Teachers are a funny breed

We all had them, the nerdy bloke with elbow patches or the old spinster with tweed skirts, in fact some of us had both teaching us in our distant past. Teachers are a different breed in some ways. Many would struggle out of the educational system – you are more likely to find these people in the traditional public school, as a house tutor or whatever. They get their bills and accommodation provided and are very self-sufficient, filling their holiday time with research or visiting places of historical interest.

Not all teachers are like the “Mr Chips” described above, and some have a lot to say for themselves (I’m one, obviously). The trouble is that when something major happens to their working conditions lots of teachers moan. Pension contributions, having to teach extra lessons for no extra pay or being bullied by senior staff (a more common occurrence than you may think) the average teacher will say a lot about it to people who don’t matter (eg. Friends and colleagues) but nothing to people who do matter (i.e. their union or senior staff).

It’s funny but most teachers just grin and bear it, not wanting to rock the boat. Some unions will strike, but all they end up doing is giving a day’s pay to the local authority that employs them. The best form of protest in my opinion for any teacher would be the “work to rule” policy.

Teachers are contracted for 1265 hours per year that include lessons and meetings. If staff just stuck to their hours and refused to do anything else, the whole system would collapse. When do you think most of the fun activities that children remember get planned? In a teacher’s free time, that’s when. And that free time is not being financially rewarded, only professionally rewarded with a child thanking you for the experience.

A lot of teachers will say that they do the job for those occasional students who really appreciate a lesson or lessons. Most of the thanks won’t come whilst the teacher teaches the child but afterwards when they realise the hard work that (most) teachers put in.

Increased pressure on teachers (league tables/results and Ofsted) means that teachers are bogged down in meaningless stuff rather than planning memorable lessons. Teaching is a bit like acting. A colleague once said to me this:

“We are selling them a product they don’t want in general, so it’s our personality that sells it.”

A tired teacher will struggle to sell that product purely because they haven’t got the energy to do so. So if government, local authorities and senior management want to get better results then they need to stop bothering teachers with new initiatives that will just die a death in a couple of years. Just leave them to teach, with energy and enthusiasm that may rub off on a child and therefore get the grades those targets the people in suits are so desperate for.