Anonymous wrote:I think there are teachers who truly love their work - but things are different than when we were kids...

the school schedule was more forgiving

there were no active shooter drills

IEPs are far more common and need attention

more moms work - there is less unpaid labor helping with making copies or setting up for events

kids are generally more tolerant of each other, but it's also easier to be a bully

attention spans are shorter

there's less respect for authority and less parental involvement

kids don't read as much as they did before

kindergarten is more like first grade, some school districts let kids start a year late, creating a divide in the early grades

it's easy to exploit young teachers who are more likely to leave teaching

and it goes on and on and on

the bolded are true everywhere but i am skeptical of the rest. that will all depend heavily on the district and the socioeconomic distribution. districts with mostly rich kids are very different from districts with mostly poor kids, and both are very different from districts with a uniform mixture across the strata.

I think there are teachers who truly love their work - but things are different than when we were kids...

the school schedule was more forgiving

there were no active shooter drills

IEPs are far more common and need attention

more moms work - there is less unpaid labor helping with making copies or setting up for events

kids are generally more tolerant of each other, but it's also easier to be a bully

attention spans are shorter

there's less respect for authority and less parental involvement

kids don't read as much as they did before

kindergarten is more like first grade, some school districts let kids start a year late, creating a divide in the early grades

it's easy to exploit young teachers who are more likely to leave teaching

and it goes on and on and on

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I started twenty years ago, I could get my work done in 40 or 45 hours a week. I had balance.

I work 7 days a week now. It never ends. I’m always grading papers, responding to emails, and revising lessons. If I’m awake, I’m working or thinking about the work that needs to get done.

The demands of the job have grown exponentially.

As a parent, I also felt we have to enrich so much outside school. Somehow it is very exhausting to be parent in this country.

100%

Ability grouping in elementary school would make it easier to teach. But teachers unions are oddly opposed to it. It's racist or classist or something. So now you have mixed ability classrooms where some kids are 3 grade levels ahead and some are 3 grade levels behind.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids school has no homework and teachers get a daily planning/work period of over an hour a day. I have no idea how they claim they are working so many extra hours. Standing around talking, I guess.

It takes me 15 minutes to comment on one essay. I have 80 essays. That’s 20 hours of sustained grading for that assignment alone. They also took a test. They are easier to grade, so maybe 10 minutes each. That’s over 13 hours of sustained grading. That’s 33 hours for two assignments I collected this week, essentially a second job.

So here’s where you write back and tell me how you could do my job better. You’ll tell me not to assign work (which is why there is a current thread about high school English teachers not teaching how to write). Or you’ll tell me I should have expected that when I became a teacher (even though all I’m doing is correcting your misconception above). I’ve heard it all.

I don't know about you, but my "free" periods are often taken up by students who need help, meetings, answering parent emails, or some other issue.

Anonymous wrote:It's interesting teacher threads are always filled with teachers claiming they work 60+ hours a week, but there's always a delay in grading, sending communication, etc. 🤔

You have no idea how much BS teachers have to deal with. Learning support meetings. Team meetings. Grade level meetings. Department meetings. Curriculum change meetings. Faculty professional development. If you're at a private school, teachers often have to run clubs, attend games and faculty events, and coach.

Parents ARE ungrateful.

Admin is a nightmare, unless you are lucky and have a supportive and lovely admin. Even then, usually their hands are tied.

My mentee was just diagnosed with a chronic condition. Her ability to continue teaching full time would be possible if she was allowed to switch classes with a willing colleague. We’ve been told it cannot be done.

She is not a new teacher, just new to our system. She doesn’t have enough sick leave and doesn’t qualify yet for sick bank. She is not allowed to reduce her course load by half either.

Anonymous wrote:Teaching seems like on the worst jobs right now. The kids suck, the parents suck, the pay sucks, the admin sucks.

For me, it’s the severe lack of work/life balance. I can deal with the rest of that.

Teaching seems like on the worst jobs right now. The kids suck, the parents suck, the pay sucks, the admin sucks.

Anonymous wrote:There is a percentage of teachers who aggrandize their grievances and for some reason, think their complaints are unique. They give teachers a bad name.

We all know it's a hard job, it's thankless, that you work more hours than you are paid for, that you don't get paid enough, and your clients can be challenging.

All of this is true of MOST jobs.

Is it, though? Certainly not among private school parents, which is where this thread was originally posted.

Anonymous wrote:No textbooks. Too much standardized testing. No real disciplinary options so kids don’t have to behave. Crowded classrooms. Kids are device/screen zombies. Parents aren’t on the teachers’ side the way they used to be. Too much is done online.

Kids don’t read. Curriculum doesn’t involve real writing instruction in most instances (my DC’s AP English language class is an absolute joke). Some instruction modules are antiquated so why should kids care? (How many different grades do they learn about, say, ancient Egypt?!)

No textbooks is fine. This isn’t 1985.

Anonymous wrote:There is a percentage of teachers who aggrandize their grievances and for some reason, think their complaints are unique. They give teachers a bad name.

We all know it's a hard job, it's thankless, that you work more hours than you are paid for, that you don't get paid enough, and your clients can be challenging.

All of this is true of MOST jobs.

I don’t see this.

I see teachers explaining the realities of the job, and then I see some posters rejecting those realities.

I also don’t see teachers saying they have it harder than others. They are saying they have it hard, and that’s okay.

If you want a thread about your hard and thankless job, nobody is stopping you from starting one. I’ll even visit it and write something supportive. But this thread is about teachers and their experiences. That’s why you see grievances here. And it’s okay for teachers to respond.

There is a percentage of teachers who aggrandize their grievances and for some reason, think their complaints are unique. They give teachers a bad name.

We all know it's a hard job, it's thankless, that you work more hours than you are paid for, that you don't get paid enough, and your clients can be challenging.

All of this is true of MOST jobs.

Anonymous wrote:Because they think they deserve a lot more money and respect than the job actually calls for.

Speaking for the other 95 percent of humanity, I think teachers deserve a lot more money and respect for the job of educating children. But alas, we have conservative cretins like above and progressive morons with their agendas, which combined make teaching effectively nearly impossible. The right wing and left wing ideologues make things very difficult. It'd be an awesome day if common sense ever makes an appearance again.