Teachers have to contend with soul sapping Ofsted inspections, violent, rude and disrespectful little thugs and their unemployed, aggressive parents, who all seem to know their 'rights' but not their responsibilities and a complete lack of gratitude from the outside world, who think that teachers complain too much and get too many holidays.
I've spent some time reading blogs from established teachers, all of whom describe life in a state school as a war, one which the teachers are steadily losing, as their mortal enemies, the pupils gain more and more power over them, helped by incompetent Senior Management Teams. Their blogs are riddled with stories of assault, incompetence and lies. Links to these blogs can be found on the sidebar to the right.
Faced with this endless stream of negativity you would forgive me if I threw up my hands in desperation and withdrew my application, but I'm not going to. Not because I'm naïve or idealistic, not because I don't believe that all this stuff won't affect me, but because I know that somehow all this negativity is worth it. Frank Chalk, Old Andrew and Ranting Teacher are all teachers or former teachers, they care deeply about the profession, about their colleagues, the subjects they teach and their students. This tells me that there is essentially something positive and worthwhile about teaching and I'm looking forward to discovering this for myself.
5 comments:
Great post!
But don't you mean, on the sidebar to the right?
Thanks for the plug. As I often have to point out when I get a hostile reaction to my blog:
- I complain about what teachers put up with because it can be better and I believe we can make it better if we admit to (and publicise) the problems
- I remain a eacher because I want to do my part to make a difference and because I do get to make a difference even in the current mess
- I write about it because I care about what happens to teachers and believe they are better off knowing what they are going to face and knowing that it's not their fault
The pay-off I get from my blog is the teachers who reply to say "I'm glad I read this. I thought it was just me." It is perhaps an irony that although I write about how bad teaching is, I do get responses telling me that what I wrote helped encourage them to stay in teaching.
Or to put it another way: you are more likely to win a fight if you aren't caught by surprise.
Well good luck with the application an' all! Good for you, wanting to swim amongst the sharks... ;-) As I'm sure I mention somewhere amongst all the verbal chaos, my blog is all about letting off steam... of course nice things happen too, but then I'd have to call myself something other than Ranting Teacher...!
I think you're right Razzler - changed it!
Love your blog, and this post especially. I'm so thankful for folk like you - as I am the mother of four school aged kids!
I have several friends who are teachers, and my mum was, but I just know I couldn't do it. I used to help with Sunday School and it was the longest half hour of my week!
I have various teacher friends, one of whom I see every week and whom I tell, often, "Give me 500 bad men any day!" (I work in prisons!)
Good luck with your applications and the next chapter of your adventure.
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