My Experiences and Advice

I have to support BNibbles in his honest opinion. As an escapee from the profession, I know that every word he utters is true. After many years in industry, I went into secondary education as a teacher of mathematics, remembering the disciplined learning environment of my days at school. What a shock, shootings, stabbings, vandalism to staff cars and property, theft, lies and numerous assaults on staff, and that was just my first year. "It'll take you a couple of years to settle in" I was told when I first arrived, so I slogged it out and worked hard at controlling the thugs that I was blessed with each day, looking forward to the day when it got easier. ...  Read the complete review

I am writing this as the wife of a newly qualified teacher. My husband had had a good job in the computing industry and gave it all up to follow his dreams of becoming a teacher. I look on from the outside at what teaching involves these days. I myself was a teacher a long time ago and I can see that it has changed a lot in the last decade. Let me first of all dispel a few myths. I get quite annoyed at times when people make these comments. 1) Teachers have long holidays. How often have I heard this well in some ways it is true they do have quite a lot of holidays 6 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks at Easter and Christmas and 3 further weeks. ...  Read the complete review

This might well be one of the toughest opinions I have ever written. I would like to write the definitive op for this section, but am worried that I will be caught up in a whirl of subjectivity. So please, please bear with me. The other thing that I would like to be is utterly professional, as befits someone in the teaching profession, so I will state now that if I mention the name of any school it will be fictitious, as will the name of any pupil that I mention. Teaching is one of those strange jobs, you know? It used to have the status as being one of the 'professions', but over the years its status has been subject to continual erosion by governmental ...  Read the complete review

I got so carried away in the "useful qualifications" category that I ended up having to chop off half of the original review as I started digressing into "experience and advice". Then I found this category - hurray! I used to love teachers who would digress. The best ones were the ones who never seemed to embark upon teaching their subject at all, and yet somehow you learnt more in their classes than anywhere else! Let me tell you my background. I don't have forty years experience in teaching. I haven't travelled the world, fought with savage beasts, played the Gamalan with Balinese tribes and then brought my experiences back ...  Read the complete review