https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2024/04/01/by-friday-im-so-tired-i-can-barely-see-straight-the-rise-of-long-distance-commuting-teachers/
FFS, a major newspaper running this story just because it's a teacher. Driving 80 minutes is something many people do, but they have to do it far more days a year than a teacher will have to.
Thanks, I guess I'll never get it. I wouldn't study for a bunch of years to not be guaranteed a minimum number of hours in a job. Teaching is weird to me:-)
Teacher unions called for schools not to reopen after the Xmas of 21 heading into 2022.
Classes continued online on second level schools, are you suggesting they work for free for days already worked?
I worked in construction for over 20 years and 95% of the work was in the middle of Dublin. My commute was an hour and a half at the closest sometimes 2 hours. I had to be on site for 8 and finish at 5 sometimes 6. All I knew for years was drive, work, eat, and sleep. She's very late to the game bless her.
Teaching by zoom was a complete farce.
Let's not pretend otherwise. And the more disadvantaged the school was, the more farcical it became.
So, you are saying they should work for free and online classes, sh1tty as they were, since nothing compares to class contact time, means nothing?
Teachers don't know what hard work is.
Teachers should have been pushing for the reopening of schools and viewed education as essential, like the way a nurse/guard kept going to work.
It was particularly disgraceful the resistance of special needs teachers going back to work.
Yep. What's the point of debating a topic or discussing an issue if this is a posters response. Pointless.
They asked for additional resources to be put in place to cope with the Omicron variant, which had emerged in the weeks prior to schools reopening. This was refused. Unions expressed concern. They were ignored. And schools reopened. As I said, teachers did not shut schools at any point during the pandemic.
Would you think of becoming a teacher?
if it’s such a handy number why are none of ye doing it?
I never said teachers shut schools. They certainly weren't rushing back though were they. They even wanted to skip the queue ahead of elderly people to get the vaccine.
No regrets or remose about that either.
I'm going back to college in September but not to study teaching. Maybe a lecturer further down the line.
You’d have to question a journalist who thought it was news that a person was driving 80 minutes to work.
The teacher was exceptionally naive also, if they did not realise this article was going to make them look like a terrible moaner.
I suspect a teaching union organised the story and if they did so it was a very bad own goal. So no credit to anyone there.
Because they were working online during Covid.
Personally, if I could go back in time I would. But now I couldn’t afford to take the year or two years or however long the hdip is out and study while not working full time because it’s 20 years on and I have responsibilities. If I could slide straight into it that would be different.
No, I said that. You implied that they should truncate holidays to make up for lost time, as if it was somehow their fault.
Yeah, teachers were the only ones that werent in a rush to get back to work in the midst of a pandemic.
The public and the government were mad to get teachers back in the classroom but scoffed at the idea that they may be given some sort of priority with regards to the vaccine, even though they were in close contact with up to 150 students a day. As somebody said at the time, teaching is an essential service but teachers are not essential workers. Pretty much sums up the attitude towards the profession.
Some were, some were not - the amount of cancelled classes my son had to put up with was unbelievable.
Career Breaks are available across the public service (not sure if in every single role) . They are something you can apply for, but can be turned down. Some people take them to travel, some to work in other sectors, some to return to education, some to care for children/elderly relatives.
Speaking as someone who can't afford to take one, I find the disproportionate begrudging attitude towards career breaks hilarious. They are neither the cause nor the solution to the teacher shortage.
There are good and bad in every profession but from my secondary school experience most of my teachers were awful and for those subjects you would have been better off self learning at home. The teachers were just phoning it in.
The only thing disgraceful is your biased recollection of events. They wanted saftey measures put in place in line with other comparable workplaces.
"All I knew for years was drive, work, eat, and sleep. She's very late to the game bless her."
And you're saying that should be the norm and we should all just suck it up?
Seems to be an attitude of "I had it tough, so should everyone else"
I went to a doctor once. Does that mean I know everything there is to know about being a doctor?
Not everything, but if you were stuck in a crowded waiting room who shouldn't be fùckin amazed to see your own waiting room crowded once you become a doctor.
By biased presumably you just mean my opinion and observations.
Shop workers working with and around hundreds of people everyday.
They properly didn't have the neck to suggest skipping the queue.
If all those on up to 5 year career breaks had to return, all the temporary teachers filling in for them would be available to fill empty places.
If they are at the start of their careers they are unlikely to be buying houses so could house share
There's plenty of professions.where experience in certain countries isn't counted. This guy worked in a private school in Dubai. It's quite likely to have had different standards of teaching that are irrelevant.
Im sorry but if you were working in construction for 20 years, then some or all of it was likely during the Celtic Tiger, which means you made money, probably a lot of it if you were in any way competent, Which means you had the option not only of living in Dublin but of comfortably buying there. Your commute was entirely your choice and your situation is in no way comparable to that teacher's.
I'm assuming a little here perhaps but the main observation that most will agree on is that Dublin is way way more expensive now than it ever has been.
That's a pretty good deal, would the 5 year limit be related to a TDs standard one off term I wonder? Keep a replacement teacher or teachers in limbo.
Much the same here as regards Irish teachers we had and our children too, kinda depressing at the lower ordinary level Irish standard.
That said, I have reason to be grateful to two other teachers who gave of their time after hours and at weekends. Influenced the rest of my life in retrospect.
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