The nasty side to teaching

Is secondary teaching a lot tougher than primary teaching or are both the same ?

Seems to be something pervasive in public sector jobs where the usual supports have been removed.

I know gardai, teachers, nurses and doctors. All have said their management has opted out of providing any guidance on how to deal with any sort of sensitive subject. Zero guidance on dealing with people who have mental health issues is one.

All have been assaulted multiple times at work and nothing has been done. My friends wife is a nurse and had her jaw broken by a patient who attacked her. The patient was known to be violent but due to short staffing she was left alone.

Teaching Council is a waste of taxpayers money. The only way to get struck off is to commit a crime. They have never upheld a complaint from a parent or student, no matter how bad it was.

I'm also skeptical of their ability to check qualificatiions - I honestly think they accept anything on face value and only check if simeone complains.

Teachers have been removed from the register. Some chose to resignn from the teaching council also to avoid the hearing which would have booted them out so the stats won't show them. This loophole however was closed in the last year.

Getting registered is also notoriously painful for anyone who qualified outside Ireland.

And, finally....a waste of taxpayers money 🤣🤣🤣.... the teaching council is being funded by the annual registration fee that teachers pay.

Some of the stuff that happens in my school on a regular basis is outrageous. To the point that I mention it in a conversation a few weeks later to teacher friends in another school and they are 'you never told me that!!' and I had forgotten to tell them a particular story because I had two other outrageous stories from that week.

It's amazing what you discover when you do S&S.

Teachers with eight or nine kids in their classes while other teachers are wrangling 30 kids in every class.

Teachers with 'team teaching' classes on their timetable. When you show up to cover for them their lead teacher looks bewildered and says "Oh, I didn't know that person was supposed to be here, I always teach this class on my own."

Teachers who have demonstrated an inability to manage a subject or a class full of students so they are give a nice number giving one-to-one support to students who never show up to school. Or lots of 'SEN admin' classes, where nobody knows what they're supposed to be doing or if they're doing anything.

There's really no way to fail out of teaching. You either fail upwards or you find yourself relieved of most of your workload.

Waste of teachers hard earned cash 😄

Would be better being fully State funded to eliminate any conflicts of interest.

I haven’t come across that in my experiences of many schools at all

i would imagine sitting doing something your bored of or pigeonholed into because you’re not able to manage else where is mind numbing and drags the hell out of time.

I know a lot of teachers are disenchanted because they feel they were unjustly overlooked for posts.

I have very little interest in a post, all my unhappiness comes from the gradual erosion of everything that makes teaching a class possible.

Changes to the JC mean I have a huge course to cover (core subject) so nothing gets covered to my satisfaction. Large mixed ability classes mean nobody achieves what they should. I have 28 in my third year class and 22 have some form of additional need, some genuine and some spurious. This lowers the bar for everybody as well as creating a massive extra workload. Time that used to be spent correcting copies or preparing is now spent responding to emails or filling out pointless progress reports.

If a student wants to show up with no book, no homework done and a bad attitude and then ask to go to the toilet so they can miss 20 minutes of the lesson there's nothing I can do to compel them to stay in the room and participate. If they use their phone without permission I'm not allowed to confiscate it without involving a yearhead, most of whom are so busy they will, understandably, return the phone if they get a grudging apology rather than add to their list of parents to contact that day.

Last year, over half of my leaving cert class had attendance of less than 60% over the two years (Sept 2021 - June 2023). Apart from the usual colds and injuries, 'anxiety' accounted for a lot of absences but holidays were a very significant factor. I frequently got emails saying, "We're going on holidays, we'd appreciate it if you could put work online and we'll see that he does it." They come back with no work done. "I wasn't able to do it because you didn't explain it."

I have SNAs bustling in and out of classes taking kids for 'self-regulation' breaks, then asking me at the end of the class what they missed. Parents explaining to me why I should allow their child to submit homework in the form of a mindmap or an infographic when the task is to write an 800 word essay.

And inspectors who are inexplicably OBSESSED with whether I wrote the date on the board at the start of the lesson.

I dont think its appropriate to refer to parents/students who lodge a complaints with the TC as "cranks" - the whole reason teaching exists is for the benefit of the students.

The BOM influence on appointing people to posts of responsibility seems to be a big issue in many schools. In my wifes school its effectively a closed shop. Unless you"ve a connection with one of the BOM, you've no hope.

There was one occassion in my wife's school where a staff member brazenly told a couple of other staff who'd applied for a post nor to bother turning up for the interview as she was on a promise!

Does anybody know how, in fact, timetabling is done? I was told I am with 6 or so other teachers and that if I want to adjust my timetable they would have to change the other teachers in my group. Is that true?

It is most definitely NOT a stretch. In the vast majority of schools the interviews are rigged. I know of a school where excellent teachers of 25+ years experience are being overlooked for teachers with less than 5 years experience, and then subsequently humiliated with "advice" on how to improve after their 6th or 7th interview. Sometimes they're being interviewed by shysters in their early to mid 30s who know nothing.

The Ps and DPs who engage in this practice are sick. Not only are they stupid (as they divide their staff) but they don't give a **** about their school or their students.

You've interviewed candidates where you "know they can do the job"?. . . . Gimme a break - you make it sound as if these are posts are at NASA.

There's no full transparency as you well know. The totalling of the points is easily rigged in favour of the chosen candidate and "transparency" or appeal is only applicable if the points happened to be totalled up wrong [which given the quality of management these days is probably not a bad thing].

What I'm stating is fact. The interview panels should be brought to an end (most of you on them are onto a nice little earner btw so no wonder you're trying to portray integrity and professionalism). Seniority should be returned. It was a system that worked, a system that didn't have principals playing teachers off each other, a system which brought no backbiting and backstabbing and a system which rewarded teachers for their service and experience and not because they're the local GAA guy or known to someone on the panel.

The problem with seniority is that posts become a sinecure for worn-out teachers or lazy feckers who had 'done their time.' When seniority was an important factor in interviews there were chancers who had never taught a full week being handed year-head positions, which they proceeded to approach the same way they had approached teaching.

The current system is far from perfect but at least it's transparent. There is some effort to acknowledge merit and hard work.

I have indeed seen hard working teachers get promoted under the new system. I've also seen lazy teachers get promoted simply because they're drinking buddies of the principal. I've seen hardworking teachers who are hardworking OUTSIDE the classroom and skiving off from the job they're paid to do - TEACH. This, apparently, is what is known as "leadership". The best teachers are the hardworking ones and whilst it is the case that teachers become tired as they get older (this is inevitable for EVERY teacher) they also become more experienced.

The appointment process for AP1 and AP2 posts is just an appalling disgrace.

Come across this thread, as a parent view, when your children talk about a teacher you get a mental picture of them and like last week went to fifth year PT meeting, and they were exactly as I had them in my head, the teachers that knew the child inside out and were able to tell how they were progressing in that subject, the waffler who hadn’t got time yet to correct the last two class exams and was out with the sports teams and missed half the classes so far and was friendly with the principal, the teacher who told us her door is open at lunchtime and stays back in her class for extra hour on Wednesday and anything that student wanted to ask call. The teacher who was nervous and hadn’t much to say and the one that can’t control the class and gets very little work done and our girl’s subject she is falling behind in. Last year our other daughter done leaving cert German and we had to met the principal several times about homework being put up at 10 o’clock at night( 5 other parents also) due to the teacher being so poor and struggling to speak the language. The principal attitude was the teacher was doing so much for the school gaa teams and would look into it.