Renovations and Repayments.

Suffolk_lass · 22 October 2017 at 8:21AM

Alex, my husband has just started his half-term week and boy, does he need it! This is the longest term of the year and crucial for his students to learn the bedrock of what they need for their GCSEs and A' Levels. I've just had a re-read of the last page of your diary to see if I had missed your decision and I don't think you have written it down.

You are fortunate that if you close this door, and that is your decision, you have other options and other doors in front of you.

You also have your music qualifications that mean you are qualified to a level to teach that as a volunteer or privately, outside school.

I am with Daisy and would try and suck it up to do the training year and the QTS year and then I would look to teach as a part time specialist peripatetic music teacher, going in for a day in several schools, or in the private sector.

While you are off, reflect in other people's shoes a bit - it will help you with your decision and allow you to see whether you have burned the bridges with colleagues or whether they (the bridges, not the staff :rotfl:) are smouldering. Perhaps be a little reticent about what you offer of yourself and your opinions and background - you are older (and more opinionated) than a lot of primary teachers and I suspect their hackles are up because you question and challenge things that younger student teachers will accept as wisdom. Or they may just be judgemental and not very nice people.

Have a good week off and one last thing - look for somewhere else to stay while that kitchen is being done, if you cannot "camp" at home. We camped out at home but had to eat out and at friends' houses for all but breakfast but we always slept at home. It means you can clear all the inevitable pink dust every day. The danger if you don't is it gets into everything and wrecks it.

newgirly · 22 October 2017 at 9:53AM

Morning Alex, I've been reading through the last few days but have held back from posting as the only thing I know about teaching is from the perspective of being a student many years ago, and as a parent who always had a huge amount of respect for how on earth people commit to spending their working lives looking after and educating other peoples kids and dealing with their often ungrateful parents, it's something I couldn't do!

I'm sorry it's not been what you expected, often you build a picture in your mind whilst plannng for the things and its often quite different from the reality. I'm surprised you are questioning why you are not "putting your efforts into areas which would see much greater financial gains" as you originally said it was about doing something worthwhile rather than for just money.I am not trying to be unkind, but I do feel like you may have not made the most of the chance to get along with your colleagues. Don't get me wrong, they may be a total bunch of (fill in he bleeps here!).

You shouldn't have to hide who you are, but a bit of discretion goes a long way. Do they need to know you have a string of properties and your parents are very wealthy? (Big clue perhaps having a train in the garden

)

I'm not sure I'm putting this down very well, so I guess I'm trying to say do you have respect for the people you are working with and does that come across to them? If not it's going to be impossible to build the working relationships and support that you need, that in turn is going to make the whole situation more unpleasant for you.

Knowing nothing about the realities of training to be a teacher, or how well you are coping with it. Based solely on what I've read in your diary over the last however long, I would keep at it a bit longer and perhaps give it until Xmas.

You spent so long questioning whether you could /should go for it, you have barely given yourself time to bed in and adjust, and its a MASSIVE adjustment from your life before. That being said, (this is the bit I'm most worried about saying!) I think you should question your own attitude the whole experience, I think you need to be more sensitive to how other people live and how you may come across.

Perhaps it's not for you which is fine but it could be a good learning curve. I would love if you went back and gave it another go and challenged yourself to change people's perception of you. You are a great guy, you clearly care about learning or you wouldn't have given so much of your own time up to help others. Perhaps you should see persuading the ones who don't want to learn as the ultimate challenge? That's the place where I would have thought you will make the most difference to kids lives. Some of the best teachers I had did not teach subjects I was interested in, they were brilliant at reeling you in though

I hope you come to a decision that you will be happy with both now and in the future, all the best

Red-Squirrel_2 · 22 October 2017 at 9:59AM

AlexLK wrote: »

Hairy carrots? :rotfl:

Red Squirrel, I have let people down re. teaching. I thought I had found a career path which would suit but I was ignoring some of the realities. When volunteering I didn't mind some of the more challenging pupils because they didn't view me as a teacher. I hadn't anticipated how different it would be with the challenging pupils as their everyday teacher. All the problems teachers had with those pupils and I didn't, I now have and I can't really cope with it.

