Bored of your job? Become a teacher!

[Suff]

There is a huge difference between the Serviceman "Warrior" and the Serviceman (or woman), "technician". Something most people outside the services have no concept of. Teachers are some of the worst at recognising this.

However, that being said, my mother was a radar tech in the RAF before she married. She then retrained into teaching and had a full career in teaching. From her peers I'm told she was an excellent Primary teacher.

Teachers are an interesting breed. They are the last person in the world I will willingly teach anything about computers or software. I include my mother in that which just goes to show that teaching is a process which creates the end result.

The most common phrase I hear from a Teacher when trying to teach them about using a computer is

"I don't want to know that I want you to tell me what I want to know"

I say the same thing every single time to every teacher who ever says that to me.

"And what would you say to a child who told you the same thing".

I had a running battle with Mrs S about this for nearly a decade until we had a furious row one weekend about "This computer has lost my files again and you will find them in ten seconds and I've waited all week to get them and I really needed them". I finally lost my cool and, rather heatedly, told her that the computer had not done anything of the sort, that she had lost her files because she had decided that she could use a computer without understanding how to use the file manager (Windows Explorer). After that she finally submitted to learning something I had been trying to teach her for 10 years and, funnily enough, the computer never lost another file of hers.... Strange things computers....

I have 6 teachers in the family and at least another 6 close friends are also teachers. Bored, want to be a teacher? I can think of easier ways to drive myself insane but not many more sure....

[cromwell]

My wife, brother and mother were all teachers. I never became one because I knew that in my younger days my short temper (it's better now!) would have seen me last about a month in a school before I reacted badly to a pupil behaving badly.

All of the above were glad to finish teaching, my wife and brother especially so. The job had changed massively since my mother retired in 1991 to when they both did, just a few years since.

More paperwork, massively increased workloads, more and more problem kids from problem families. Having to draw up performance grids on the progress of three and four year olds (yes, really). Multi agency meetings with social services, the council, the police, drug workers, etc.

And somehow a more bullying culture from school management. The type of person who gets to become a headteacher in this area (and it holds good for other managerial positions in the public sector, too) is one who doesn't question the policies that come down from above; even if in private they admit that most of these policies are rubbish.

Schools are now part of the social services imo, they are where the problems of society are being parked. Be on the lookout for signs of radicalisation? OK, whatever. Increasingly they are dealing with the fall out of poor parenting as well, having to teach children what they should be learning in the home.

The reason why the government is desperate for new teachers is because so many graduates are trying it and then saying "No way", and quitting; and I don't blame them!

[Suff]

The reason why the government is desperate for new teachers is because so many graduates are trying it and then saying "No way", and quitting; and I don't blame them!

One of my daughters started to take up an assisted place as one of the Governments "get teachers in" incentives. It took her 3 months to ditch it when reality struck.

Funnily enough I think that it is the culture successive socialist governments have fostered which is driving people out of teaching. Nothing in their lives prepares them for the, often abusive, overregulated and destructive environment that teaching is now today. The teachers who are now leaving came up through a more strict regime and are much more durable.

Nobody in my family or circle of friends greatly misses teaching. Although many of them happily use the supply situation to supplement their pensions. Mrs S being an exception to that, she would never go back, I'm sure she'd try begging first, she'd get less abuse...

[TheOstrich]

Cromwell & Suff - Mrs O, who retired from teaching 5 years ago, would echo all your sentiments.

She was a specialist teacher and spent her last 10 years as part of an assessment team in Birmingham. To add to all the bureaucracy, it was a multi-disciplinary team which meant a lot of interaction principally with the NHS. One thing that stood out was the inept and bullying nature of middle management, especially within the NHS. Eventually she had a stand-off with an NHS manager that escalated very rapidly up the chain of command (Mrs O is, shall we say, tenacious, and wasn't going to let the NHS manager who had verbally abused her get away with it, despite the top brass of both Education and NHS wanting to put a large lid over it). Eventually, just before she invoked the Union, she got a personal apology (which she had insisted on) and the perpetrator was moved sideways within her NHS structure.

Looking in from the outside, I rather felt that the needy children, with all their poor backgrounds (white as well as ethnic) and medical / behavioural difficulties (these were under-5's mind you) were the least of the problems in the job. The far bigger problems were the petty career-carving management staff in all three disciplines - NHS, education and social services - the constant changing of targets and increasing pressure put on the staff out there at the coal face, and the endless "management meetings" and courses where you dare not say what you felt or you would be marked for "re-education".

It is a salutary fact that most case workers out on the streets of Birmingham in those days had speeding points on their licences, incurred as they tried to fit in ever more home visits in a day to meet ever-increasing targets.

[Rodo]

When I began in 1970 I loved it, wouldn't have done anything else. 30 years later I couldn't wait to get out. I had been verbally abused several times by parents, usually fathers. I was kicked hard by a child, accused of theft, accused of abuse, had my own personal possessions stolen by children..........you name it, it happened. That was in addition to the difficulties of classroom control, ever-changing curriculum requirements by the government and the realisation that new young teachers coming into the job were inevitably not up to it and usually couldn't spell or use punctuation themselves, let alone teach the children.

[Workingman]

I did my PGCE towards the end of 18 years of Conservative rule so I cannot blame the Socialists for every ill in education.

I did quite a bit of supply teaching in the beginning and was shocked at how the real thing compared to the theory. I rarely met or saw a Head teacher. The Senior Management Teams (SMTs) seemed to run most of the schools, and they were often aloof and remote. In quite a few schools they had their own tea room away from the staff room. Then there were heads and deputy heads of years and heads and deputies of subjects. They all had their own separate meetings, but would sometimes meet together, and then their "wisdom" would be passed down to teachers for implementation. It was the most demoralising hierarchy anyone could have dreamed up.

I volunteered to leave and never looked back.