Monday, February 11, 2008

Onwards to glory

As part of Marj's annual assessment, she has been asked to consider whether she wants to take the extra training and exams to become a full time teacher and leave the world of Higher Level Teaching Assisstant behind.

As the schools music specialist she already does some teaching just in that subject. So she has been working on the pros and cons of moving forward.

PROS : Having a whole class to take and teach full time. The extra money. Paid holidays. (HLTAs only get paid for working time, not the 13 weeks they are on holiday). "On the job" courses rather than full time education.

CONS : The time needed to complete the course outside of the working day. The parents! (More so than the kids). But by far the worst thing is the amount of admin required to be carrried out by teachers.

That admin is what will probably put her off. Planning the lessons is okay. And if it was just marking work then she could cope. It's the assesments, the "levelling" of pupils, the follow-ups and a whole raft of other stuff she's told me about that I've forgotten.

Gone are the days when teachers just taught, marked and wrote reports. Now they must prove to the government that they can fit all the new initiatives that Westminster come up with into an already full timetable, and then be ready to scrap those next year when they change everything. They must take the blame for the deficiencies of parents in helping their children learn at home. (Parents are asked to read with their children for just 10 mins per day, but for many of the parents at her school there just isn't time to fit this into the merry-go-round of soaps and reality programmes). They are now being cited as a reason that children are obese. When children fight, if a teacher breaks the fight up they are liable to be sued, or at the least reported, should a child decide they were rough handled.

So on balance, what is probably a vocation for her, will be avoided as it is too stressful. That's why most teachers need the holidays.

2 comments:

Masher said...

I read a short story to my daughter, most nights. But, I'll readily admit there are also plenty of nights where I don't: either because I'm too tired, too busy or just had one of those days where all you want to do is get the kids into bed, so you can flop onto the sofa and vegetate in front of the telly for the rest of the night.

kennamatic said...

But at least you do it sometimes and realise it's a good thing. I hear of too many parents who want kids but then can't understand why they should interact with them at their level.