If you left teaching what did you go on to?

[Snowflakewater]

I had a really tough day today and parTly just need to vent and partly need some advice.

I think at the place I’m in now I really don’t know if I can carry on teaching, I’m losing passion for it on a daily basis. The good kids are amazing but the bad are awful. I got told “spotty features” and another shouted something so bad I just wanted to burst into tears another told me “I’m an arrogant so and so” for them flinging a chair across a room, I learnt not to let much get to me but this just did.

Since I’ve been back after summer I’ve lost the passion to teach, I just feel like I’m on auto pilot, I work with others who just seem to know jr all and one up each other in meetings. The kids simply do not listen and it just feels exhausting.

Part of me wants to stay or maybe this school just isn’t right, but then another part of me thinks, maybe I’m just not a good teacher and actually it might be time to find something that I do genuinely feel more passion for.

How is everyone else getting on?

Where did I say I ignore it? I said I’m firmer than the other teachers there because I choose not to tolerate certain things and find it hard to ignore quite obviously dangerous, rude or bullying behaviours

You said Of course I’ll keep working on what I needs fixing for now I’m trying to ignore the rudeness from kids for now and just pretend I didn’t hear it.

Can I just make it clear that I do not tolerate things being flung around the classroom. I follow the behaviour policy even though it’s very weak. At no point did I say that I allow them to do jr and ignore it.

norhing happens to the students they get put back into my class.

My heart isn’t in the career at the moment. So regardless of trying x,y,z I don’t think it’s going to be something I want to continue until retirement. There’s nothing wrong with choosing something I might feel more suited to.

Honestly, I think you should give notice now and find something else. This isn't for you.

I have bills to pay so I can’t just hand my notice in with nothing to do after but that’s exactly what I’m planning to do after my ECT is complete.

In reference to this. I ignore the low level disruption tactically for example making a silly noise after I’ve said stop. Then I’ll give students the look without saying a word and 9 times out of 10 it’ll stop. I do NOT ignore chairs flung across a room. I may hate the career but I’m not stupid.

So you don't think it's anything to do with you then? Nothing you could improve about your lesson planning that might improve behaviour, you're following the behaviour policy perfectly, you're calling home and building relationships with parents, you're talking to form tutors etc? Sorry all of those ideas I shared are all things you're already doing.

It's interesting that you think that you are stricter than other teachers in your school and tolerate less despite the fact that behaviour sounds pretty appalling in your lessons. Do you think that's a general theme in schools - that teachers who don't tolerate poor behaviour get more poor behaviour in return? It's not a pattern I've seen personally.

Honestly if you can't self reflect you can't teach. That's just the way it is. It requires a LOT of ability to reflect on yourself, your practice, the effectiveness of your lesson planning etc and if you can't or won't do that then it isn't going to work.

More important than can you bear to do this till you retire is the question is it fair to the kids to do this if you're not willing to do the work it takes to turn your practice around. It doesn't sound as if you're willing to do the reflection and make the changes necessary to improve the situation in your classroom so the fairest thing to the kids and the school would be to hand your notice in to be honest. It's like feedback and ideas just bounce off of you as if you cannot or will not reflect on what you could do differently and you are just a victim of circumstance you have no control over. You seem incredibly judgemental of your colleagues in every school you've been in rather than trying to learn from them to improve what according to your own postings sounds like fairly disastrous classroom practice and terrible relationships with the student body.

I've had kids pissed off with me because I'm the one person who won't put up with x or the only person who makes them do y according to them (likely not the truth) and I've had difficult relationships that have taken a lot of work to turn around and the occasional one I've never been able to but I've never been called names or had chairs flung or the level of chaos that you regularly describe as standard in the schools you've been in - 3 so far I believe. Something is going seriously wrong in your practice - it can't all be everyone else's fault snowflake and it won't be because you went to private school or are too nice or too strict. The very first thing you need to do if you have any desire to turn this around is look at your planning honestly and see where your lessons are just not working and why.

There is loads of expertise around you at work and on here but you have to be open to self reflection and acknowledging that what you are doing is not working.

This with bells on.

Also, I was homeschooled, so even less experience of bad classroom behaviour than you before I started teaching, and have taught in some real inner city schools in dodgy postcodes. Yet I have never, in 10 years of teaching, had a student throw furniture in my room.

And you are seeing this a wrong. For most people, work isn't their passion, work is there so they can afford their passions. Teaching isn't like the TeachFirst adverts where you are imparting knowledge to keen young people who come from awful households and you magically turn them around with no fight back.

this Isn’t me deflecting however my hod has also had a table flipped in her class within the last week. I understand you say you’ve never experienced it but it does happen just like assault in the classroom towards a member of staff, you may not have experienced it but it definitely does happen.

