Are there any happy teachers out there ???

We’ve no appropriately sized military to defend us,

We have the 3rd, 8th, or 9th most powerful military in the world depending on how you measure it. Hardly 3rd World.

https://fullfact.org/news/does-uk-have-worlds-third-most-powerful-military/

I was working as my union didn’t get enough people to vote.

Same with us- 86% voted to strike, but only 48.5% voted.

I’m a teacher, I probably work a 40hr week on average and it amazes me when I hear these stories of teachers in unpromoted posts working 60 hour weeks. Promoted posts are different, they pay you a chunk more and get a chunk of your life in return.

Teaching is one of those jobs that will fill all the time you let it and I think some of the teachers complaining about long hours are doing exactly that.

Teachers really are their own worst enemies in that regard. I’m union rep in the school and teachers regularly come to me with workload complaints. Often they could reduce the load elsewhere but they’re not willing to. Sometimes they could legitimately say no to some new task if for example it’s voluntary or outwith their remit. Usually they don’t want to do that either. What they want is someone else to fix it for them rather than being proactive about managing their own workload.

I’m not saying this is the whole story but it’s definitely part of the story and a part of the story lots of teachers don’t want to face up to.

Looks like I picked the wrong time to get into teaching… I switched from the private sector in 2017, so now in my 6th year? I’ve beaten the odds and survived this far (also outlived eight education secretaries since I graduated)

It’s odd for me, as I was expecting a pay cut anyway, so the lack of money still feels like that, rather than government cuts. But even after such a short time, I can already feel the cuts in other ways. We no longer get TAs helping the SEND kids (at least not in languages, my subject. They get prioritised for Maths and English).

Budget for trips, books, equipment etc feels extremely tight. Then the big one, staff. We’re losing teachers to retirement etc and can’t replace. I have to teach outside of my subject regularly, which isn’t great.

It’s a weird job, hard to describe to people and hard to train for. Even while you’re training you don’t really get an idea of the pressure and workload.

I’m probably still quite inefficient at planning, but to give you an idea:

27 teaching hours per week, I have about 6 free 50min periods per week. Add CPD, meetings etc and it’s supposed to add up to this figure of x hours per week. But, this assumes you can plan all your 27 classes in 3 50 min periods of “planning time” Which is impossible.

I’m in my room by 7:30, teach until 3, leave school about 4-5. Every evening, plus Sunday, I have to spend 1-3 hours planning. God knows what this is per week, I don’t want to know.

But, I do mostly enjoy it. Grumpy teenagers are still more fun to deal with than Tesco buyers.

Today was weird. I’m in the “couldn’t post me a ballot” union so went to school. It was shut, so I got a ton of marking and planning done. For the first time in ages, I’ve had two evenings off. Woop-Woop

Every evening, plus Sunday, I have to spend 1-3 hours planning. 

Not havinng a dig here but that sounds like a awful lot. Do you not have resources (personal or departmental) you can reuse? I wouldn’t expect someone teaching for 6 years to have ready resources for every lesson but you should surely have a lot of stuff to draw on? My planning for the next day is maybe 20 mins at the end of the previous day. It usually involves checking the resources for the lesson are in order and writing the lesson title in my planner.

It’s a valid point, Spin. 2 different languages to 5 year groups and I’m still coming across topics I’ve not done before, or it’s been ages. Sometimes it’s quicker, I find a lesson from last time and repeat. It’s getting better than my first few years too. It won’t be long before I’m writing scribbles in the planner in the 20mins after school.

Today I found a lesson for tomorrow, and the last time I did it was in lockdown. There’s instructions in it for the students to write things in the chat box of Teams. Ahhh, the joys of remote learning.

It won’t be long before I’m writing scribbles in the planner in the 20mins after school.

A mate of mine is a lecturer and he says in your first year lecturing it takes a week to plan an hours lecture and in your tenth year it takes an hour to plan a weeks lectures. 😀

Same with us- 86% voted to strike, but only 48.5% voted

Yet it took only 52% of 51.9% to take the UK out of the EU.

