Career as Teacher

Originally Posted by Unregistered

If feedback to HOD already, then if HOD never do anything, what does it tell about HOD? Then why not HOD ownself tank the job? Such HODs then don’t have organisation awareness. Don’t know that people are leaving because of the unreasonable workload.

Here's a tip.. if you spend all your time believing that you are already the busiest person in the school, and you are the only one who has little space left on your plate, while your colleagues are all shaking leg and deserve to work harder, then you are the one with no organisational awareness. You are the kind of scum who believe PE teachers only come to work to shake leg, and aesthetics teachers should be the ones planning Speech Day and Open House because you are "so damn busy already".

A lot of the total workload that a given school needs to take on is also not determined by the P, VP or HODs. The total workload has gone up in light of policy driven HBL/BL, FSBB, YOY national reduction of EO headcount. This means that on average, all teachers, not just you, experience greater workload. It is foolish to think that you will always get what you want if you tell your boss to pass the work to somebody else. You may get a temporary respite if you are going through particularly tough periods, but don't abuse it because this comes at the heavy expense of your immediate colleagues. Everyone's plates are equally full because the new normal workload has already changed at the Ministry policy level.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Here's a tip.. if you spend all your time believing that you are already the busiest person in the school, and you are the only one who has little space left on your plate, while your colleagues are all shaking leg and deserve to work harder, then you are the one with no organisational awareness. You are the kind of scum who believe PE teachers only come to work to shake leg, and aesthetics teachers should be the ones planning Speech Day and Open House because you are "so damn busy already".

A lot of the total workload that a given school needs to take on is also not determined by the P, VP or HODs. The total workload has gone up in light of policy driven HBL/BL, FSBB, YOY national reduction of EO headcount. This means that on average, all teachers, not just you, experience greater workload. It is foolish to think that you will always get what you want if you tell your boss to pass the work to somebody else. You may get a temporary respite if you are going through particularly tough periods, but don't abuse it because this comes at the heavy expense of your immediate colleagues. Everyone's plates are equally full because the new normal workload has already changed at the Ministry policy level.

Like what was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, to manage your workload, you should consider assigning less homework, assign MCQs as homework, get students to do peer or self marking for immediate feedback, reject one to one consultations, instead get students to leverage on one another’s strengths to address queries, only if the whole class doesn’t understand then reteach. You will be amazed how classmates can influence one another positively in their school work.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Consistent 80 hours per week for many teachers are unbelievable. 16 hours per weekday unless working over weekend. You are not allowed to stay too late in school unless exceptional case such as event etc.

16 x 40 marking loads dont make sense. Unless you are teaching 16 different courses. You mark based on per exam per class.

Dont try to exaggerate that teachers are one of the hardest teaching job. Many industry also have long working hours.

If manpower is an issue, it should be raised to management as it affects production. You dont expect a teacher to take more than he/she can handle.

Who said anything about work being restricted to weekdays? It is normal for teachers to spend 12h in school, get chased out by the school attendant, and continue work at home. Usually will stay back to mark homework that are in workbooks, unless you want to lug home the thick pile of workbooks.

16X40 marking load don't make sense, but they are actually happening. E.g. 16 full classes of compulsory subjects like SS, Art, Music etc, where contact time is 1h a week. And since you only see them once a week, therefore need to give weekly homework too. Usually HODs will set a minimum number of graded work they want to see during file checks.

Be assured that the issue has been raised many times, in many schools. But management either repeat HQ's line that manpower is in excess, or give excuses that they can't find any replacement.

There are schools which had to hire vendors to deliver the lessons, because they don't have teachers.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Here's a tip.. if you spend all your time believing that you are already the busiest person in the school, and you are the only one who has little space left on your plate, while your colleagues are all shaking leg and deserve to work harder, then you are the one with no organisational awareness. You are the kind of scum who believe PE teachers only come to work to shake leg, and aesthetics teachers should be the ones planning Speech Day and Open House because you are "so damn busy already".

