Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Returning to this thread:

If you read the first 20-odd pages, there are a lot of people saying that indeed teachers do work hard. The first few posts are about how people DO, in fact, acknowledge how hard teachers work.

There are a couple of posters who did poop on teachers, true.

There were also posters that said, "hey we are all overworked." (Which is not saying that teachers AREN'T overworked, its' saying other people are overworked as well.)

There are also a couple of teachers who are ridiculously dug in to the narrative that they have the hardest job ever (worse apparently than poop scuba divers).

Oh yeah, there's the "parents suck" teacher as well, who always chimes in to just keep everything positive.

This is just a summary so no one thinks this entire thread is just "teachers have easy jobs."

Yet there are plenty of posts that refuse to acknowledge that teaching can be demanding, and the tired “but summers” argument is the usual go-to.

There are staggering misconceptions about teaching throughout this thread. I wouldn’t presume to know what it’s like to be a doctor or a “poop scuba diver,” but it’s clearly okay to assume what teaching is like. We’ve all been in classrooms, after all. We’ve all seen teachers in our daily lives. I guess that makes all of us on this thread clear experts in the education field. Sigh.

+1 It's like thinking that owning a car makes you an expert mechanic.

But don’t you understand? Having been students in the 80s/90s makes them experts on teachers’ jobs in 2023. Not enough eyeroll emojis in the world.

Sweetcheeks, can you maybe respond to the flow of a thread, versus responding to individual posts from days ago, all in succession? I mean, I'm happy that at least you didn't do it at 3am this time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Has anybody claimed this on this thread? Or are teachers simply asking for acknowledgement that it IS a hard job?

As for showing little respect, your post does a good job of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Returning to this thread:

If you read the first 20-odd pages, there are a lot of people saying that indeed teachers do work hard. The first few posts are about how people DO, in fact, acknowledge how hard teachers work.

There are a couple of posters who did poop on teachers, true.

There were also posters that said, "hey we are all overworked." (Which is not saying that teachers AREN'T overworked, its' saying other people are overworked as well.)

There are also a couple of teachers who are ridiculously dug in to the narrative that they have the hardest job ever (worse apparently than poop scuba divers).

Oh yeah, there's the "parents suck" teacher as well, who always chimes in to just keep everything positive.

This is just a summary so no one thinks this entire thread is just "teachers have easy jobs."

Yet there are plenty of posts that refuse to acknowledge that teaching can be demanding, and the tired “but summers” argument is the usual go-to.

There are staggering misconceptions about teaching throughout this thread. I wouldn’t presume to know what it’s like to be a doctor or a “poop scuba diver,” but it’s clearly okay to assume what teaching is like. We’ve all been in classrooms, after all. We’ve all seen teachers in our daily lives. I guess that makes all of us on this thread clear experts in the education field. Sigh.

+1 It's like thinking that owning a car makes you an expert mechanic.

But don’t you understand? Having been students in the 80s/90s makes them experts on teachers’ jobs in 2023. Not enough eyeroll emojis in the world.

I suspect this is a big part of the problem on this thread. Unless you teach, you have no idea what the job is really like. There’s a good reason teachers are quitting in droves: the pace and the conditions aren’t sustainable. You have to give up all work/life balance to get it all done, and people are increasingly refusing to do that.

The anti-teacher posters on this thread will continue to discredit the fact real problems exist within this profession. Nothing will change their minds, which were likely made up when they were teenagers seeing only a fraction of the work their own teachers performed.

To add to that, anyone who graduated >20 years ago, which I suspect is a significant number of posters on this forum, has no idea what it’s like in schools now that funding is tied to discipline referrals or lack thereof, graduation rates and passing test scores.

That's a great point. I think that calls for reform are most effective when they focus on how the profession has changed in terms of administrative workload, student challenges, discipline, and any other issue that makes teaching unsustainable rather than general statements about how overworked and underpaid teachers are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

Did you even read the pp? That is exactly what was being argued.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

Did you even read the pp? That is exactly what was being argued.

You mean the facetious “full stop” comment? No, that wasn’t an argument. That was a mockery of teachers who tried to illustrate the challenges of their profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

Did you even read the pp? That is exactly what was being argued.

You mean the facetious “full stop” comment? No, that wasn’t an argument. That was a mockery of teachers who tried to illustrate the challenges of their profession.

The fact that you thought that was a mockery suggests you don't value teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

Did you even read the pp? That is exactly what was being argued.

You mean the facetious “full stop” comment? No, that wasn’t an argument. That was a mockery of teachers who tried to illustrate the challenges of their profession.

The fact that you thought that was a mockery suggests you don't value teachers.