Grumpy teenagers are still more fun to deal with than Tesco buyers.

The French teacher who put me on the path to becoming French was last seen stacking shelves in Safeway. Seemed reasonable to me. Safeway over a Brummy secondary modern every time. I wonder where he went from there ?

One thing I’ve noted is that the people I know who are ex-teachers have done really well at whatever they’ve followed it up with, I’d love to know how many start successful businesses (I did). Sting was no exception.

Singletrackworld Mark was a physics teacher !

There are exceptions to that rule… Step forward that moron MP Gullis. He was a teacher somewhere.

I genuinely don’t know how to read this but if it’s because they really can’t afford to lose a days pay then things have gone way to far already

Yes this is a real reason – my wife is a teacher of 23 years, part of her schools SLT and has been at the top of her pay scale for years – due to cost of living increases, as a household we cannot afford for her to lose a day’s pay.

She has been in tears due to being unable to strike but is also part of the reason her school was able to remain open; she had 3 classes of years 1-4 in one class today with the help of 1 TA. This is at a school within a desperately deprived area whose parents by & large are not that long out of school themselves and generally see school as free babysitting.

My wife pays out of her own pocket for a breakfasts for her children, buys printer ink & paper herself so that they can have worksheets in the absence of text books, is constantly providing clothing for kids who turn up either half dressed or wearing uniform that’s never seen a washing machine… the list is endless where as a family we fund the welfare of these kids.

She routinely works until 11pm most nights and is up at 6.30am for the next round. I have literally no idea where she finds the energy. She is passionate about her job, loves classroom teaching but despises all the other crap that goes with it. She sees her job as a vocation & can’t see herself working in any other profession but I think it’s killing her.

Edukator
Free Member

Same with us- 86% voted to strike, but only 48.5% voted

Yet it took only 52% of 51.9% to take the UK out of the EU.

Hah! I’m glad you posted that as I was thinking the same bloody thing.

Sorry to go off topic though guys.

@mildred

I really wish the world or at least our government was populated with more people like you and your Mrs.

If that were so I’d like to think that you wouldn’t have to take on such difficult responsibilities.

We opened. But with only 2.5 teachers (the deputy does the 0.5 and then goes to our much bigger partner school , 70 as compared to 40) . So two teachers. Both could have been on strike but felt that the kids were more important. We know our parents! Sadly. Our head was dealing with the other school where staff did walk out.
We have 5 TA’s. Sounds a lot but four are 1:1 with kids that in 3 cases can’t be left and mine 1:1 is in that very mixed class. We have TAs covering dinner duties as the dinner staff left and we can’t find a replacement. This means that 1:1 are being doubled up whilst we have our allocated 30 mins lunch (I had 10).
All five TAs are health hazards as are all teachers, but maybe we’ll infect enough kids to reduce the numbers. One TA though is off with pneumonia as she kept going too long.
Can’t blame the plague on politics but we are over stretched to the point of sillyness . What we need is funding and a policy that doesn’t insist that our kids, say , speak French at 7 years old, learn English Grammar that most adults have never heard of or try to reach a level that isn’t feasible given the material we can work with.

I’m a teacher, I probably work a 40hr week on average and it amazes me when I hear these stories of teachers in unpromoted posts working 60 hour weeks.

Not unusual in many areas of the public sector, MrsMC is a social worker and a 50 hour week is the norm. Partly because she doesn’t want a child to die and partly because if one does she needs to have her back covered for the enquiry.

And that workload pressure/fear of consequences seems endemic in HMRC as well

I loved teaching for the vast majority of my time as an educator, had some brilliant and inspiring kids and in comparison to the “real jobs” I had, teaching was great.

