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The outspoken head of Ofsted has hit out at teachers who complain their jobs are "too stressful" and make excuses for poor performance.
Sir Michael Wilshaw suggested head teachers needed reminding what stress really was.
Speaking at an education conference, he said heads were better paid and had more power than ever before.
But the ATL teaching union said official figures demonstrated how stressful teaching can be.
Sir Michael told a conference of independent school heads in East Sussex that in the past, poor teaching and poor performance had gone unchallenged.
He went on: "We need to learn from this and challenge those who have power invested in them to make the difference, but too often make excuses for poor performance - it's just too hard, the children are too difficult, the families are too unsupportive, this job is far too stressful.
"Let me tell you what stress is. Stress is what my father felt, who struggled to find a job in the 1950s and 1960s and who often had to work long hours in three different jobs and at weekends to support a growing family.
"Stress is, I'm sure, what many of the million-and-a-half unemployed young people today feel - unable to get a job because they've had a poor experience of school and lack the necessary skills and qualifications to find employment.
"Stress is what I was under when I started as a head in 1985, in the context of widespread industrial action - teachers walking out of class at a moment's notice; doing lunch duty on my own every day for three years because of colleagues who worked to rule; covering five classes in the sports hall when there was no-one to teach them.
"Stress was, in the days before local management of schools, writing letters in triplicate to the local authority asking for a brick wall to be built in the playground or for a bit of extra money to keep an excellent maths teacher - and not receiving a reply for weeks."
Sir Michael said that times had changed and that heads were now in charge, with better pay and more independence, power and resources than before.
"We need heads who know what a privileged position they are in now and who can use their new-found independence well - people who roll up their sleeves and get on with improving their schools, even in the most difficult circumstances.
"What we don't need are leaders in our schools whose first recourse is to blame someone else - whether it's Ofsted, the local education authority, the government or a whole host of other people."
Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said Ofsted should concentrate on helping schools improve and stop criticising teachers and heads.
"It is really not helpful for Michael Wilshaw to rubbish the amount of stress teachers are under.
"The pressures on teaching staff and heads are enormous and growing due to the constant churn of government initiatives, tinkering with the curriculum, introducing new tests, and pressure to get pupils through exams to prove their school is performing well.
"And Ofsted is part of the problem with its continual changing of the inspections goal posts, and ridiculous demands for lessons to be exciting at all times.
"Teaching is the occupation with the third highest amount of work-related stress according to Health and Safety Executive figures."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18025202
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He's pretty much right, though; Teachers work for 9 months out of the year, they get vacations whenever the kids do, they've got it pretty good.
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Snip
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it's pretty difficult to get them to actually learn stuff though, and depending on how bad the school is you could be facing verbal abuse or, in really bad schools, physical violence
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It's simple, send them to ISS, fail them for not doing their work, etc. They don't want to learn, it's their choice.
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Yeah except the kids don't understand that it's important.
Most that I know don't take the summer vacation but work another job through it.
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Marking, writing reports etc takes up a lot of the rest of the time, so it's not quite a 9-5 job, but they do get a fair bit of the holidays off so I get your point
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i could imagine being a teacher was probably one of the most stressful jobs i could think of, having to plan every single one of your lessons when its likely you have 4 or 5 a day with kids giving you shit, along with planning the homework and then marking it along with the responsibility of trying to get every kid to pass their exams? sounds stressful to me...
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I'm pretty sure it depends what age group you're teaching
kids can be shitty
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Completely disagree..
The teacher friends I have are in work at 7.30 and not out before 5, so decently long hours during the week. As well as this their evenings are taken up with marking books/work and planning lesson (as Ofsted insist on detailed plans for every lesson, even ones you could teach blindfolded), so their working weeks are pretty intense, and pretty much always take up substantial amounts of time on the weekend as well.
As for long holidays, they're in for at least 1 week every holiday changing the room/planning/doing the many training seminars they have to do to keep up to date etc. Sure their holidays are still longer than the majority of people's (including mine:( ) but hey, I get normal length hours, no work when I'm at home in the evening and my weekend to myself. Teachers don't have that great a deal.
Edit: I forgot to mention that most kids are little shits.
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Pretty much exactly what I came in here to post. I wouldn't imagine teaching being a very easy job, but it really comes down to what the grade level is. Elementary levels would obviously be a lot easier than high school or college.
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I'd imagine there's gonna be quite a lot of backlash to this
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Teachers work pretty much all year. Weekends and vacations are usually spent on assignments and planning.
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Keep in mind he is mainly talking about head teachers. A lot of head teachers are on £100,000+ per year, and in comparison to other jobs of that wage, it may seem like quite an easy wage
Although I can imagine teaching being stressful, kids having a go at you, their parents, the government, and now Ofsted
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he needs to realize time has changed and we have a new generation of self-entitled kids who suffers from dunning-kruger syndrome and think they know better cause they can read & argue in the internet, it literally creates hell for these teachers in this age
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Teaching in general would be easier if parents and children understood it's not the teacher's fault their kid is getting bad grades (most of the time)
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That's completely wrong.
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Just imagine trying to be a parent of a kid for 6 years of them being rowdy and disobedient, then take that time, extend it to be your entire career, and have no meaningful way to punish the kids other than removing the problem for a day
Most teaching jobs are pretty stressful if you're in a public school, but on the other hand, it doesn't give you an excuse to do a bad job, it just means you're justified in cracking out a cold one at the end of the week
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That's not how it works.
Both my sisters are teachers, and I can tell you second hand it is fucking MISERABLE.
they have no power. Thier students can do whatever the fuck they like, throw a fucking tantrum about having to actually work, and she can't even fail them because of NCLB.