This is honest and realistic, and there is a bit of self reflection here.

I also hadn't anticipated the day being so regimented it's practically impossible to extend Maths for 15 / 30 minutes to allow either for time lost or because extra time would be beneficial. At times it almost seems that routine seems more important than learning.

This is not at all realistic. A school with hundreds of children and staff needs a routine or it will fall into chaos. There are only so many hours in the school day and adding a random 15/30 minutes onto one lesson would cause chaos for other lessons and teachers, surely you can see that?

Had everything else been right for me, I wouldn't be so concerned with the conditions of the job but it isn't and I've really started to question why I've not been putting my efforts into areas which would see much greater financial gains.

Financial gain isn't everything, you wanted to try something that you hoped would give you greater job satisfaction, more meaning and a feeling of having contributed to society. All those things are just as important as making money. It hasn't worked, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to try it.

To the staff at the school it seems anything to do with my life comes across in a way that offends them. I tell them about my son's upcoming birthday party to have a member of staff roll her eyes at me and be told "well, we just knew you wouldn't be having a pool party at the local leisure centre". I take in a video of my father's live steam garden railway and some nice old clockwork locos to show an interested pupil which was met with scorn.

You've only know these people 6 weeks, and most people are not so horrible that they are ready to instantly hate new members of staff for absolutely no reason. Maybe a little self reflection here as you managed in your thoughts about teaching in the first paragraph. It can be harder when you are reflecting on what it is that you do that makes people dislike you, but it could make a big difference. If I recall correctly you don't have a lot of friends and don't really spend much time with people who aren't your family or your in-laws. Are you out of practice? Are you forgetting some of the basics? Are you showing an interest in the lives of the other staff members or are you just telling them about your life and expecting them to be interested with no reciprocation? Are you talking or behaving in a way that could be viewed as showing off or acting superior or disdainful?

Everyone in the school is indeed busy but they seem to have time for gossip at lunchtime (called "dinnertime" :eek:) at this school.

This, in a nutshell, is probably why people find it hard to warm to you. Do you see that at all? Can you understand why you might rub people the wrong way?

On here, we are all rooting for you because you have opened up to this forum and we know that there is a decent, kind, thoughtful Alex under the surface who is trying to be a better person even if he sometimes struggles. Others will only see the surface, so what are they seeing?

Red-Squirrel_2 · 22 October 2017 at 10:04AM

AlexLK wrote: »

I fail to see how not attending a staff meeting means I am failing to provide opportunities for pupils? On another point, I am not a paid member of staff. In fact, as a student, if I do go back after half term I will be paying to be there. Therefore, I would argue the same rules cannot apply. Further, the terms by which I signed to as a student has no such clauses pertaining to the definition of directed hours.

Whilst I won't go into the full details of why I needed to see the tenant, finding a time was difficult due to the tenant's working hours and had another time worked, I would have been at the meeting.

Oh Alex, you don't even realise that you've behaved poorly here, do you? Teacher training might not be paid, but that doesn't mean its a hobby or that parts of it are optional. This is the nature of vocational training.

amanda_p · 22 October 2017 at 12:07PM

As a former teacher, I can see how you might come across so to speak. We all know students have to learn but believe me there are never enough hours in the day to teach the children and give the best to the student. It is very much a case of observing their methods of dealing with the difficult ones and taking on board everything in school life, even staff meetings. Yes the lunchtime gossiping is the unwinding time for staff, so they can face the afternoon ahead.......

Your biggest error was probably wearing your 'old school tie' on the first day, this will not have endeared you to the people you are working with. I think you have also made a comment about teaching for a yearly salary of £23,000 to start. Yes this is the reality and yes a lot of people are bringing up children, paying mortgages on this. This is the real world and until you embrace this and look beyond the privilege you have been raised by you are going to have a problem.

There was a programme on TV a good few years ago about a group of highly privileged young people from Harrow, Eton and Charterhouse who went with a company called, I think, Teach First. They were put into sink schools close to London. One of the girls was absolutely hopeless, couldn't hack it at all. But the best of the bunch was the boy from Eton. He could not believe how some of these children lived, what they had to deal with and the empathy he had towards them was unbelievable. He got a lot of stick from them because of how he spoke, how he dressed etc. but he persevered and at the end of the programme he went into full time teaching and I would imagine by now he has moved up the ranks.

