Parent teachers

[Mrkipplingslice]

How are you doing this?! I came back from mat leave after Easter and honestly don’t think I have the mental and physical stamina for the job any more. I also exam marked this year but didn’t finish my quota and didn’t get on with my team leader which hasn’t helped. But I just feel rubbish about the profession. I’m organised and capable but by Friday I felt run into the ground and like I had no time or energy. I still have quite a bit to do over summer and just looking at the calendar for Autumn term, which is full of parents evenings, open evenings, trips etc makes me want to cry.

You're exhausted after maternity and then coming back at juggling child care and being back at school! It's normal anyway to feel exhausted at the end of the year but yours has been particularly busy! Spend the summer relaxing and enjoying being with your little one again! The last week of the holiday batch cook some meals to freeze and make it easier in the first weeks of the new term. Iron clothes etc! Try to get all the little jobs done over the summer so

you don't have to worry about them I. September. Above all relax and enjoy the long summer break things will feel easier come September don't stress about it now while you are exhausted !!

I think that you may need to let the exam marking go for a few years. I marked this year (family grown up) and was absolutely knackered by it, so I can't imagine how tough it must have been for you.

My advice to you would be to cut out anything non-essential at school. Open Evenings and Parents' Evenings are non-negotiable, of course, but is it absolutely vital that you go on the school trips? I made a conscious decision this year that I wasn't running a theatre trip; I decided that I wasn't willing to teach all week, then give up my Friday evening to take a bunch of KS4 pupils to an unattractive city an hour away to see An Inspector Calls. Some parents expressed disappointment, but I just told them I was away that weekend, pointed them in the direction of the production website and suggested that they take their DC themselves. Nobody did, of course, but they were all perfectly happy for me to give up my own free time to do so 🙄

Don't let management emotionally blackmail you about extras being for the good of the pupils. There will always be pupils, but your DC won't always be small. Focus on the teaching and the marking; that's quite enough, and don't volunteer for anything else.

Thank you both - solid advice. Definitely no more exam marking for a while! I’m hoping my anxiousness will die down as summer goes on and I’ll do my best to feel prepared and stand my ground come September.

I think coming back after maternity leave tends to change teachers. I was quite involved and up for most things before becoming a mum. I was quite happy to do trips and extra hours and whatever. I was phase leader and easily did about 70 hours a week.
I went back 0.8 after mat leave. Year 6. It probably would have been OK but I didn't get on with our deputy head and constantly felt under scrutiny. It just didn't work and I felt like I was doing a shit job at work as well as being a shit mum.
In the end, I walked out of the job and changed schools. We moved abroad and I initially taught at a Montessori school. It was so laid back. No more pressure and it really helped me to get my love for the job back. At the same time, I also learnt that teaching is a job. It's not a calling or a vocation that has the right to drain you mentally and emotionally. It's a job.

I moved to an independent mainstream school (still abroad, though) a little while after and went back up to full time. I'm phase leader again but I work my 40 hours a week. Nothing more. I get to have a proper work/life balance. Some things don't get done or they get done later. The world won't end. I've learnt to prioritise better and have started to delegate much more. I don't have to do everything.
Funny enough, my classes here make much better progress than they did in the UK. Their teachers are, on the whole, a lot less stressed.

I agree about the exam marking. My son is 4 (5 in September) and I'm a solo parent. I attempt to mark exams last year with a rubbish team leader. After one week and 10 papers I gave up. I managed 250 this year and just received an email asking me to continue marking for another week. I replied with no! On top of that my suggestion is to lower your expectations of yourself when back in school in September. To survive the year you will need to have a decent amount of sleep and rest. I stay in school until 5.30pm then refuse to work in the evenings unless absolutely essential. I also only work on Sundays for an hour in the morning while my son plays then after he is in bed. I went back from maternity and tried to do everything. My son then changed his sleep pattern and has never improved so if I don't look after myself I end up unwell.

You need to be ruthless with your time management - no more optional extras like trips, cut corners where you can, don’t re-invent the wheel. Giving 80% instead of 120 will not be noticed by others, but it will make a massive difference to you.

Thanks all. I’m secondary English with TLR. I was toying with giving up the TLR but I need the money! We are also teaching three brand new texts this year which I’m stressed about. I’ve read two already but there’s reading them then there’s becoming comfortable enough to teach them well at GCSE/A level! Trips and additional faff need to be opted out of as much as possible, I agree.
@Minimochi that sounds so lovely. I’d love to find a school in the UK with a similar outlook on work/life balance.

It does get easier. I found the years teaching when I has a 1-2 year old harder than when I had a 2-3 year old, both times. I also do loads less and take the view that a school is lucky to have me, without me doing ridiculous hours! The younger teachers think I'm a good example of being strict with my time, but it worries me a little that they see me as the exception rather than the rule.

That sounds pretty tough regardless of everything else. Does that mean you need to redo a lot of planning as well? Will the planning be split within the department?

Hello again @Mrkipplingslice . You will have gathered that I am secondary English too, so here are some things I have used over the last few years to help manage the marking:

1. Make the kids proof read their work, using a 30cm ruler so that they can't skip any lines. Every so often, swap so they are proof reading someone else's work. They hate proof reading, but it's a good habit to get into and means you can focus on content more than careless errors.
2. Get them to write essays in pairs from time to time if you have a lot of marking on elsewhere. It halves the load, and nobody has complained yet.
3. Self / peer assessment doesn't really work with English because the mark schemes are so difficult for them to understand. I get the pupils to highlight specific areas of their work, depending on the question answered. So, with a poetry essay I would get them to highlight technical terms in one colour, and comparing words or phrases in another. In a speech / article, I'd get them to highlight the topic sentences. A particular bugbear of mine is their stubborn refusal reluctance to use sentences of different lengths and types, so that's also an area they often highlight. It helps them to see what they have / haven't done straight away, and makes your marking a bit quicker.

Incidentally, I agree with PP that having to take on three new texts all at once is unfortunate. I always find that I have to teach a text once before I really know what I'm doing with it, no matter how well I think I have prepared in advance. What are the texts? Can you get SOW from the TES / Teachit? Are colleagues sharing this load?

Thanks @Quoria nice to know it does get easier! I think when I sleep better I’ll feel more positively too.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl all new plans unfortunately. We split SOL planning but the policy is to all make our own ppts.

@AttractiveAlpaca great tips, thank you! 100% agree on the peer assessment! Two texts are older so can definitely nab ideas from TES etc but one is Leave Taking so brand new to the AQA spec which will be a challenge.

Does this mean everyone in the department will be making the same powerpoints, say, seven times over. That seems insane! Obviously you want to tweak things for you class, but everyone making the same things from scratch seems like a waste of labour- particularly when you've just changed your texts.

Is there any chance to push back on this collectively?

@Postapocalypticcowgirl ridiculous isn’t it?! Everyone is weirdly possessive of their resources. It’s always been that way since I joined the school six years ago. It wasn’t too awful when I knew I could reuse a lot but now we’ve changed so many texts it seems even sillier not to share. HoD is very keen on individualised approaches for class/teacher and adaptive resourcing and made that clear when questioned on group planning before.

It is absolutely bonkers not to share the planning! I teach MFL and I would not go back to individual planning. With shared planning you still need to tweak for your class, but the bulk of the work has been done and the gained time through shared planning is a godsend. Overall the quality of planning increases as well, I think, as you plan one course / year properly rather than multiple courses under time pressure.
Can you not go rogue and find a planning buddy?