If they fail a student, the school gets less money form the government. Ergo, the school artificially passes students so they can move on. This means she has 6th graders reading at a 3rd grade level and she has no power to send them back.
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A lot of what that guy has to say seems to boil down to "Just be glad you have a job" which I think is a dangerous attitude for workers to start accepting. Once they got you going down that slippery slope they'll get you to accept more and more reductions in your quality of life.
Teachers have to control and 'teach' other people's children, how much more stressful can a job be? Most of those complaining parents can't control their own kids and they might only have two or three at the most.
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I can't be a teacher because if a kid starts complaining or acting up or some shit I'll probably just snap and pick up the kid and slam him on the ground and punch his face until he bleeds
and that'll probably get me fired
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The only reason teachers are 'stressesed' is because somewhere along the way they get tired of teaching and treat their students like shit.
Students - even first or second graders - know when a person just doesn't care anymore and simply goes to teach everyday for her monthly paycheck. A lot of teachers tend to have conservative teaching methods which do not work and are counter-productive. They still assume that 'memorizing test assignments' will teach you things. It doesn't and never has.
It's far better to teach in unorthodox methods which stimulates a students mind. Takes them out of the mundane everyday life of school. If teachers treat their students with real respect and not just empty-headed cattle to stick information in then the students will treat them with the same amount of respect. Some will even look forward to the class and some might even start enjoying school altogether.
Teaching is only as stressful as you make it to be. Teachers arent the only ones at fault here however, because the entire educational system is outdated, ineffective, useless and is dictated by old fucks who are out-of-touch with the current generation - worldwide.
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most don't really think that they'll have to work (well they do, but they just don't think about it until it's way too late), and consequently they don't really care for their education as much as they should
plus even if you do try and work really hard people might single you out for it, as retarded as that sounds, and that can make a potentially successful student get terrible marks because they're afraid of what their brick-headed friends will think
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You don't get to pick the kids.
Sometimes you get a a group of ungrateful spoiled pricks and realize all your dreams about teaching the right way are completely wrong.
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Just because he had it worse, it doesn't mean that modern teachers aren't justified in their own struggles.
Telling them to sit back and take it because someone had it worse is dickish.
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For the majority of teachers they have a well rounded class with a minority of problem children, some unlucky ones however have a class of nightmares and can't deal with them due to inexperience, I can attest to this as in my school days I seen many younger female teachers brought to tears.
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it's basically a mix of this and everything else Marbalo brought up, meaning there's only one or two reasonably successful teachers in a decent-sized UK school because of the constant barrage of pitfalls that you have to work around
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Stress is completely relative to a person and anybody who thinks otherwise is an ignorant cunt.
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Then you have to adapt. You have to understand the way those 'ungrateful pricks' see the world around them and then use that to keep them under control and peak their attention so some level of mutual respect is formed. Once said mutual respect is established they'll be willing to learn whatever it is you are teaching.
Unless you're talking about Detroit-level of schools in which case I wouldnt really consider that a school in the first place. More like a place that kids go to hang out and chill.
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You have to remember not all students are the same. Some students respond much better to some methods than others. I don't claim to be an expert, but I thinks it's more complicated than you're making it out to be.
Also, it sems you guys are relating more to highschool experiences. Teaching Kindergarden deals with very different problems than 12th grade.
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chances are if you get a bad class in a bad school then you're gonna be dealing with a lot of stress because the group mentality of a bunch of kids (who on their own might not be very bad) is to mess around and make trouble or do stupid stuff to impress friends.
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In my experience, even teachers with a nightmare class can still be effective if a minority are actually paying attention. In my sophomore (10th year) biology class about 80% of the class was constantly talking during lectures or being sent out of class for disruption. Because I actually worked hard, and payed attention to her, my teacher gave me a lot of slack if forgot my homework, or left a book in my locker, not to mention being trusted to actually come back to class after going to the bathroom.
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Teaching IS stressful as hell. You're paid next to nothing to spend the entire day dealing with teenagers. I can't really think of a more stressful job that's still considered 'civilian'.
Maybe Britian's teachers get paid signiifcantly more than America's, idunno. Never talked to a british teacher. And yet they have to put up with the most stress inducing demographic on this planet for 9 or 10 hours at a time. You couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher because of that alone.
Doesn't work, and these things just make them resent you and make your time even worse. Teenagers are pricks and will make your life hell if you try to get them to do something they don't want to do. If I were somehow convinced to be a teacher I wouldn't assign homework at all. Kids don't want to do it and aren't going to learn shit from it anyway, why waste their time and mine with it?
You're forgetting to factor in how fucking dickish kids tend to be. They don't want to be there so they're not going to want to cooperate, and every class gets at least one asshat in it.
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And this constant adaptation and thinking is stressful because otherwise the students won't care.
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You're forgetting why they dont want to be there in the first place.
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"people give DBS shit all the time but he's really a good guy and i'm glad he's my friend" -no one
March 2009
17,012 Posts
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Ofstead can fuck off, they have taken so long to haul their asses round to my school that it has delayed our study leave.
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Too true.
This kinda changed my views on teaching. I think most people thought the complaints were legit without doubting it.
To be a teacher you certainly need to like your job. It's one of those jobs you need to like in order to perform it properly. I am sure many complaints are legit though. I've witnessed them first hand seeing teachers struggle to implement the new teaching standard forced upon school by law all while being short on hands and motivation.
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Obviously, they need this guy again.
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The Union Jack would look a shit ton better with a Hammer and Sickle in the middle of it
November 2007
6,743 Posts
opinions on teaching by people who have never taught in their lives
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