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What is the most frustrating part about being a teacher?

Just in general

teaching
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Paul’s Answer

The long hours and the time required outside of class.

But, every June, when a student I taught walked across the stage to accept their diploma. It was definitely all worth it.
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Nicole’s Answer

For six years, I served as a high school teacher, instructing students in both English and Spanish. The most challenging aspect of my job was the overwhelming workload coupled with an insufficient amount of support and resources. A significant portion of my modest earnings was spent on essential classroom supplies. After a long day at school, I would return home to face hours of grading and lesson planning. The compensation I received did not seem to match the intensity of the work I was putting in. This exhausting routine eventually led to burnout. It's no surprise to me why the rate of teachers changing jobs is remarkably high.
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Don’s Answer

Every teacher’s frustration varies depending on several factors such as the school or working environment, students, colleagues, administration, culture, location, management, teacher’s needs and many others. It only means that my biggest frustration as a teacher may be different from others.

I’ve been working as a teacher for 7 years now and I experienced dealing with students from different grade levels (college, senior highschool and elementary). Based on my experience, the most frustrating part of being a teacher is when everything is blamed to the teacher when the students fail or cannot catch up to the lesson eventhough the teacher already did his/her very best to the point of having a hard time creating a balance between work and personal life due to overwhelming workload and poor school management. A teacher works in school and sometimes, still brings excessive work at home. Also, the pressure of constantly learning (attending seminars, trainings, workshops, studying a higher education program and etc.) adds up to the workload that sometimes it was so hard for teachers to spend time with their family and friends. I know that continuous professional development is a must in the teaching field. However, I can’t take away the fact that sometimes it needs to be done during days off or free time.
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Alan’s Answer

Jonathan, the most frustrating thing about teaching is that the American school system shows such a poor understanding of how students learn and yet forces teachers and students to follow their misguided approaches. Standardized tests, packets of worksheets, homework and passive learning through memorization are some of the things that have been proven inappropriate and yet are staples of American education. If learning isn't active, concrete, meaningful, unpressured and self-motivated, it's neurologically meaningless. What's memorized is forgotten, what's not self-motivated is not continued, what's not personally understood can't be built on. The work periods, school days and school years should be shorter, and allow more time for exploration, relaxation and exercise. Students, teachers and schools are graded, labeled and in competition based on inappropriate measures and standards. There's insufficient to no room for or encouragement of creativity, imagination, individuality or cooperative efforts. And now the system has become more politicized, with books being banned, history being hidden or rewritten, and social progress being reversed. So... we need teachers who are firm in their convictions and knowledge, who know how to work creatively within and around the system, who build relationships with each student and remove the pressures that they're put under, and who can deal with their frustrations, loving their students and teaching enough to work hard to make a difference.
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ian’s Answer

The toughest parts of teaching for me are class dependent. For example, in my English Language Learner courses, the biggest challenge is differentiating between new students coming in who are not literate in their home language and students who may have been here already for a year. In an intervention class, classroom management is probably the toughest part. And when I teach my International Baccalaureate courses, it’s not easy changing my teaching mindset from those other classes and/or, when I do, moderating it and not going too far in the opposite direction.
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