Work Dilemma

Curious_George_2

they do have part timers in schools here (mid day assistants, teachers assistant etc) but in my area those jobs are like gold dust,
and quite often applying when the job is advertised is a waste of time (as more often than not its already gone)
the only way in as i see it, is to volunteer,
they have readers at our local primary, the teachers dont have time to hear every child read aloud, so they have volunteer readers come in and the kids read to them, ive noticed that it tends to be these people who get the advertised jobs,
also making yourself known through the PTA wouldnt hurt but i never wanted to go that route... (they remind me of the mafia!)

jo1972

Curious_George wrote: »

making yourself known through the PTA wouldnt hurt but i never wanted to go that route... (they remind me of the mafia!)

:eek:

My mum reads at our school, she started when my dd1 began in reception....10 years ago :eek: and she stuck with the same teacher the whole time even though my dd left for secondary. Unfortunately that teacher retired last week but my mum had 3 teachers ask her if she'll work with them cos apparently they all love her! She's in her 70's so only a voluntary thing. Maybe I should pop in the school office when term starts and have a chat with the receptionists?

Curious_George_2

well then you could already have half your foot in the door!
if the worst they can say is "we dont need anyone at the moment" and then take your details - then you still havent lost anything
and you could always get your mum to keep her ears open!

jo1972

Hmmmmm yeah, thanks for that!

Good luck with the baby btw

Spendless

jo1972 wrote: »

Thanks for all your replies

I think going part time would be the solution for me, maybe doing a morning/afternoon shift in a docs surgery or something like that. That way I still get to pay the bills that we can't cover on dh's wage plus I might have a couple of quid left to take the kids somewhere nice once a week!

Any more advice is appreciated, especially anyone that's doing part time work at the moment, what sort of field of work should I look for? Do they have part timers in schools? That would be ideal, although I presume jobs are few and far between plus highly sought after!

I'm not working at moment but when I did work p-time when DS was a baby I had an evening job. That way I had the whole day to do the chores etc, take baby to mums and tots, parks, gp appts etc and then my nan babysat for the hour between me starting and DH coming home. My job was 5 evenings a week, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that many if I'd also had school age children I wanted to be at home for. My husbands job has changed since so he is no longer in at a set hour, otherwise I'd still consider an evening job a few times a week, leaving me the day free to get stuff done and meaning not having to book a day off if a child is ill or you wish to go see them in a school concert/sports day, and you are still at home all day in the school hols.

Many jobs like these are shop work, but some have admin staff for these hours eg 1 woman worked same place, same hours as me but worked in the cash office, also call centres.

klare_2

just wanted to throw a flip side on this, not trying to be negative just think you have to make sure you look at all possibilities.
i did exactly the same as you, had time off with kids , really really wanted to be at home to take care of them and the house and my OH .. packed in job ( planned it all, not willy nilly) ,,,and within 6 weeks i was rocking in a corner i hated it!
I actually missed all the hussle and bussle of my full time working life and all the stress that went with it.
I was bored out of my brain after a few weeks at home,,,all the things that i loved doing on my hols with the kids became mundane and a chore ... it was awful...
anyway our solution was to get an au pair for the childminding and its fab, she does 2/3'ds of the cleaning and washing and stuff, i dont have to drag everyone out of the house at stupid o'clock in the morning and save about 800 a month on the child care! a bonus lol



just trying to say that its not always the same when you are actually doing the stay at home thing all the time, no matter how many activities you pack into the day with the little ones so just be preapred for that ... but i do hope that you can work it out so that you get the chance to try ...
could you take a three month sabatical from your job to give it a trial run?

Savvy_Sue

Being a coward, unless I could see an obvious 'alternative' to what I was currently doing, I'd look for part-time hours in the same field as I was currently in. So, if I had been - say - an expert cake maker, when I needed to go from f/t to p/t I might have tried to make some money out of that.

I did try to go p/t with my old employer but they couldn't find anyone to job-share with me, but don't let that put you off. It's especially worth doing that if they pride themselves on being family friendly.

jo1972

Thanks for your replies.

Spendless, I think I'd rather work full days at the w/end rather than evenings, I love my early nights although I probably wouldn't mind doing something late afternoon/early evening.

Klare, this is exactly what I was worrying about, purely cos when I was on maternity leave I had no problems returning to work. Well saying that I was looking forward to going back but on the morning I had to get up and go I didn't wanna!! You definately have a valid point, I don't wanna be rocking in the corner! Some very serious thought will have to be made before I make any decisions.

Sue, I doubt very much my boss would allow me to work PT, I went PT after having my ds and he was on at me constantly wanting to know when I was gonna increase my hours. Although a lot of that was probably because I had intended on going back FT at some point and he probably didn't want to train someone else up for the time that I wasn't there then have to keep them on when I was FT. Problem is that it's an hour and a half journey to work, so not much point in me treking right the way across London just for a couple of hours work then treking all the way back again.

jo1972

I've just applied to AQA to answer questions again, failed last time so I'm hoping that as I've been given another chance and have an idea of what I'm going to be asked I might have more chance!

Does anyone else work of AQA, if so, what's the money like?

kj*daisy

Loacl authorities are generally fairly flexible about working hours.