I grew up the daughter of two teachers. My aunties are teachers. My uncles are teachers. And now my brothers are teachers.
And here is what I have learned.
Do not have a conversation with someone who is a teacher from mid November until the end of the school term unless you want to be yelled at for no reason because they are going to be grumpy as f*ck.
Listen: A teacher shares all her secrets on This Glorious Mess. (Post continues below…)
Dad has been whinging about the pool for four days now (it’s unclear what the problem is), and mum is screaming at the oven every hour or so. This is typical late term four behaviour.
My brothers are speaking only in groans, and my aunties and uncles just keep repeating the word ‘tired’.
At this point of the school year, teachers are tired in their soul.
According to my extensive research, here are the thoughts every teacher in Australia is having right now:
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“Goddamn. I hope they learned something off me this year…”
“That kid definitely didn’t. Jesus, it’s November and he’s still holding his books upside down.”
Top Comments
Oh. I love teaching at this time of year. It's finally warmer weather, classroom schedules can relax a smidge. I love sitting with my students doing some Christmas craft and chatting with them. The trick is to keep the activities meaningful and not drop the ball with behaviour management and the end of year is a really nice time. Yes there's definitely report writing and cleaning up stress but for me its balanced out with the good things. Although I am a Primary School teacher, not sure I'd feel the same way with High School kids!
Yep, that pretty much sums it up.
The morass that is end of year marking and report writing, plus getting organised for next year, plus kids turning feral (im looking at you year 8), plus the directives from above to "make sure they are doing lots of extended writing to prepare them for next year" (ie what we do all freakin year) is absolutely exhausting!!