I taught for 11 years having retrained when I was 31 after a decade of sales/marketing and then project management. I left the profession last summer as a Head of House and had also been Head of Department. I left due to an increasing general malaise and the feeling that teaching was becoming  an increasingly Sisyphean task, constantly chasing moving goalposts.

Workload can vary, especially as a teacher of a core subject like English. I also taught media so it was not uncommon for me to have three year 11 classes of about 30 kids. Marking was tolerable until November then mocks would kick in and by the time you’d finished marking them and reported the results and gone through errors with kids you then had a second set of mock in February and the process would start again just in time for the final sprint into exam leave. Meanwhile you’re juggling all the other year groups that you teach as well.

The key bugbear is all the actual reporting of data though, strategies and frameworks that are constantly being tweaked and updated for the academy. There is a constant feeling of not being good enough and heavy scrutiny from Ofsted, Academy heads and even SLT, who are supposed to be on your side but rarely behave so until results day in August.

I’ve had a couple of unpleasant behavioural experiences where the school didn’t exactly back me which was disappointing but not the end of the world as the vast majority of kids were great although encounters with county lines were most unwelcome and increasingly common.

Sadly education has become a band aid catching social service overflow, I’ve dealt with a disturbing amount of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and mental health issues, especially post covid. Working with external authorities like the the NHS to provide evidence for a diagnosis and provide support for those in need was a weekly occurrence.

It doesn’t help when we’ve been shat all over by the press for decades, eroding trust and opinion, pay has consistently lagged behind since I started in in 2011. If results are good we had a good cohort of students, if results were bad then we were shite. A bit of a thankless task all in all and 6 months on I can’t imagine going back.

Sadly education has become a band aid catching social service overflow

I think this is one of the key things that people who don’t talk to teachers miss. The cuts to other services, including in child mental health, has a huge knock on effect on what teachers are left to deal with beyond “teaching”. Worse in some schools/areas than others, because those cuts in services haven’t fallen equally geographically or socially.

TLDR (didn’t read the thread) …
Isn’t it like asking if their are any happy nurses etc ?
Pay is not exactly amazing so it’s more a vocation that then gets interfered with/lack of resources driven by KPI’s they cant influence and they either suck it up becoming increasingly dis-illusioned or leave.

Sadly education has become a band aid catching social service overflow, I’ve dealt with a disturbing amount of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and mental health issues, especially post covid. Working with external authorities like the the NHS to provide evidence for a diagnosis and provide support for those in need was a weekly occurrence

I think it’s what strikes me most. My partner is the head of a large primary and the shit she has to deal with is beyond belief. In her school’s area the social services have been in special measures for 15 years.

She was open and running 3 classes out of 21. The teachers that were in school were in the wrong Union. Headteacher’s Union did two surveys before strike ballot which were both in favour of striking and (IIRC) their ballot was the first in over a hundred years. She was disappointed that they did not meet the threshold.

When she sent letters to parents informing them about the strike action there were no comments in person at the gate either to her or her deputy head but some parents actually spent the time to email their support for the striking teachers which was much appreciated.

^^^^ that all sounds very familiar. It’s not just the kids they have to deal with but the parents too. Society is in dire straits when local Primary Headteachers are really propping up Social Services.
I am sometimes amazed at the extent of their responsibilities. She does her job, like most Headteachers for the opportunity to change kids lives for the better. Without them we really would be screwed!!

Were you aware that some of these may have been somewhere in the job description of a maths teacher before you applied? 😀

What s stupid question. What’s the point you’re trying to make?

I thought it was funny that a teacher sounded surprised that were skills involved in looking after kids, which was fairly obvious if you hadn’t quoted quite so selectively. But, yes, I was going for a cheap laugh – which you seemed to also miss – because the person who posted the original quote sounded quite sensible.

Sadly education has become a band aid catching social service overflow,

I think this is the root cause of most of the issues in the public sector, it’s certainly a massive issue for the police, NHS, probably fire brigade, councils seem to spend most of their resources on the welfare of a small minority.

