The Student Room Group

Argument about how hard teachers work

Swing
I want to be a primary school teacher which means short hours which means plenty of time with the children.



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Have you ever MET a teacher? Do you KNOW any teachers?!?!?!?! Okay maybe you only work with kids until 3:30 but try marking and less plans until midnight!!!!!

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Bekaboo
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Have you ever MET a teacher? Do you KNOW any teachers?!?!?!?! Okay maybe you only work with kids until 3:30 but try marking and less plans until midnight!!!!!


*Watches my two teacher parents watching TV*

Hmmmmm, ok.
Reply 2
The hoildays are definitely a perk - guaranteed time off for christmas, easter and the summer.
Reply 3
Swing
*Watches my two teacher parents watching TV*

Hmmmmm, ok.

*talking to my teacher mum on MSN*
blissy
*talking to my teacher mum on MSN*


lol! Staying up 'till midnight working. What a load of crap. :tongue:
Reply 5
Swing
lol! Staying up 'till midnight working. What a load of crap. :tongue:


Well let's take a look at MY two teacher parents who DO stay up til midnight working. Have you seen how much red tape there is these days? Any school who enforces it is crazy. And did i ne1 tell you that people who stay in teacher past the age of 55 have an increased chance of heart attack and stress related illness by TWENTY PERCENT or MORE
Bekaboo
Well let's take a look at MY two teacher parents who DO stay up til midnight working. Have you seen how much red tape there is these days? Any school who enforces it is crazy. And did i ne1 tell you that people who stay in teacher past the age of 55 have an increased chance of heart attack and stress related illness by TWENTY PERCENT or MORE


That's a crock of ****, its one of the least stressful jobs you can get. I have no problem standing in front of a class talking, I can explain things well if I'm interested in it, and I can sit down and do paperwork for hours on end without getting bore in the slightest. Teaching is easy, face it. You want a stressful job be a solicitor or barrister. They work constantly weekends, 7am - 11pm, no holidays, you get the picture. None of this 'lets get paid in August for absolutely nothing' business. Many lawyers resort to cocaine and heroin, they can afford it. If you told me that many of them died of heart atatcks early I might actually believe you.

No offense to your parents but any organised teacher can severly limit their work load by using more effecient teaching techniques. My dad is brilliant at this, he never works at home. He doesn't lesson plan, care to explain why you need to? He cuts out 60% of the syllabus, sure you get no choice of question in the exam but you're still guarenteed to do the 2/5 questions required, and you know them so well that no choice is required. I know in some subjects you can't do that type of thing, like say...maths. But where did I say I want to be a maths teacher? :tongue:

Basically you can take your generalisation statistics and stick 'em where the sun done shine missy, because it doesn't apply here. :biggrin:
Reply 7
Swing

No offense to your parents but any organised teacher can severly limit their work load by using more effecient teaching techniques. My dad is brilliant at this, he never works at home. He doesn't lesson plan, care to explain why you need to? He cuts out 60% of the syllabus, sure you get no choice of question in the exam but you're still guarenteed to do the 2/5 questions required, and you know them so well that no choice is required. I know in some subjects you can't do that type of thing, like say...maths. But where did I say I want to be a maths teacher? :tongue:

Basically you can take your generalisation statistics and stick 'em where the sun done shine missy, because it doesn't apply here. :biggrin:


You do realise it's now official policy that teachers HAVE to write lesson plans even those that don't need them? And learning objectives and criteria etc etc. Personally i think that most of the govt. initiatives to improve skools r a load of **** but they are there and some schools DISCIPLINE teachers who don't because they will FAIL Their OFSTED otherwise. Plus now you get the lovely lovely job of inclusion: kids with severely dibilitating ADHD, autism, aspergers, angelmanns.... and as a primary teacher u can have the lot! Trust me i work with kids with learning disabilities and putting tem in a mainstream class aint a plan! And cutting out 2/5 of the syllabus doesn't make you a good teacher it makes you a dosser. What if that's the 1 bit that the student doesn't understand? And in case ur interested my dad is a maths teacher.
And how is it a generalisation statistic? Don't make me bring out the alcoholic figures!
Bekaboo
You do realise it's now official policy that teachers HAVE to write lesson plans even those that don't need them? And learning objectives and criteria etc etc. Personally i think that most of the govt. initiatives to improve skools r a load of **** but they are there and some schools DISCIPLINE teachers who don't because they will FAIL Their OFSTED otherwise. Plus now you get the lovely lovely job of inclusion: kids with severely dibilitating ADHD, autism, aspergers, angelmanns.... and as a primary teacher u can have the lot! Trust me i work with kids with learning disabilities and putting tem in a mainstream class aint a plan! And cutting out 2/5 of the syllabus doesn't make you a good teacher it makes you a dosser. What if that's the 1 bit that the student doesn't understand? And in case ur interested my dad is a maths teacher.
And how is it a generalisation statistic? Don't make me bring out the alcoholic figures!