A lot of the total workload that a given school needs to take on is also not determined by the P, VP or HODs. The total workload has gone up in light of policy driven HBL/BL, FSBB, YOY national reduction of EO headcount. This means that on average, all teachers, not just you, experience greater workload. It is foolish to think that you will always get what you want if you tell your boss to pass the work to somebody else. You may get a temporary respite if you are going through particularly tough periods, but don't abuse it because this comes at the heavy expense of your immediate colleagues. Everyone's plates are equally full because the new normal workload has already changed at the Ministry policy level.

Gotta back you up on this. The problem with JOs is that they have no frame of reference. So they're convinced that they're the only ones doing work and the others are shaking leg. Hence the belief that they deserve a B when there are other more deserving teachers out there. I'll say this again, the entitlement mentality is very strong in the younger teachers. Just do a little bit and think that's worth an A or B.

We are always trying to do more and more with less and less. Too bad, even the staffers in HQ are powerless. You can propose whatever you want up to top management and PAHs, but if it is not in line with the prevailing gov narrative, then the Singapore govt style is: I say what, you do what. Not happy, LLST.

You think nobody complained about headcount? Dude. Pretty much the entire ground has been complaining and giving feedback about it for years. There is no school leader in their right mind who thinks they have a "comfortable" number of staff to enact all the new stuff that is being pushed down. But what can they do, on the grand scheme of things? Just sugarcoat it to their teachers to suck it up lor. Zeng hu say do like that, we LL do like that lor.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Gotta back you up on this. The problem with JOs is that they have no frame of reference. So they're convinced that they're the only ones doing work and the others are shaking leg. Hence the belief that they deserve a B when there are other more deserving teachers out there. I'll say this again, the entitlement mentality is very strong in the younger teachers. Just do a little bit and think that's worth an A or B.

Hahahaha ya, every year I hope I get an A or a B.
And I hope I will promote this year after few years of Bs!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Like what was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, to manage your workload, you should consider assigning less homework, assign MCQs as homework, get students to do peer or self marking for immediate feedback, reject one to one consultations, instead get students to leverage on one another’s strengths to address queries, only if the whole class doesn’t understand then reteach. You will be amazed how classmates can influence one another positively in their school work.

Easier said than done. If feasible in the first place.

Maybe MCQs still possible for pri school. For sec school and above, questions are usually written responses and essays. And teachers need to read through them thoroughly, because ideas need to be expressed correctly and grammatically. Some students' language skills are really terrible, and you don't want them to teach their peers the wrong thing.

And there are terrible assumptions made. These suggestions assumes that there are some students who are competent in the subject, and are able, and are willing to explain to their classmates. Some classes are so bad, usually math classes, where there's no such strong students to do peer learning. More so for NA, NT and tail-end express classes.

With FSBB, from what I see, most teachers already do not have time for one-to-one consultation. In my school, the normal timetable ends at 3pm, and I need to continue with additional lessons for grad classes until 5.30pm.

Giving less work is not really an option. Work is clearly set out in the SOW. Every class in the level must cover these pieces of work. Students must be given roughly at least 1 piece of work per week. Think this is common practice across schools, no?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Like what was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, to manage your workload, you should consider assigning less homework, assign MCQs as homework, get students to do peer or self marking for immediate feedback, reject one to one consultations, instead get students to leverage on one another’s strengths to address queries, only if the whole class doesn’t understand then reteach. You will be amazed how classmates can influence one another positively in their school work.

This is bad advice in many schools. It probably could work well in some classes in elite schools, but even such schools will have a small handful of kids who really need 1-to-1 support to pace their schoolmates and are not privileged enough to have academic support at home or from private tutors. Some schools will have a larger proportion of such kids. Any teacher who gives a damn about their students will not leave such kids in the lurch.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Like what was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, to manage your workload, you should consider assigning less homework, assign MCQs as homework, get students to do peer or self marking for immediate feedback, reject one to one consultations, instead get students to leverage on one another’s strengths to address queries, only if the whole class doesn’t understand then reteach. You will be amazed how classmates can influence one another positively in their school work.

This type of teacher, if put in a high needs neighbourhood school, contributes to the negative stereotypes and public perception of a teacher's job. They reinforce the idea that some people have that school teachers are useless in helping their child achieve academic outcomes, and it's the quality of tuition they receive that matters.

Ownself nth left to give alr still care bout what other people think lmao