Letter: A day in the life of a normal hard-working school teacher

Wanted to be one from the age of seven and now I am 47 I still love the job. Believe me, you certainly need to be dedicated to be in the profession.

Typical day:

In school at 7.30am, prepare books for registration activity and lessons, tidy resources, prepare resources, set up interactive whiteboard, deal with parents.

8.30am, children enter school, 30 in each class. Register children who, by the way all want to speak to you about their dead goldfish, their tea last night, why they are crying, why their mum is cross with them or their holiday.

8.55am, assembly, many of which I take (more preparation).

9.20am, lessons begin. Many children due to society are no longer interested in reading books, listening to ideas, sharing, taking turns, listening to others. They want everything fast paced, as their social activities are like this. We try and respond by using interactive whiteboards to make lessons exciting and relevant but many children have poor concentration and listening skills. Much of the lesson is spent gaining attention rather than teaching.

Numeracy lesson starts at 11am. Thirty children all vying for attention.

11.55am lunchtime. Start marking books from the morning lessons. We eat our lunch while marking, have to stop marking as we have to prepare the classroom for the afternoon lesson and if you time it right you are ready as the children come in at 1pm.

Afternoon starts and is always hectic as the children begin to get tired.

Break at 2.30pm and three quarters of an hour after to cram as much learning in as we can according to the expectations of the government.

Meetings twice a week after school until 4.30pm and often go on til 5pm. If no meeting then an after school activity is often taken. Three bags of books into the car with files and planning to take home.

A family awaits, children need lifts, make tea and then the work begins at about 8pm. Planning, marking, re-setting target groups, evaluations of today's lessons, finding good inspirational ideas for tomorrow's lessons.

Next, holidays: I can't afford to go away, haven't for four years, but that's just my problem. It is a fact, teachers, take two weeks to 'come down' and relax. They have two weeks 'holiday'. They then embark on getting everything ready for their new class.

I am not a 'one-off hardworking freak'. All the teachers I know and have known work these hours.

Yes, I agree, all jobs carry stress but I wouldn't dream of damning a profession which I had no experience of.

A Plant, Newport

The letter from Graham Burns printed on September 14:

So only two days since return to work after their six weeks holiday the teachers have announced that they are going to go on strike before their next week's holiday in eight weeks time.

They then plan another strike during the few weeks before their next holiday, two weeks at Christmas.

This, we are advised, is to cause as much disruption to working parents as possible.

Their reasons for these strikes as we are advised by the Shropshire Star are:

Their workload: When they only work for three quarters of the year (13 weeks holiday plus five P.D. days) how can they claim to be overworked?

Their Pay: When, as I am told, they are only contracted to work for 39 weeks a year their pay compared with the average wage for 48 weeks work is exceptional.

Their Pensions: Nearly everyone in the Private Sector has had their pensions hit by Gordon Brown when he started raiding pension funds.

The people who are relying on State pensions are having to work longer before they can retire and most private sector pension funds have discontinued their "final salary "schemes.

All these schemes are no longer affordable with people living longer. The only way that the teachers can continue with their " retire at 60, index linked pension" is for it to be backed by the taxpayer, the very people who have already have had their own pensions hit hard.

Unfortunately many teachers went from school to university and back to school and have no experience of the real world.

This is borne out by the closure of schools as soon as we have a scattering of snow. A good way to prepare the children for life outside the institutional environment, unless they are going to become teachers of course.

Graham Burns, Newport