Just because you have to do them doesn't mean you have to do them! Just don't, sooo much easier, screw ofsted, ignore those batty boys and get on with teaching your way. If students can't understand a section of the syllabus that you've gone into 3 times more detail than you're supposed to than they're just stupid and wouldn't have passed anyway, there's nothing you can't understand given that much detail. Look matey, my parents teach, I know plenty of teachers, and down here saying teaching is stressful is a load of crap because its one of the easiest jobs there is.
Swing
That's a crock of ****, its one of the least stressful jobs you can get. I have no problem standing in front of a class talking, I can explain things well if I'm interested in it, and I can sit down and do paperwork for hours on end without getting bore in the slightest. Teaching is easy, face it. You want a stressful job be a solicitor or barrister. They work constantly weekends, 7am - 11pm, no holidays, you get the picture. None of this 'lets get paid in August for absolutely nothing' business. Many lawyers resort to cocaine and heroin, they can afford it. If you told me that many of them died of heart atatcks early I might actually believe you.

No offense to your parents but any organised teacher can severly limit their work load by using more effecient teaching techniques. My dad is brilliant at this, he never works at home. He doesn't lesson plan, care to explain why you need to? He cuts out 60% of the syllabus, sure you get no choice of question in the exam but you're still guarenteed to do the 2/5 questions required, and you know them so well that no choice is required. I know in some subjects you can't do that type of thing, like say...maths. But where did I say I want to be a maths teacher? :tongue:

Basically you can take your generalisation statistics and stick 'em where the sun done shine missy, because it doesn't apply here. :biggrin:


Oh my God, what is this **** you're going on about, saying teaching is one of the easiest jobs there is? I'd say it's easily one of the hardest and most stressful. They never get paid for doing nothing because they spend evenings, weekends and holidays working, marking books, planning lessons, writing reports etc. It may be easy to talk in front of a class as long as you're confident, but it can't be easy to discipline today's children, especially when schools are so restricted in the punishments they can give out, which causes teachers a lot of stress. It must also be quite a challenge getting everyone involved in the lesson when some students are just not interested and even in sets, each student will be of a slightly different ability. When there's an event going on in the evening such as a parent's evening, teachers can be stuck at school for over 12 hours, which is a lot longer than a normal 9-5 job.

What do you mean, your dad doesn't do lesson plans? You have to. He should have been sacked by now if his school's any good at checking these things. Cutting out 60% of the syllabus is terrible! That doesn't make him a good teacher at all, that makes him, quite frankly, a bad and lazy teacher! Please explain to me how it can possibly be a good thing to teach your students less than half of what they need to know?! The government sets the syllabus for a reason, so the exam boards can set questions on it. If a teacher doesn't bother with 60% of the syllabus, that means the students will be unable to answer 60% of the questions, which is not going to get them very good marks. Maybe your dad chooses to cut corners and not do any work at home, but good, dedicated teachers do a hell of a lot of work outside lesson time.
Reply 10
He cuts out 60% of the syllabus, sure you get no choice of question in the exam but you're still guarenteed to do the 2/5 questions required, and you know them so well that no choice is required.


I think teaching can be stressful, but it depends on what sort of person you are. Getting six paid weeks off in the summer is great, especially if you have a family as you can spend time with your children when they aren't at school.

I think that teachers should want to teach for the satisfaction of knowing that they have benefitted so many people, and I think it's awful that you said your dad only teaches 40% of the syllabus. It might get them through the exams okay, but they haven't learnt all that they should have. If they then go on to do a degree in their subject, they will find themselves seriously disadvantaged. Also they would be likely to do better in exams knowing and understanding the whole syllabus, rather than just sections, as they would have a choice of questions, so could choose what they feel they would be better at. Different students will be better at different areas, so they are not all getting an equal chance.
Reply 11
I am impressed. I appear to have started a thread without knowing about it.... i'm guessing 1 of the mods removed the argument from the other thread

And i'll leave it as that - as kellywood and dreamer86 seem to have finished my point quite nicely!!
I realised the other day that i'd quite like to teach computing....

