Just need to rant...

[Cardiff76]

I teach secondary and have 2 primary age children with additional needs. DH is also working from home. It is intense. We’re both trying the juggle work, whilst homeschooling our own reluctant children and feeling the stress.

I’m the only person in my dept with children. Other teachers seem to be managing their workload plus extra ‘projects’. I’m juggling setting work for my classes and look after (feed/educate) my own children whilst getting eleven billion WhatsApp notifications from my children’s parent groups. Some of the parents are HCW and homeschooling is bottom of their list, and understandably so. I feel bad for ranting about my work when they’re rushed off their feet in busy covid wards. Other parents are stay at home parents and relishing the opportunity to home school and seem to be doing 6 hours a day as if their kids were in school. I feel like I’m failing to parent properly and I’m failing to ‘teach’ properly and I hate the way work has now infringed upon every aspect of home life. There’s no escape!

Arghhhhhh!!!

It’s just all getting to me. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be fine again.

And while I’m really off on one, a very close friend (also a teacher, but EYFS) has told me that she has got nothing to do work wise and is uploading umpteen photos a day of her n her kids sunbathing and drinking wine in the sun!

I know the solution is to take a deep breath, and come off social media! But just needed a place to RANT and get all that off my chest!

Oh yes I hear you!
Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow. Or maybe when this is all over.
I’m struggling to cope too. I’m homeschooling my own two primary aged children (no additional needs though). My husband is out at work all day so I’m doing all of that plus working plus all the house stuff. It’s so difficult isn’t it?
Part of the problem is that I’m so inefficient at the moment because I keep getting interrupted all the time.
Marking children’s work via email takes me a minimum of 30 minutes per child. It’s very difficult to mark work via email. I have to note down errors/ 2 stars and a bloody wish then type it up into an email. It’s like writing a school report for each child every day! 30 minutes x 30 children is God I don’t know how many hours of work per day plus preparing new activities plus the endless additional CPD that’s constantly being sent to me. One parent sent in 37 pieces of work to mark. That will take well over an hour.
Most of my colleagues don’t have kids at primary age - many of them have grown up children. So they keep making suggestions about how we should be doing even more.
And then you read things on Mumsnet about teachers being lazy scumbags. What are we doing all day?
Crying. That’s what I’m doing all day. Well, today anyway.

Same! The notifications from our platform are pretty constant, with a couple of half hours of quiet. Problem is, I can never predict when those half hours are going to be.

I'm mentally knackered.

Oh, and I have a single parent friend, who is struggling big time. She has an autoimmune disease so I can't physically help her because she's terrified of dying. Her son is verbally aggressive constantly and I just don't know how to help her out.

So that's hard too, and I feel guilty I can't give her the headspace she needs me to.

Sorry, I'm spamming your thread.

Oh yes, same here!

I'm in a department of 2 part timers (hahahaha, not at the moment!)

Answering a million emails/teams messages, designing the work, setting the work, checking the work, providing lists to SLT of those not doing the work, praise lists to heads of house, write SoW, complete long term plans.....

I feel like my own kids are totally neglected during the day.

DH working from home but on a lot of video conferencing so it's me. Trying to work, look after X2 primary age kids, run the house.

I have been working my days off because of the workload, but I'm very tempted to stop this and go back to my proper working days.

Right, take a step back a moment. Rethink what your expectations are right now and lower them. For everything! You do not need to respond to every notification when it happens. It is ok to not respond to someone on the exact day or moment they email. It is ok to survive. It's ok to do basic teaching of your own children. None of this is ideal, we are all learning and making do.

You are doing a brilliant job under shit circumstances. Give yourself space to breathe

I think we need to try to be very strict in compartmentalising our time. It’s so hard. I’ve been trying to plan lessons but constantly getting pings from kids with questions. Perhaps try to focus on one thing for a set time and ignore everything else in that time. Do you actually need to be on the parents WhatsApp groups at the mo? Could you turn off notifications and just look once a day?

Thanks everyone. Glad (?!?!) I’m not the only one feeling this way. I love the suggestions about compartmentalizing my time and not needing to respond to every message from students/parents/friends immediately. That is so true. A lot of this pressure is coming from within myself and I think I need to chill out a bit.

Total respect for all you teachers. I have 3 DC, oldest in S1. All the teachers are setting work, DS1 and DS2 both have issues and the teachers are so great with them. I know DS2's teacher has two primary age DCs. DDs has a baby.
DH and I are both working so can't do a huge amount of supervision, but thank you all so much!

Me too! I think of all these people learning new skills in lockdown- I have even less time now than before! The Easter hols were fab!

EYFS teacher here - definitely not sunbathing! Juggling home schooling with constant emails, constantly setting and responding to work from the children in my class, communicating with colleagues, writing long term and medium term plans.

Nix32, I have other friends who are primary and EYFS teachers and they’re working the same as me. It’s just this one particular friend I’m talking about. Tbh I don’t know how she does it/gets away with it because she’s been the same her whole career, and when in different key stages too! I need to ask her where I’m going wrong because she’s living the dream.

Don't do any schooling of your own children. Screen time is fine. Let them play. I'm doing almost nothing with my child - if I'm not working then my brain is randomly not 'letting' me do anything constructive.

This is OK, I'm trying to be gently on myself. It's temporary (sort of!!).