Parents can sometimes be rude and arrogant. I didn t learn to take responsibility for my own learning until I was at university, but we expect children to do it from a very young age, and it s frustrating when you know that they really don t care about what you re teaching them. They can take and take and it doesn t feel like they re giving anything back. You ve got to be realistic about all of this, because teaching does have its down sides, and these can hit student teachers and NQTs hard. But there has to be a reason why I keep on doing it, and why lots of your colleagues have done it for 20 years or more - and it goes beyond needing to pay the mortgage.
Teaching is, quite simply, the best job in the world.
It will give you highs that no amount of caffeine can ever achieve, and it inspires such passionate debate nationally and internationally precisely because it is a job that involves real people, real emotions and real experiences. Children don t break down or crash like computers. You can t put them on call-waiting, or refuse to return their letters. There are some interesting ways of teaching about eggs and sperm and it s up to you to discover them. You re surfing a continuous learning curve and you develop personally as well as professionally.