Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Nah, Kivver, not on here, but the SEO thread has been taking a beasting (Now removed as offensive) and even the bugs thread had someone whining this morning about the odd bit of ribbing on there!!
As with apparantly everything in society these days, aseptic only please.
If the threads were to ban any posts that were potentially offensive, off topic or speculative as is being suggested by some then there would be very few posts, very little "community" (I hate that word) and soon, very few viewers.
I really do feel I know alot of people on here, almost as friends and I am suprised when people feel the need to be abusive over "friends" enjoying a joke or a bit of teasing.
Perhaps I belong to a different time.
Alan

i know what you mean as a 40 something i can see the world/country changing and im not sure its for the better. I used to hate people like Mary Whitehouse and think she was boring old cow stuck the mud. I now think were going to far the other way and need some rules and guidence of where the line is, but i suppose that would be different for everybody especially our TEACHERS. Who must have an incredibiliy hard job to do, lol. Some of my friends are teachers (in the second city) and i would like to tell you more about them than general public ever see or would realise.

I dont know if you watch shameless on c4 (tuesday night) a very funny show (but lots of sex, violence and swearing), way past the watershead, but the number of 13 and 14 year olds who go into school and explain in graphic detail what they have seen must put teachers in a dificult situation. The first obvious one being why do your parents let you watch this??

Alan - I support your views as I spend quite a bit of my day browsing the airwaves - however - I can understand those busy,busy people who only log on once in a while and have to trawl through literally hundreds of gossip to find any real substance.

having said that - I dont plan to change my ways. These are after all free Bulletin Boards - and you do as you say develop a sort of camaraderie

Off on holiday this weekend sp usually riseds when I am away - hope this is no exception.

Baza

Here you go Al ,,this should cheer you up .

I suggest we all club together to keep Baza on holiday for 12 months, SEO 1,050 by the time he returns?!

kim

Happy again.
God, I'm so shallow.
Have a great holiday Baza.

:-( I see signs of someone trying to turn this now far more sensible thread back into one of balatant debauchery and happiness. Going to report you to the Gloom and Doom police Jimmy.
:-(

I specialise in doom and gloom Kim .

Phworr Jimmy, if that's gloom and doom, make me more miserable!

kim

al - we wont have this debate (post 4119), then RUDE PEOPLE KEEP INTERUPTING, LOL. i love the pics, make love not war, one of my favourite sayings. and i dont mean you and me!!!

One of my favourite things to do as well Kivver!

kim

all i will say is you have GOOD and BAD teachers. You have some who put their heart and soul into it. On the car park on 8 in the am and leave at 5 - 6 pm in the afternoon (thats 10 to 11 hours a day) only 15 mins break in am and 30 mins for dinner. Kids do go at 3.30 but then there are meetings, detentions , sports teams (which is a nightmare to organise) preperation, hours of marking, performance management, ofsted etc. My friends usually spend 8 hours on the weekend doing school work and certainly half of their half term holidays.

When they are school trying to mange the discilpline, getting the kids to work (whats the most teachers can do nowadays, a detention and dont bother coming to it anyway), parents now back thier kids and not the teacher. The abusive, aggression, swearing form the kids is sometimes unbearable. Of course not sure of the pressures of teachers at nice schools or posh schools but big city school it is very stressful and need their breaks and holidays. But all my friends do about 50-60 hour weeks not what you thought.

Many of my family are from the teaching profession. A headmaster is one of them. My point, very succinctly, is that they are salaried staff. Work hours for salaried staff is irrelevant. Getting the job done is the only criteria.
The world is full of hard working professionals doing 60 hours per week for much less money, without the benefits that go with teaching.
Just take the benefits into account.
Incredible pension scheme. Absolute job security. Lunch hour plus break. Free periods almost every day to do the marking, prep etc. Their job being halted to train (never happens in industry), 13 weeks a year holiday.
The real truth is that they have to work from 9 till 3. The rest is as flexible as they wish it to be. The six hour day of teaching is reduced by a 35 minute lunch and a 15 minute break. It is then further reduced for high school teachers by free periods of 1 hour each day. It is reduced much further by only working 9 months out of 12.
I am not having a go at teachers, many of whom do a fine job. I am having a go at the attitude that they ought to be earning more like professionals in industry.
I am happy for them to earn what professionals do in the private sector PROVIDING they accept the conditions that go with it.
Much worse pension scheme, 9 to 5 minimum, no free periods, unpaid overtime as and when necessary, no job security, training in their own time or if in work time they wrok over to catch up and 5 weeks holiday a year.
i have a sneaking suspicion that given the chance of a 50% wage rise, but accepting the new conditions or keeping the status quo, the no change option would win by a landslide.
Not having a go at teachers here. Okay.
Alan

