Is the secondary teaching situation as dire as it's made out to be?

Good to know! Thank you for the responses, really helpful stuff. Shadowing in schools is a great idea but I currently work full time so would struggle to get in, might have to play it by ear and try to coincide it with holidays! Thanks again

I feel your pain, spurious, and I've noticed this too. We lost a quite brilliant Irish teacher recently precisely because of this. A young guy, full of energy, beautiful spoken Irish and very popular with students. The management, without any concern for mental health issues, just filled his timetable with the toughest classes while the more "political" staff members, who in most cases were not capable of teaching effectively, got a variety of waffle jobs in the school. Coasting it. Far too many principals expecting teachers to behave honourably and get stuck in, when in reality the principal is taking advantage of certain staff who can actually teach by giving them the toughest classes again and again. Above all else, it really pulverises energy levels, and saps goodwill. You have nothing else to give. Just floored, crawling towards the next break. In the past six months I witnessed a female teacher have a breakdown and it was an awfully sad sight that nobody (that I talk to anyway) talks about. Again, she was given the toughest classes. Year after year after year.

There are so many elements to this, too. "Department resources", while in early career it might be a place to show off your workrate, in reality it's another outlet for dishonourable ethics by school management. The subject teacher who is streets ahead of the other ones is often, if not usually, carrying them. The "shared resources" often amounts to one teacher with superb notes - and by superb notes, I'm really focusing on that private time, that is never coming back, the working teacher used to create those resources - keeping the whole standard up. The principal watches the department standard improve and his options for the timetable improve, which is what he/she wants, because the lazy and less effective teachers are now using the resources, and teaching techniques, the working teacher created. The teacher who does the work gets no credit, and the principal's "encouraging professional development" box can be ticked at the expense of that teacher and of course the poor students who are thrown to the wolves. It's no wonder that the harder working teachers with more experience are generally much more hostile to the idea of having "shared resources" in an electronic format.

And to top it all, and this is incredible to me, the entire system actually gives no financial or career incentive for an effective teacher to stay teaching. All the financial and status incentives are to leave the actual classroom teaching. Everybody, no matter how inspiring and effective they are as a teacher, is financially incentivised to get out of teaching and go into some school admin role. And that says more than anything else about how concerned the Department of Education is about teaching standards. In all the "reform" talk, the existence of inspiring, passionate and effective teachers does not, in fact, feature - and the absence of incentives to keep them teaching is the firmest evidence of that. They could create a system where incompetent teachers are encouraged to leave classroom teaching and competent ones are encouraged to stay in classroom teaching. Instead, incompetent teachers are encouraged to leave for better-paid school admin jobs, while the fact that an effective teacher is effective would go against her/him in promotion as the school wouldn't want to lose them from the actual teaching staff. A genuine fair play to you for having the courage to go. Life is too short.

I haven't been in your situation of having classes of outlaws, but I'm currently in the process of getting out too. I never really had much difficulty with classes but more and more I find the constant extra demands on my time unmanageable. We are filling in copious 'meaningful' reports all year where we're not allowed to say anything overtly negative. We're told we all have to do the same texts at the same time but we are given no time for planning. Every new 'initiative' invented by somebody with their eye on an AP1 eats into another little bit of time. We are constantly chasing our tails to cover our arses (nice image there!) with regards to somebody's hysterical interpretation of GDPR or child protection guidelines or a ridiculous WSE report. We are expected to be available online around the clock. In fact, this online availability has probably had the biggest impact on my decision to get out.

I would be able to get over it if it was was in any way productive or helpful but the vast majority of the extra busy work we have to do is utterly pointless. It's all just in case somebody points a hypothetical finger and says "You should have...." and we can brandish an email and say "We did...technically!" It all detracts the the time and energy I have for my classes. Unfortunately it looks more and more and more like the least important thing you can do, the least significant contribution you can make, is show up and teach your classes. If you're not winning competitions or getting your mug in the paper you're dead weight.

Anyway, I'm going to job-share next year and hopefully get out the following year. It'll take me at least that long to get my plan B off the ground. I can't afford to job-share but I don't really have a choice. If I don't do something I know I'm going to keep driving some morning, right past the school. I'm trying to manage it all without burning any bridges.

Yeah thanks. The problem is my failure to kick ass.

Unfortunately I don’t have the LC Irish for Primary teaching so it wouldn’t be an option for me. Disheartening to hear but I did somewhat expect those subjects to be thinner on the ground than the core subjects, to be honest I was hoping the JC Business would give a leg up but I suppose every LC Economics teacher can teach it!

Just saw a History job on a VTOS scheme on Educationposts.ie for LouthMeath ETB. It was for 4.5 hours, covering a maternity leave. Or, rather, it was a vacancy to be put on a panel where 4.5 hours per week of teaching might appear at some stage.

The application form is 14-pages long, ten pages of which have to be filled out with specific information and examples for that specific 4.5-hour possible post. Here's the application form (E448): http://www.etbjobs.ie/index.cfm/section/job_results/

These complete pisstakers and dossers in LMETB deserve nothing but contempt for this. Ironically, Norma Foley is on RTÉ Radio 1 this minute talking about the shortage of teachers and the difficulty they have recruiting teachers. What a joke, disconnected, system bristling with disrespect and contempt for job-seeking teachers. Now, will any journalist highlight these miserable hours and these pfo application forms?

Anyone get the sense the Bull5h1t Buzzword Bingo is on the way back.

I wonder how some brilliant teachers I had decades ago survived without "the latest and greatest thing in education is taking the world by storm". We're they all really that deficient without these teaching methods, would Socrates himself feel humbled in the presence of facilitator greatness during a JCT cluster meeting?