Nefarious wasn't saying it never happens in any teacher's classroom, but that it's never happened in her classroom.

Yes, I gathered that.

So why does it happen in your classroom? What triggers it, what have you tried to prevent it, who has been in to observe you to support you, what do these same pupils do in your colleagues’ classrooms so which of their tactics can you learn from?

You are, as you acknowledge, a weak teacher currently- almost certainly in terms of content and lesson design as well as behaviour management because the teo are so inextricably linked. Yes, you can leave - half term is coming so resignation for leaving at Christmas is feasible. Or you can have the humility and tenacity to learn to be better, which is the useful and practical form that passion for teaching should take.

Where are your mentor and induction lead in all this? Where's the support from the AB?

I honestly think if it’s happening to my Hod too that you can’t assume that I’m the only one having the issue. I have said I am willing to learn I’m going to observe others but the student that threw the chair with me has done the same with my hod there is safeguarding issues surrounding the child and SEN that plays into the aggression they have and they’re a managed move. I plan my lessons and ask my hod before I teach some of them, although he hasn’t got the time to look at every single lesson but they follow a similar format and he’s happy and does regular drop ins and gives me feedback.

I feel like there’s this immediate assumption that I’m not doing things to seek support. I am, however when your PPA is consumed by cover and you’re not having regular mentor meetings and the organisation of the school as a whole is not great, I haven’t got enough hours in the day to chase people who I’ve already flagged the issues with. And yes I’ve also spoken to my union about it.

Im doing my best, I’m doing what I can. I’m weak right now because I can’t tolerate the behaviour. Not because I don’t ensure my lessons are planned to a high standard.

That’s been my question exactly for the last 4 weeks of term. They don’t do anything.

What did your union say?

Your PPA cannot be used for cover.
You should be having fortnightly mentor meetings in year 2.

If you've spoken to your union, what have they done? Because I'm a union rep as well as the induction lead and if this is true, then they should already have intervened.

They were shocked I’ve not had a single meeting. It’s a tiny department there’s only 5 of us so we have regular meetings weekly as a team and I mentioned that I think my mentor assumed that was enough. I told them I tried ti flag it on numerous occasions and the union said that I need to send an email and copy my rep in, which I have. So I’m waiting on my mentor to give me an agreed date for a fortnightly meeting. However as expected I heard nothing.

And having heard nothing, you've spoken again to your union as well as to the induction tutor and the AB.

Either you've been incredibly unlucky in every school you've ever been in, or you're actually testing out plot holes in the novel you're writing about shit schools.

No I’ve emailed my induction tutor and booked a meeting with them and I’m going to go from there and highlight days me and my mentor are free so we can put forewarn dates to meet once every fortnight.

And you are seeing this a wrong. For most people, work isn't their passion, work is there so they can afford their passions. Teaching isn't like the TeachFirst adverts where you are imparting knowledge to keen young people who come from awful households and you magically turn them around with no fight back.

Couldn't agree more @TheNefariousOrange , and it's what I was trying to say, albeit clumsily, upthread. I have friends in various professions (law, medicine, dentistry) and work isn't their passion for a single one. Work simply pays for their passions, be it cycling, fishing, following a football team, or whatever.

So you have miraculously had three terrible schools in a row that don't follow any rules for students, then ects or as I recall safeguarding because you'd had zero safeguarding training yet many of us on here, some of whom have been qualified over 20 years, have never ever worked in a school that operates as you say the three you have been in do.

It seems incredibly unlikely.

You're now focusing on one student who flipped a table for two different teachers but you're consistently talking about terrible classroom behaviour, verbal abuse from students and kids who won't listen etc - you've put all of this out repeatedly on here and people don't just forget because you get posts deleted when people ask questions you don't like.

What happened with your reporting your school to ofsted for not doing safeguarding training by the way?

Frankly my passion is staying in bed watching netflix these days and surviving till half term without either a breakdown from workload or ending up saying or doing something outrageous to the next person who comes up with a 'little thing' we could 'just quickly' do that actually would take bloody hours and has no benefit at all.

If all of us who weren't feeling passionate all the time quit schools would close and I'm fairly sure no bins would be collected either.

Than that’s peoples own choice. Don’t fixate on the on the single word of passion. The point is I don’t see myself doing this in 30 years and if I’m not happy now why bother putting myself through a backup career that was never my first choice. I want to explore other options. It’s not illegal for me to want to do that. But thanks for offering words of advice.

Let’s also not act as though the retention rate is great for teachers either, there’s a very obvious reason for the high turnover.