The Exasperated Teacher Blog UK

Sometimes, when you rant and ramble on about how hard teaching is and why it is the worst job in the world, it’s difficult to see the positive reasons why teaching is so amazing.

1. Making a difference.

In my many classes, I had quite a few children who didn’t deserve my time and effort. Despite my greatest efforts, it was just a losing battle so you have to remember to focus on the ones for whom the time is worth it. The ones who appreciate the lengths you go to in order to help them achieve their full potential. The ones who when you put the time and effort in, it really makes a difference – and it’s blatantly obvious too. Sometimes, they don’t want anyone to know how much support they need or get, but they understand how much work goes into their education so their effort matches yours. They have their off days where they just can’t be bothered, much like every teacher, but they still show up and work hard – no matter what.

2. Abundance of love.

If teaching has taught me anything, it’s that children have the capacity to love others in a relentless way. They might not show it all of the time, but they do. Even when I’ve spent the last ten minutes telling my class of 10-11year old pupils that they need to stop being so mean to each other, stop ignoring instructions, stop stirring the pot and spreading rumours that aren’t true, stop defying expectations and to actually grow up for once and face the responsibilities they have as the oldest children in school. Seconds later, they are smiling happily to each other, being kind to each other, using manners and showing the love and respect they once shared at the start of the academic year. And even when they’ve had the biggest fall outs between friends, once everything has settled, they love each other like nothing even happened. Often it leaves me lost for words how they can revert back to being friends so quickly. Most of the time, I struggle to keep up with who is friends and who is not. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow – as they say.

3. An amazing team.

I’ve been lucky in my career, to work within amazing teams. From teaching partners to teaching assistants and sometimes parents – teamwork really does make the dream work. And when everyone on the team pulls their own weight too… the hard work is worth all the laughs and tears along the way.

I do feel like in my final year of teaching, my hard work was wasted because it wasn’t producing the results certain people wanted to see. But then I remember the people closest time knew that my hard work wasn’t a waste and I should have listened to them more to have that self belief.

4. Christmas, Easter and Summer.

Some ok most teachers do moan about how the Christmas, Easter and summer breaks aren’t all hunky dory relaxing with our feet up. There is some days during these times (some weeks during the summer) where we spend time doing work for school – planning, resource making, display creating, reorganising loads of different things, writing reports etc but for the most part, yes we do relax and unwind – and rightfully so! We spend every waking moment teaching in one way or another, we should be allowed to spend 2 weeks of the summer on a glorious holiday without any work to do – but I can guarantee that the teacher will still be thinking about school things (for the first week of that holiday at least!).

5. The little gifts.

These gifts might not be expensive or elaborate. They are little, tiny handmade or recently discovered gifts to show a child’s true feelings. Whether it be a little torn piece of paper with illegible handwriting declaring that you are the best teacher ever, or a bunch of squished and wilting daisies picked from the field at lunch… a pebble, a piece of plastic that has been worn away to look like a heart or another random shape. A fresh baked fairy cake with erratic translucent icing and wonky sweets stuck on top, or a picture of you that they spent only a few minutes creating but let’s be honest, they could have been watching TV or winding their parents up something chronic but instead they spent a few moments of their time at home, thinking about you. They cannot give you much in the way of gifts, but they can give you a piece of their heart. A gift that lets you know that they appreciate you and think of you when you’re not there. Sometimes it is all that a child in your class can give you. Sometimes they will come into school the next week with the exciting news that they got a pet bearded dragon over the weekend and they’ve named it after you! 🙈 (True Story!)

Unfortunately all of these reasons and so many more could not keep me in teaching for my tenth year and I have since left the profession to seek a healthier work:life balance.

I hold so many fond and embarrassing memories of my teaching time near and dear to my heart and will endeavour to share them, and remember them, on here as and when I can.

This isn’t “goodbye”. It is simply “Goodbye for now,” as you never know what the future holds and I firmly believe that once a teacher, always a teacher! ☺️