This is what my teacher looked like.

Mmm, she doesn't look overworked.....yet!

al- at my friends school they get 30 mins break, there so called benefits of holidays are half spent working (wheres the benfit?)

''The real truth is that they have to work from 9 till 3.'' why are my friends in at 8 am then and leave at 5-6 having a chat???

You say they have free bree breaks, my friends (they have extra responibilies) spend most of there free breaks in classrooms supporting other teachers with discipline problems adding to their levels. I often ask parents what its like looking after there 2 0r 3 kids, they say a nightmare, well image looking after 33 13 years olds in todays society.

One runs a football team on top of of everything else (he is not a sports teacher). The arrangements, getting the team together, ref, parents aggro, i often wonder why he does it. Half term just gone he had year 11's in to finsh there gcse course work and is doing the same the next 2 saturdays. They run school trips, one took 50 kids to the formula 1 british grand prix last year for 2 days which inc staying in a hotel. He had to sit up until 4 in the am making sure the kids stayed in thier rooms. Another does the duke of edinburghs awards, weekends away.

Realise you are not having a go at teachers but i hope i have put foward some things you didnt realise. I agree their lots of 9-3.30 teachers they are usually not that good ones. The ones i have talked about work much much much longer, do much more, under incredible stress that you have tried to make out.

I'm someone who works/manages in the building industry, work all day, have fewer holidays, and some days are stressfull, earn more than teachers but most days are a doddle.

Not arguing the case at all, kivver.
I work in the financial industry and as you may guess from my posts I am in fromt of my computer from about 7am till about 11pm. Not all of this time is spent working as much of my work is done in the evenings.
I earn extremely well from this and I am not complaining, as, with my board, we have built a very succesful and lucrative business.
When I worked for others, i put in the same effort, as did most of those around me. Teachers are not a special case. The good ones will be rewarded with promotion.
Once when I was unable to do very much due to illness, a few years ago, I set myself the task of how I would reform education to the benefit of all, as an intellectual exercise.
I started from the premise that pupils did need regular breaks and 13 weeks was justified on that basis. I did much research on how i would rework it all and came up with a system that would give teachers a guaranteed 40 hour week, with absolutely no extra duties, a full day every week dedicated to marking and prep and would have the knock on effect of allowing parents to rosta the 13 weeks their children had off, to co-incide with work commitments, thereby reducing the astronomical cost of holidays out of term time, allowing teachers to take 2 weeks when they wished to take them, increasing teachers salaries by almost a quarter and either reducing class sizes or the education budget.
I offered this to the teaching staff within my family, expecting them to pull it to pieces as unworkable. the response was always the same. possible but the unions would never accept it due to the reduction in time off and the fixed hours. I also sent it to my MP who was impressed but argued that getting up the noses of the teaching unions was politically suicidal!!
my views have been a little jaundiced ever since.
As an interesting aside, two lecturers within my family considered that the bulk of it applied in their chosen arena anyway.
Alan

d'ya you two fancy keeping the debate off thread, please. you're getting in the way of jimmy's pics which are far more interesting.
thanks
perv of bolton ;)

Now she was a teacher who could have any conditions and salary she wanted.
Alan

my friends never talk about wanting more money, only that the breaks (in which half of it spent working) is essential, because of the stress. If we could get back to the old days of corporal punishment or the very least parents backing teachers judgements where there is at least a threat or a warning for kids behaviour/attitude to work we might get somewhere. Kids now come to lessons with thier mp3 players, mobile phones, hand held computer games etc etc how do teachers compete with that??