We need a grown up and difficult discussion about what we do with the small minority of society who take up vast levels of resource. Do we increase funding to the level it needs to be at to work with people who aren’t coping, at the level we like to think we should provide, will money be enough? Are there enough people prepared to work with these challenging people? Does intervention actually work, should resources be more targeted at those that can be helped the most? Would this create an ever growing population of dependant people?

I don’t know what the answers are but expecting the police to understand all the nuances of mental health issues, teachers to cope with dysfunctional families, nurses to treat revolving door patients who can’t or won’t help themselves is not working, is burning out the services providers which is then degrading the service for everyone else which in turn creates a sicker society in every sense and fuels the increase in dependant people.

I think the idealised levels of support government like to say we provide is seriously mismatched with what we are capable of providing as a society at the moment. The gap is getting bigger and a lot of people are being failed. The wider population will not continue to put up with it, the strikes are a key indication of that, whilst money is a driver, working conditions and expectations on employees are regularly being cited as the cause of the issues.

@stumpyjon – i think you’re on the money with that third paragraph. How that element is fixed is beyond me.

I don’t know what the answers are but expecting the police to understand all the nuances of mental health issues

My lad has only been in the police force for a week or 2 and he’s already seen what I told him would be the case. The police in many ways are now the defacto front line mental health service.

I firmly believe we should be judged by how the most vulnerable in society are treated and cared for. No-one is born a burden. If that minority take up large resources then so be it. However, targeted intervention in so many situations can help save life’s *and* money long term.

Trouble is there are wild fires all over the place and not even a plan on the back of a fag packet to put them out.

@Poopscoop I’d broaden that to all the public facing services.
Teaching MH issues in kids and families
Nursing, revolving door patients mass MH issues.
Police yep deal with MH issues, my wife is a DC and half her cases are due to mental health issues (I’d argue all but that’s semantics)
Fire service

I’d broaden that to all the public facing services.
Teaching MH issues in kids and families
Nursing, revolving door patients mass MH issues.
Police yep deal with MH issues, my wife is a DC and half her cases are due to mental health issues (I’d argue all but that’s semantics)
Fire service

It’s becoming a bit of a cliche in the media, isn’t it? This public service can’t cope because you, the public, is using it too much, or using it in the wrong way. Nothing to do with over a decade of everything being run down, it’s YOUR fault. (And, of course, it’s not MY fault, it’s the fault of those unspecified idiots who use it too much! Probably poor people. Or immigrants.)

/sarcasm

Until I left last year (geographical reasons), I was pretty happy.

HOWEVER…
-I taught a “fun” subject (product design/electronics)
-Our department was small but amazing, really supportive
-The schools was pretty nice, with nice kids
-As a DT dept, the focus/pressure was often pointed at other departments
-If we got the results (which we did), we got left to it

I did some napkin maths the first year I taught, when I was getting all my planning and everything in place, and even working a few extra hours a day, I was coming out on top with the holidays. I don’t mind working late in January if it means I get August “off”.

I can certainly see how the work would get away from folk though, and the pressure can be debilitating. I have assorted family, friends and ex-colleagues who ended up off for months at a time with stress related conditions. Finding quick, efficient ways to manage the load worked well for me, but not everyone has that option.

As with everything, working smarter, not harder was a good policy. Spending hours checking simple homework? Stick it on a Google form and it’ll mark itself, you can check and add feedback later. 200 year 7 reports to write? Invest the time in making a spreadsheet that will generate the reports for you, likelihood is you’ll just be copy/pasting stock phrases anyway, so get Excel to do it. Etc.

Let’s not talk about OFSTED though, eh.

One of the reasons I enjoy teaching more than speaking to Tesco happened today:

Year 7 – in an exam. One of the “spikier” student is obviously peeking at another students work so I start off with my most non-confrontational lines “I’d like to find out what you know, not her. Why don’t you grab a seat up the front here so you can concentrate?”