EDIT: dont know why i quoted there....Just did it out of habit i guess. :redface:
Reply 13
kellywood_5
What do you mean, your dad doesn't do lesson plans? You have to. He should have been sacked by now if his school's any good at checking these things. Cutting out 60% of the syllabus is terrible! That doesn't make him a good teacher at all, that makes him, quite frankly, a bad and lazy teacher! Please explain to me how it can possibly be a good thing to teach your students less than half of what they need to know?! The government sets the syllabus for a reason, so the exam boards can set questions on it. If a teacher doesn't bother with 60% of the syllabus, that means the students will be unable to answer 60% of the questions, which is not going to get them very good marks. Maybe your dad chooses to cut corners and not do any work at home, but good, dedicated teachers do a hell of a lot of work outside lesson time.


My psychology teacher (one of the best teachers I've ever had) only did lesson plans when OFSTED visited our school, and cut out part of the syllabus too. This didn't make her any less of a good teacher, in fact a lot of our class got A's and it meant less stress for us when exam time came around. By the way in subjects like this you don't need to know a lot of the syllabus anyway since there are optional questions. Thankfully the A level curriculum is still flexible enough to allow different styles of teaching in at least some schools, and we can benefit from that.
Bekaboo
You do realise it's now official policy that teachers HAVE to write lesson plans even those that don't need them? And learning objectives and criteria etc etc.


I think it's only primary school teachers who have to do all that. But only Ofsted care though.

Dad teaches physics and says he'd enjoy the job, even with all the work and lack of support... if only the kids he was teaching actually cared about learning at all and didn't go from exclusion to exclusion without a care in the world. Yeh, he works in a pretty nasty school.
dreamer86
I think it's awful that you said your dad only teaches 40% of the syllabus. It might get them through the exams okay, but they haven't learnt all that they should have. If they then go on to do a degree in their subject, they will find themselves seriously disadvantaged.


lol, he gives handouts on all the other stuff and says you can read it if you really want to, and if you want to do law at uni. However nobody does because he spends ages telling everybody in his class not to do a career in law like he did. He became a solicitor and then quit after a couple of years, and why did he do that? Hmmm, because it was loads of really hard stressful work. So he became a teacher, and now he's watching TV, as he always is, and he loves his job and thinks its easy, and has encouraged all of us to do the same.

kellywood_5
What do you mean, your dad doesn't do lesson plans? You have to. He should have been sacked by now if his school's any good at checking these things. Cutting out 60% of the syllabus is terrible! That doesn't make him a good teacher at all, that makes him, quite frankly, a bad and lazy teacher! Please explain to me how it can possibly be a good thing to teach your students less than half of what they need to know?! The government sets the syllabus for a reason, so the exam boards can set questions on it. If a teacher doesn't bother with 60% of the syllabus, that means the students will be unable to answer 60% of the questions, which is not going to get them very good marks. Maybe your dad chooses to cut corners and not do any work at home, but good, dedicated teachers do a hell of a lot of work outside lesson time.


Hmmmm, before you start saying my dad is crap at his job maybe you should realise that he far exeeds the national average in grades, I think that does make him a good teacher. Last year his A2 class got no U's. The average amount of A's in law is something like 18%, and he gets around 50%. He shouldn't be sacked. He used to teach politics when he didn't even study it as AS level, he just lied and pretended he did. Who cares? You don't need to follow all the rules to be good at a job, so long as your students get good marks that's all that teaching is about.
Reply 16
Swing
so long as your students get good marks that's all that teaching is about.

This attitude is why our education system is so poor at the moment
Bezza
This attitude is why our education system is so poor at the moment


I'm talking about college here, do you honestly want to gain more from college than just the best grades you can get?
Reply 18
Bezza
This attitude is why our education system is so poor at the moment

Agreed, teaching should be much more than getting your students through exams. Good teachers teach you everything that's relevant, bad teachers teach you how to scrape through exams.
Reply 19
Bekaboo
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Have you ever MET a teacher? Do you KNOW any teachers?!?!?!?! Okay maybe you only work with kids until 3:30 but try marking and less plans until midnight!!!!!


My moms a math teacher. She gets up at 4 every morning to do her work and stays at school at least 2 hours late every day.