Why do so many SF members hate teachers?

[sixer]

I am not a teacher but the ones I have encountered through my childrens schooling are doing an excellent job. I do think a lot of people have it in for teachers & wonder if that is why so many pupils have so little respect for them.

[harvey19]

Because teachers had authority over them.

[Mr Bloke]

I presume you didn't mean to post this on this thread. This doesn't describe the job of a teacher at all, but it does describe how teachers are perceived by people who have never taught.

 

The reality is reasonable pay per hour once you've been doing it a while, long hours, long holidays but which you cannot take as and when you like, and the difficult job of trying to convince a generation who are constantly fed messages that being 'famous' is pretty much the only career choice -and it's one that evidently doesn't require you to know much - that learning something is a valuable thing to do.

 

On the hours thing - the school day is 6 and a half hours long. In that time you might teach 5 or 6 lessons. Each one has to be prepared. On your PGCSE you are are told to spend as long on prep as you do teaching. Clearly that is unreasonable, but let's say for every hour you teach you spend 15 minutes on prep - making sure you have the right things, that your demo works, that you have a backup in case things go wrong, that there is something to challenge the full range of abilities in the group and so on. If you teach 5 lessons a day, that's another 1.25 hours, so we're up to 7.75 hours per day.

 

Now, lets assume you set each group one homework per week, and you have 6 groups, each with 25 kids in. That's 130 homeworks to mark and give feedback on per week. Let's assume each homework takes you a mere 5 minutes to read and give feedback on. That's 650 minutes per week. Let's round that up to 11 hours - so we're now on almost 50 hours per week.

 

Remember though that teachers have to be in before the pupils for playground / bus stop duty or staff meetings, or to set up their first lesson - so we can add a minimal 15 mins per day - so we're on 51 hours per week.

 

Each year group has a parents evening - usually two per year per year group. If you teach 4 different years that's 16 parents evenings, at 3 hours each. Another 48 hours over the year, or over an hour a week on average. 52 hours per week.

 

And then there is coursework to maek - that takes much more than 5 minutes. A full set of A-level coursework (one module, complete class) would take me about 10 hours. I had two classes, and I did a full collect, mark and feedback 3 times per group, but students were free to hand in work whenever they wanted feedback, which they did reguarly. Without the ad-hoc handing in, that is still 30 hours of coursework marking per module, with two groups that's four modules. Another 120 hours - an average of 3 hours per week over the school year. We're now on 55 hours a week.

 

The curriculum changed every year I taught, which meant preparing a new scheme of work for the year over the summer. That took two days per course - 16 hours - another half hour per week of term on average. 55.5 hours.

 

Add on the after hours clubs, the trips, the sports day, the staff meetings for whole school, department and year groups every few weeks and you can easily get to a 60 hour week over 38 weeks, which works out at 43 hours per week over 52 weeks - for which I was paid about £25k, or about £11 hour. Not exactly poor wages, but it's a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility. And a lot of hours.

 

See me after class.

 

This is exactly my point!

 

If all teachers stated their case as clearly as this then maybe more people would understand what is involved, and there would be less hostilities towards them!

 

A*

[Mr Bloke]

... I put it to you' date=' therefore, that your own postings are at odds with the points you make regarding the failings of teachers' postings on here.[/quote']

 

You may be right - but then I'm not a teacher and don't get paid to put forward clearly defined points of view!

[Lockjaw]

You may be right - but then I'm not a teacher and don't get paid to put forward clearly defined points of view!

 

 

 

..........

[iansheff]

I am not a teacher but the ones I have encountered through my childrens schooling are doing an excellent job. I do think a lot of people have it in for teachers & wonder if that is why so many pupils have so little respect for them.

 

Because they hear parents moaning and complaining about them?

[Mutts Nutts]

How could I have forgotten the reports? Let's assume you do a rush job and only spend 5 minutes per pupil. You can add half an hour per week over the year for those.

 

I also forgot to include the GCSE coursework. I had two A-level groups and one GCSE group in my last year teaching. Depending on what you teach, that could easily add an hour per week over the year.

 

And then there are the revision classes after school I used to do - an extra hour once a week for eight weeks.

 

How many hours per week are we up to now?

 

Yeah must be a really difficult job..

Spend a lot of time on here though don't you.

Or have you got a teaching assistant to post on here for you..

[Number Six]

Yeah must be a really difficult job..

Spend a lot of time on here though don't you.

Or have you got a teaching assistant to post on here for you..

 

A couple of points.

 

Firstly I've made it quite clear I don't teach anymore

 

Surely all work is a career choice? - If you don't like your job, get another one.

 

I did. It's not always possible though. I worked with a teacher who was carrying on for the sake of his pension and kids. I know people doing exactly the same thing in other professions - it's not just a teaching thing.

 

 

Secondly, it's half-term.

[Mutts Nutts]

A couple of points.

 

Firstly I've made it quite clear I don't teach anymore

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secondly, it's half-term.

 

You mean....you mean..when you leave this poor excuse for a difficult job you dont get to keep your teaching assistant slave...and they dont fetch and carry for you anymore...even in half term..my god what is the world coming to.

[Gordonb]

Perhaps a lot of them see teachers as a waste of time as they know everything anyway.