She refuses. I admit it wasn’t really a request. Move, thanks. Refused, I suggested getting a detention over swapping seats seems like a terrible waste of time. Finally, she moves, and on the way says to me:

“Don’t even look at me, you disgust me!”

I sometimes think I should go back on twitter, just to create an account of “stupid shit students said to me today”

Been a teacher for over 11 years. It’s OK if you have the following:

Up to date equipment.
Enough equipment for everyone.
Big enough rooms.
A space to do admin work thats not overcrowded.
Supportive management that listen to you.
A reasonable timetable.

But, a realistic scenario is: You don’t have the correct equipment, and management don’t think you need the equipment you ask for, even when they don’t know the subject you teach. You are asked to teach 25 students in a room designed for 15. Then half the students don’t show up. Management blame you. Parents blame you. Then students show up after being off for a month and parents expect you to put in extra hours to “catch them up”. Then it’s kinda hard.

Though now I just do my best and if I get fired I’ll just ride my bike more.

I know a few teachers (mostly secondary) and not one of the secondary school ones are happy – for pretty much the reasons stated above. Completely understandable in my opinion.

It’s pretty much the same theme from all of them – love the “teaching” bit but dislike all the bureaucracy and ridiculous hours and expectations that comes with it. Only thing that keeps them in the profession… yep… the holidays. And for that reason – they feel trapped in the job. Again, completely understandable.

As a parent myself, I want my kids to get a decent education so they can survive life.

Many teachers I’ve talked to say they are working ridiculous hours and not having a life themselves. If I have time for my kids, then they should have

Why are they striking instead of doing something different? Like working to the 48hrs rule, on site, clocking on and off and demonstrating via time/motion that there simply isn’t enough time to do their job as it’s grown to be, thereby forcing the system to change to accommodate them, and attract further staff?

Why are they striking instead of doing something different? Like working to the 48hrs rule, on site, clocking on and off and demonstrating via time/motion that there simply isn’t enough time to do their job as it’s grown to be, thereby forcing the system to change to accommodate them, and attract further staff?

Presumably, their union has decided what they think is most likely to get the effect they want quickly.  Teachers striking has quite a ripple effect which means politicians feel it directly, whereas teachers not doing extra stuff takes a long time before it has an impact.  e.g. one of the first things teachers cut in the 1980s strikes was out of school clubs and activities.  Thats probably still having a long term impact today with obesity etc but at that moment in time I am sure was a “so what” from government – lets face it if you are earning £80k a year in parliament your own kids are able to access clubs and activities privately even if the teachers stop.

Time and motion studies!  Well I don’t think anyone is disputing the workload.  I’m sure studies have been done.  I’m also sure that there are some intelligent efficiencies to be made – but the way schools are organised arguing with local management about how work gets done is different from arguing with the people who fund it locally and nationally.

Many teachers I’ve talked to say they are working ridiculous hours and not having a life themselves. If I have time for my kids, then they should have

That “should” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. 🙂

Why are they striking instead of doing something different? Like working to the 48hrs rule, on site, clocking on and off and demonstrating via time/motion that there simply isn’t enough time to do their job as it’s grown to be, thereby forcing the system to change to accommodate them, and attract further staff?

It’s insane that people would argue for a long-term reduction in quality of service (and the knock-on this would have in terms of quality of education) over a one day strike.

Any teachers on here willing to admit they voted tory in the last GE?

Yep. Damn sight better bet than the thick headed hypocrits as an alternative.
However I do consider all polittians as parasites. We need to be run by professionals not glory seeking amateurs or those who think that their own little prejudice is important. By the time politics gets past parish level we are into ego trips not care.

No chance. Keeping the faith that we’ll manage to break out of this broken two party bullshit that’s **** our country over. If that means my vote is wasted by voting for an “alternative” then so be it

Less happy today. Horrible news about a colleague who was already in a horrible situation.