Was passiert mit unseren Lehrern? 🚸

The article is about a single school, not the profession as a whole

The article relates to problems between teachers and the director of a specific school.  

Also teaching is not respected anymore. Between helicopter parents second-guessing teachers at every turn, threats received as a result of teaching certain subjects, violence by parents/students, being a teacher in most countries is a fairly sh**** job. 

The only thing that Lux has going for it is that it pays teachers a more than decent salary. That in itself does however also attract people that aren’t interested in teaching in the first place. 

This is my old school, there where problems with the direction 10 years ago already, things just seem to have gotten worse.

Also since they don’t specify it in the article is that LJBM is a special school with the technical engineering and architecture section. A lot of the teachers in that school are not your standard teachers, they are architects and engineers who took an extra curriculum to teach kids about the construction sector.

Most of these teachers so to speak have no real idea how to deal with teenagers and they don’t bagage the background a normal teacher would have. As we already said back then, they usually were the ones who didn’t want to work in an office anymore and wanted to try something new.

As someone who went through the system I hope things work out, some of my idols came from that school, people who showed me I could follow my dreams.

Being a teacher myself, I can tell you that alot of pears never worked in private industry and have no clue how good we actually have it. Imo, there should be a minimum professional background requirement before becoming a teacher.

I think complaining is the main hobby for teachers, not only in Lux.
My mother is a teacher in my home country and so often when she meets a collegue or when she invites one for meal the topic is regularly about how bad is this, how shameless is that reform, how unjust is that circular, how annoying those kids, and so on..
She never worked a day outiside the school system.

So many things (and not just at that one school). Teachers generally get more and more admin bullshit thrust upon them because some twat at the ministry needs to justify their salary by coming up with some shiny new thing, which takes away from their time to actually prepare class material. Rather than being able to focus on subject matter, they are more and more forced to take over basic societal coexistence education that parents fail to ensure, while at the same time (and that at all levels) being exposed to absurd levels of parent hostility, because their precious moppets are the most precious moppets around, and how dare teachers not shower them with praise and good marks despite their precious moppets being absolute menaces to society. The subject matters they teach are less and less relevant, as the Most Mediocre Meisch Of All, has decreed more students need to pass and receive diplomas. At the same time, the teachers often receive little to no support, and at best lip service only, from their hierarchy. Anyone surprised now, has just not been paying attention to the growing disillusionment…

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Being a teacher and having worked in the private sector myself, I understand the 80% disatisfaction rate, however I do not think that any teacher would give up their job for a private sector one.

I can only talk about the region I work in, but here the main problem is an enormous lack of interest/help from the government. The education ministry can and has steadily increased the responsibilities for teachers, while changing nothing about the organisation of the school system.

Where I teach for example, there has not been a government child psychologist for the past 4 or 5 years. When the old one left, there has just not been a replacement.

With parents who absolutely do not care or who do not see their responsibilities as parents, there is nothing a teacher can do to help the child without the parents consent AND help. Getting parents to realize that their child needs help is difficult enough, having them actively help is even more difficult. If the parents don’t care, the child won’t get help, no matter how dire or obvious the situation is. Furthermore, parents are way more litigous now than they have ever been, even protesting singular school assessments and/or threatening with lawsuits if their demands are not met.

I wish I could show some of the messages I recieve on the daily ranging from lazy to stupid to downright threatening and insulting from parents in the middle of the night or on holidays.

Children who have a meltdown every day, throwing stuff, biting, punching swearing, even running away have become more frequent in recent years, but there has been absolutely no change from the government to help teachers to get the child assessed and helped. For a particular child, who has been about the most difficult that I have ever witnessed, the time it took for the child to get help has been 2 years, often much more. It is so bad infact, that some of the children who would benefit from in-class help get put on a waiting list with more than 40 children in front, and when they have waited for long enough, they are on their way to high-school, having recieved 0 hours of in-class help even after professionals have deemed in-class assistance to be important.

Also on a municipal level, there are many problems.
A teacher I know complained because her classroom in an old building reached 32 degrees on days where outside it was 27-28. The children in her class were Cycle 2.1(2nd year after kindergarten) and they, along with some parents complained that the classroom was too hot. You cannot expect of a child who is less than 10 years old to just sit through and concentrate for 6 hours in 32 degree heat. The response of a municipal technician was, that she should dress airier. When my friend retorted that she cannot ask that of the children and that in germany employers have to provide measures to reduce the temperature or to simply make it easier to suffer through, she got the response that we do not live in germany and that we do not have such laws, and that there was no money for ANY heat related solutions since the new school, where construction has not even started has taken up all of their budget. IMHO, the education ministry should have to make sure that the schools in this country are at least up to certain standards and it should not be the responsibility of a teacher to assure that, even less so starting an argument with the municipality to get even the most basic of standards i.e. not making children get heatstroke.

Lastly, teachers have no incentive to do their job well. Some, take it so seriously that they sooner or later get severe burnout, others care so little, that as soon as the bell rings, they are nowhere to be seen. They both get paid the same and treated the same, and in-class controls of the teachers are very seldom, and a teacher who teaches for 3 years or more never gets assessed. This is in part because the lack of support staff also extends to the regional directories, who have too few directors to make these controls. And even when a teacher or subsitute is so awful, that they are negatively influencing the children, there is nothing the education ministry does to get these people assessed, reeducated or fired and the rest of the school staff have to shoulder that additional work.

I am complaining a lot, but if I ever leave this profession, it is not because of the children, most of them are wonderful, but it will be because of parental neglect and a complete lack of help from the education ministry regarding in-class help, psychological assistance for the kids, and lack of help in case of a lawsuit or general dispute with parents or other entities.

Reading between the lines it looks like a new school director (headmaster) at one particular school has upset a lot of teachers who may have got used to a different approach to managing. This happens all the time in the private sector. Perhaps the new manager is good or bad and the upset teachers are good or bad. No one likes change but change can be good.