!

I'm only a parent and not a teacher. I am bowled over by how amazingly dedicated, hard working and wonderful my dc's teachers are. They truly are role models as well as mentors and educators.

I'm mortified when parents criticize them as I and many others are in awe of them and value all that they do. I honestly don't know how you teachers do it all. I know I couldn't.

I respect the teachers that support my kids and cannot believe how much criticism they get from many parents

I have noticed over the years how much younger the teachers at my children's primary school have become and how quickly they have moved in to roles not allocated to classes. I think they burn out after 2-3 yrs and that the more experienced teachers get encouraged to move on.

The education system is destroying teachers and pupils

I'm a software engineer rather than a teacher but every piece of work any of us finished had to be presented to a randomly chosen group of 3 engineers in the office who would criticise it or ask for explanations of why something was done a particular way.

Critical appraisal of work is a method of improvement.

Not really a fair comparison though.

Its far more micromanagement about unrelated issues. And producing a ton of work evidencing everything.

So mot just showing a finished product but maybe justifying whyy you spent 12 mins not 10mins. Why you took 3 toilet breaks today and 2 yesterday....

Id have no problem justifying a finished product!!!

Totally. So tired of it. I feel I am never good enough. Our jotters are taken in for monitoring and then we get traffic lighted on certain standards. My HT then gives written feedback underneath and bolds and writes in red action that should be taken. Its shocking to treat another professional like they are a school pupil. Pulled into question about why children aren't achieving. I am from Scotland and know its way worse in England. Its a bloody awful job.

I agree @kneel. The issue is bad managers who micro manage.

I'm getting fed up of being told we have to use our initiative, using said initiative and then getting told that they don't want us to do it like that. They being SLT.
It's as if we have to read the HT's mind all the time and it makes me doubt my own ability.

Hey im in a really similar situation, if you see this can you let me know what happened and how you handled it... im an ECT and feel like im literally being bullied by everyone above and im only 6 months away from completing my ECT 2nd year completely and already feel like giving up.

I've done the same. Small school, 3 classes under 25. We can't afford advisors 😂 and I haven't had an observation or book scrutiny in over a year. There's not really any whole-school initiatives because KS1, LKS2 and UKS2 obviously all do there own type of thing so I'm very much in charge of how I teach. We even have supportive governors. It's another world compared to my old school where we were in a two-weekly scrutiny cycle (after each observation someone was even awarded Star of the Week 🤦🏻‍♀️ And we were criticised for too many children in the behaviour log and also for not dealing with behaviour).

For six months I would put your head down and complete the year. If you hand in your notice at Easter they will leave you alone, and then you have a term to find a new job or different school.

Hi there, I was even considering finding new job for Easter if possible… I’m on a 1 year contract. My head of EYFS said yesterday that the head said something like “I wouldn’t even deploy her as a TA”. Hard to believe head would make such commment behind a teacher she took on for a year.

I'm so sorry that there are so many of us feeling this way.

We've had our 3rd school review this year this week (the joys of a MAT) on top of constant drop ins, book monitoring, subject specific observations and every single one has vague negative feedback which changes with each visit... I'm not sure anyone has had any positive feedback at all.

Staff are being put on informal support plans left, right and centre (including me). Which will result in even more work and observations. Staff are pitted against each other.

I'm absolutely at the end of my tether and they way I feel, I will be resigning by the end of the year, whether I have another job or not. I love teaching, but the stress is unbearable and I can't manage my mental health anymore.

I’m sorry to hear, and at the same time I feel that I’m not alone feeling this way. If you don’t mind me asking what area do you teach in and how long have you been teaching.

Unbelievable that with teachers in such short supply and people leaving the profession in such droves that SLTs are so up their own arses that they don't support teachers- they should be on their bloody knees begging for you to just show up! I just despair of this profession- so glad I am out of it...

I had a classic comment from SLT recently, this was after an absolute shit show of a feedback meeting!

DHT said 'I've done my time in the classroom' 🤣

Well that you may have - but you are so removed from what is actually going on you silly mare!!

One comment upthread about people asking for observer/advisors to demonstrate their work in practice has given me a flashback.

We had a big named (famous, does talks, wrote lots and lots of books) come to do training, then take classes to demonstrate one of their methods with my class, in front of me and some visiting teachers.

But instead of the cherry picked, small number of extremely well behaved pupils, she got my class. A normal class with the normal number of usually well behaved pupils, chatty pupils, pupils with a wide range of needs etc.

The method went okay, but clearly took reminders and actually using behaviour management techniques as we do, daily rather than trotting out the usual activities and them going super smoothly.

The advisor then deigned to take up my lunchtime once the demonstration was over, as she wanted to tell me how 'broken' the dynamics were in my classroom.

One Sunday morning about ten years ago, we went to the council dump. Leaning against one of the bins was what looked like part of a row of old-fashioned cinema seats. Just what I needed, I thought, to put at the back of my classroom to seat the people continually going in and out as they checked up on what I was doing. On occasion, the one leaving would hold open the door for the one arriving.

That teachers are mistrusted to even know their subject was brought home to me in a Mockfsted LO when a lack of evidence of my knowledge base was pointed out in my lesson plan. When I asked what this meant, I was told that I should have either provided photocopies of pages from a relevant textbook or at least included a reference to it. Then the penny dropped! I was not trusted to know my subject!

These self-styled classroom gurus always think in terms of the student and the teacher, glossing over the fact that there are thirty of the former and only one of the latter.

At a staff training session, an outside 'expert' was extolling some assessment techniques that involved having a 5 -10 minute interview with each student each day. When challenged on how we were supposed to find time to do this, the patronising pillock retorted, "If you can't spare a child ten minutes of your time, you're in the wrong job!" He did not seem to have an answer to the fact we had up to 150 students come through our classrooms every day.

I love the so called "experts" who are called in to do staff training train. We had an English advisor once at our school who came into train us when the SPAG test came in. I was a specialist teacher working in a resource base attached to the school and we used to have to teach quite a bit of grammar as part of the speech and language needs of our pupils. The expert was totally incompetent and my colleagues and I wiped the floor with her- she was quite the gibbering wreck by the time we had finished with her! 😂

@KnottyKnitting. I have never known one of these experts to have an answer to the question as to whether the time-consuming twaddle they are peddling has any independent evidence proving it to be effective.

The nadir of this was an 'expert' who was extolling the virtues of De Bono's multicoloured thinking hat bollocks, for two hours in an after-school STS.

Most could not understand what he was talking about and the few that claimed to do so could not agree. How we were expected to explain it to students I did not know, so I did not try.

The worst sort of expert was one who claimed to be showing us how to reduce our workload, who just threw out a stream of slogans and aphorisms.

"You need to work smarter, not harder!"

"How do we do that?"

"You need to work that out for yourselves. That is where the smarter bit comes in (she did not say, 'dumb dumb' but from her tone of voice you could hear that she thought it)."

The conclusion she drew from all this was that we should compile check sheets to reduce paperwork!