You have to realise that children are canny little things, they will always behave for their class teacher, but bring in a supply teacher, a student, a TA and they instinctively know they can play them up.

I think deep down you could become a very good teacher and you should stick the year out , however uncomfortable it might make you feel. If your wife wasn't working your parents didn't have money and this was going to be your main job I wonder if you would view it differently?

Real life isn't easy and giving up at the first hurdle doesn't give out very good messages.
It is a difficult profession but believe me when the little six year old who could barely read a word, stands up at the carol service and reads a whole passage from a book, or the little girl who runs in saying she has joined a library because she can read and wants lots of books. Those moments make it all worthwhile and so rewarding.

I taught Infant children and am absolutely in awe of the upper end of teaching ,11 years and over.
Another ball game altogether that I still have the utmost respect for them.
Give me the 'rug rats' any day!

Debsnewbudget · 22 October 2017 at 5:51PM

Just saw this and thought of you Alex

My only comment about you thinking of moving in with your parents is please listen to Mrs K . I know in the past she has not been happy with this idea.
If you are going there to be a carer then make sure you build in back up systems as you will need holidays and time apart from the parents.

"WHY I QUIT TEACHING AFTER JUST ONE TERM"

by Andrew Critchell

My NQT mentor’s first words to me were “This will be the worst year of your life.” I don’t know whether this was meant to shock, be a reality check or whatever, but it seemed the most negative thing anyone could have done. It also, unfortunately, set the scene for what was to follow.

I embarked on my sink or swim NQT year, and really did try to swim – but in the end, no matter how much I worked, it was not enough. In a typical day I would do 10 hours at school and usually be the last to leave, just in front of the caretaker. I would then crawl home in traffic to see my own children for a short time before my wife and I put them to bed.

Dinner would then follow, before I headed to the spare room between 8.30 and 9pm, turned the PC on and stayed there for another two to three hours. There were instances of marking books at 12.30am while I wondered just what the hell I was doing.

At weekends I alternated between working half the day on both days, and working all day Saturday or all day Sunday (we were told during our PGCE course to maintain that important work-life balance by ‘Having one day off a week’). Either way, my wife – who has a demanding full time job herself – had to entertain and cater for our two young children on her own, while I felt guilty about (sometimes literally) pushing my kids away to sit at the computer, worrying about 30 other kids who had their own parents looking after them. The only evening I had off was Friday.

‘JUST WORK LONGER’
If, after all this, I was meeting my goals, putting in a great performance and keeping on top of everything, the pain would have been bearable. The trouble was that the exact opposite was happening. I went from being graded ‘Good with outstanding features’ in my university lesson observations, to ‘Requires improvement’ quite quickly. My marking fell behind, to the point that I hadn’t looked at some of the foundation subjects for three weeks. I failed to meet several deadlines for submitting the 12 incarnations of the Individual Education Plans required for pupils in my class. Peripheral things – like my classroom audit, maintaining the class webpage, ordering new furniture and putting up new displays – just didn’t happen.

My TA started at 9am after the children came in, and seemed to have so many responsibilities of her own that I was always having to tidy up, prepare resources and be ready for the next lesson entirely alone. I had little time to bond with colleagues, as I rarely left my classroom. I was even struggling to keep up with the never-ending planning and the frankly demoralising task of resource-hunting and differentiating that had to be completed ahead of each lesson. All in all, I felt that no matter what I did or how long I worked, I would constantly fail. When I broached this with my mentor, her response was “Just work longer.”

At the time, I was a 40-year-old male with a 1st class degree and 18 years of professional experience working in London. In previous jobs I had been interviewed on live national TV and radio, briefed peers and MPs on proposed amendments to planning legislation, serviced high-profile financial clients such as JP Morgan and The Bank of New York – yet here I was, sitting in tears alone at my desk in my classroom at 8.15am because I just couldn’t see how it was possible to do what was being asked of me. I felt utterly and totally hopeless.

After just one term, I said to myself, ‘No, I am not accepting this.’ And I quit.