On the contrary. I am a teacher and I took offense. It clearly was mocking the many attempts made on this thread (by me and by others) to demonstrate the challenges currently facing teachers. It was an attempt to shut down conversation by making us look dramatic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

Don’t forget American Greetings pointed out the world’s toughest job involves being a psychologist, teacher, accountant, janitor etc all for free: motherhood

Trolling aside, I actually think the world’s toughest job is being a grunt on the front lines: being shot at, having to sleep in shifts in all manner of conditions, coming back home with PTSD, being unemployable and having no one understand.

Actually world’s toughest job is probably in a different country, not America. In America itself maybe day laborer.

What should we award those who win the most toughest job contest? Acknowledgment and consideration? Why can’t we just do that without the fight? Many of us have had some rough years. Many of us are having though times. Just because we get time off during summer break or suffer conference calls from home doesn’t mean the small luxuries make life easy. We should, like France, be able to make demands of our leadership to make life more livable. But we don’t need to turn on each other

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Nurses and nurse assistants have overburdened jobs that aren’t necessarily paid well. Add on to that the knowledge that if you make a mistake, someone could die. If teachers make a mistake, they get to try again tomorrow.

And don't forget the underpaid overworked farmers and immigrant labor workers who have no unions and no say in the hours they have to put in or how they are treated. These workers have social safety net if they get sick or injured. They work or their family starves-now that’s stress.

Police, firefighters, military workers all have overburdened, underpaid jobs coupled with high mortality rates. Thankfully is still very rare for a teacher to die at work.

Teachers get to work in a mostly air conditioned room with seats, scheduled breaks, health insurance, and guaranteed income with the added bonus of the opportunity to affect lives and mold future generations. Sure the job is hard, but the hardest in the world? Not even close.

And again…
The gist of this thread is that teaching is HARD, not that it is the HARDEST. It seems any time a teacher tries to explain the challenges of the job, the efforts are shot down by people who (presumably) have little knowledge of the profession.

You spent a lot of time to argue against something nobody is arguing.

Did you even read the pp? That is exactly what was being argued.

You mean the facetious “full stop” comment? No, that wasn’t an argument. That was a mockery of teachers who tried to illustrate the challenges of their profession.

The fact that you thought that was a mockery suggests you don't value teachers.

On the contrary. I am a teacher and I took offense. It clearly was mocking the many attempts made on this thread (by me and by others) to demonstrate the challenges currently facing teachers. It was an attempt to shut down conversation by making us look dramatic.

IDK, any time someone did try to suggest that teachers didn't have to do XYZ or did have some benefit that other jobs didn't have, a teacher would come in and say why they DID have to do XYZ or the benefits of their job are worse than the benefits of other jobs. In that sense I can't tell if the PP "full stop" comment is mockery or not.

[Anonymous]

Plenty of jobs require hard work and long hours. I don’t think teachers work harder than many other professional careers, most of which are salaried with unlimited work hours. Teachers get every holiday (plus several days surrounding said holiday) and summer off. That is a benefit no other job has- paid or unpaid. My DH works many holidays (in addition to M-F, sometimes all weekend, but always at least some weekend work, as well and has never been able to take off more than 7 consecutive days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of jobs require hard work and long hours. I don’t think teachers work harder than many other professional careers, most of which are salaried with unlimited work hours. Teachers get every holiday (plus several days surrounding said holiday) and summer off. That is a benefit no other job has- paid or unpaid. My DH works many holidays (in addition to M-F, sometimes all weekend, but always at least some weekend work, as well and has never been able to take off more than 7 consecutive days.

Then can we agree teachers also have it hard? I also work M-F, and all weekend, just like your DH. I worked 4 full days over spring break, and even more over the last winter break. I’ll work 3-4 weeks of my 7 unpaid weeks of summer writing curriculum, recommendation letters, etc.

I don’t need people to think my job is harder. I’d be content if I could be respected for the fact it is hard. This thread is filled with people who refuse to accept that, for reasons I simply don’t understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of jobs require hard work and long hours. I don’t think teachers work harder than many other professional careers, most of which are salaried with unlimited work hours. Teachers get every holiday (plus several days surrounding said holiday) and summer off. That is a benefit no other job has- paid or unpaid. My DH works many holidays (in addition to M-F, sometimes all weekend, but always at least some weekend work, as well and has never been able to take off more than 7 consecutive days.

Then can we agree teachers also have it hard? I also work M-F, and all weekend, just like your DH. I worked 4 full days over spring break, and even more over the last winter break. I’ll work 3-4 weeks of my 7 unpaid weeks of summer writing curriculum, recommendation letters, etc.

I don’t need people to think my job is harder. I’d be content if I could be respected for the fact it is hard. This thread is filled with people who refuse to accept that, for reasons I simply don’t understand.

I think the question of this individual thread is why do we have to single out teachers for their hard work and long hours, if there are plenty of jobs that require hard work and long hours?

A big portion of comments on this thread are saying just that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys, teachers have the hardest job of all jobs. Full stop. No other job is harder or paid less. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Teachers are the most put-upon, least respected group of people everywhere.

Oh, you’re in middle school. It all makes sense now,