So these are linked to teaching. I know most of you on here are wonderful enlightened people but I thought I'd try and make light of some difficult elements of life in the teaching profession.
1. IT. IS. NOT. A NINE. TO. THREE.JOB. Make me repeat that and you may regret it.
2. I am not sitting at my desk marking whilst little darlings get on with their work quietly. I am preventing World War 2 every three minutes, trying to get blood out of a stone, soothing hurt feelings, searching for the missing pencil sharpener for the nth time, reading minds as well as trying to teach and help individuals.
3. "Yeh, but you get long holidays,". Yes, and if I didn't get those holidays I WOULD DIE!
4. "The summer holiday is too long." I don't understand this one. Well, I do, for full-time working parents and the difficulties and costs of childcare but seriously THEY, the children, do need it. They are a wreck at the end of term and actually they need that long break in the summer. I do too-it's the only holiday in which you really can switch off for a while and feel totally human. After you've spent days clearing out your classroom, passing on assessment data, filling in end of year assessment data, filing everything you didn't have time to file earlier, changing classroom, doing INSET day or two, then planning for next term.
5. You cannot just use your plans from last year. You may think we just reuse last year's one but no, goalposts are moved every year, every new government has some bright idea about what else must be crammed into a day and children are different.
6. I am not there to solely teach your child how to behave, parents- I am there to reinforce and model what you should have started!!! (True fact- one parent told a friend that it was her job to teach her child how to behave, not hers)
7. Children are germ-pools. If I am off sick, it is because I have been breathed over by germy children, had to hold snotty hands and subjected to more cold strains than an Antarctic wind. I am not being a layabout. I will get ill and I might, God forbid, have to take a day off to try and recover. It is no good teaching when 31 relentless people need your undivided attention. Yet why do I feel utterly wretched and guilty about trying to get better?
8. Children will vomit over your shoes. Yes, that has happened to me.
9. I will fret over every lesson in which something didn't go perfectly thinking I am the worst teacher ever. We do care and want to do our best.
10. I detest papiermache and rubbish junk instrument making. Make me make cereal box string violins (they doesn't work- it will ALWAYS collapse!)with your child and 30 others and I will cry ! That said, I will make things that sound acoustically good! If you want to make amazing junk instruments have a look at the Land filharmonic orchestra that Denise posted about! Now THAT is amazing junk instrument-making.
11. If you think your report doesn't show enough detail, believe you me, if I were allowed to, I would write MUCH more- but I am restricted for conciseness and a page limit! There's only so much about your child's full development in an entire year I can write in a small section without sending you to sleep!
I do love my job but there are some people that don't quite get the difficulties! Hope you see the tongue-in-cheek nature of this as well as a few genuine difficulties that we face!
xxx