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE
Firstly, I don’t understand why there isn’t a centralised database of plans and resources that everyone can use, so that we are all on the same page and have time to focus on delivery. At the moment we have a tragic and needlessly inefficient situation where thousands of teachers are staring at their computer screens until late at night, all searching for the same things.

Secondly, why go to all the effort of attracting people into the teaching profession and training them up, only to then dump them in it during their NQT year? Why can’t that first year be team-taught alongside an experienced teacher who can help and guide you throughout, assist with the necessary planning and paperwork and show you by example how they do it and survive?

For me, this would have fostered an environment in which my desire to teach would have been nurtured and grown, rather than destroyed.

slowlyfading · 22 October 2017 at 8:58PM

AlexLK wrote: »

I fail to see how not attending a staff meeting means I am failing to provide opportunities for pupils? On another point, I am not a paid member of staff. In fact, as a student, if I do go back after half term I will be paying to be there. Therefore, I would argue the same rules cannot apply. Further, the terms by which I signed to as a student has no such clauses pertaining to the definition of directed hours.

Really? You are so exasperating at times! It does not matter that you are not a paid member of staff. You are doing your training year, you do exactly the same as everyone else does, paid or not. The same rules absolutely apply. I can't believe you thought you'd just miss one on a whim because you had something more important to attend to? It's a vocational career you are studying for, not a boardroom. And yes, to do most training you yourself have to pay. That's not something different because you're training to be a teacher.

Whilst I won't go into the full details of why I needed to see the tenant, finding a time was difficult due to the tenant's working hours and had another time worked, I would have been at the meeting.

So the only option was to go whilst the meeting was taking place? 7 days in a week and that small period of time was the only time you could go? Hmm.

I'll be honest, I feel like you're belittling the profession that many, many people put their whole lives in to. The pay isn't fantastic, the conditions are constantly changing and children can be demanding. Parents often blame anyone else but their child too it seems. But, to many, myself included, it's a profession that is worth it, because we're helping young people build their future.

I also feel like you're probably not helping yourself in terms of getting on with colleagues. The suggestion that you extend maths for 15/30 minutes so you can get everything done shows little understanding of how a school actually works. In a work place with over a thousand students, plus 100s of staff, this would throw the timetable into chaos. It needs a timetable and routine for everything to work. Yes, there are multiple times when you wish a lesson was that bit longer, so you could get that bit more in there, but it's not the case.

Your training year and then your NQT year, should you wish to do both I suppose, will be the toughest things you ever do. Ever. It's so mentally draining and time draining too. I have never done anything like it, and only now do I feel like I've got my routines in place so that by the end of the week I've completed all that I need to. That's after teaching for 7 years! Like I said before, you have to really want to be there.

I get the feeling you don't

Red-Squirrel_2 · 22 October 2017 at 9:42PM

Debsnewbudget wrote: »

Just saw this and thought of you Alex

My only comment about you thinking of moving in with your parents is please listen to Mrs K . I know in the past she has not been happy with this idea.
If you are going there to be a carer then make sure you build in back up systems as you will need holidays and time apart from the parents.

Oh my word I hadn't even noticed that bit.

Alex you seem to falling back into old patterns, I know you've had a disappointment and you're bound to feel down about it but moving in to your parents' house? Why? If they need help you don't always have to be the one to provide it, and you can help them in lots of ways without moving in, you live close enough!

daisy_1571 · 23 October 2017 at 6:37AM

Just popping in to say glad to see you back posting and like others I am concerned by the throw away comment about moving back in with the parents. I am sorry to your your dad has been in hospital but please think twice before going back there as you know how much they suck the life out of you. I know they would not be happy about it but there are other options to it being you ie home help type people. That way you can maintain your own relationship with them rather than being dragged into being the only person they see from morning to night and relying on you for all their entertainment.

Take care, and glad to see you not labelling yourself a failure just because you tried something and found it may not be for you

D

smallholdingsister · 23 October 2017 at 8:54AM

AlexLK wrote: »

Everyone in the school is indeed busy but they seem to have time for gossip at lunchtime (called "dinnertime" :eek:) at this school.

I have no words.

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