A teacher has written an open letter on social media about her experiences in the profession.

It outlines a number of areas in which she is unhappy and suggests why many are considering leaving schools.

Its publication comes while one union is in a dispute with the Isle of Man Government over pay, workload and conditions.

NASUWT members went on strike for two days two weeks ago. More strikes are planned in the New Year.

The four other school unions have accepted the deal.

The letter:

Let me preface this letter by saying I love my job. I love being a teacher. I love working with children every day and seeing their curiosity for the world.

Seeing the sense of pride and accomplishment that a pupil feels when they have achieved one of their goals.

There really is no other job like it.

No two days are ever the same and some of the children I have been fortunate enough to work with over the years have the greatest sense of humour, that leaves me with my sides splitting in the classroom from the amount of laughter there is. I can’t state it enough, I love my job.

I am certainly not alone in these thoughts, which then begs the question why are nearly 50% of teachers across the UK and Isle of Man, considering quitting in the next five years?

Why would an educated professional, who has spent countless years, tens of thousands of pounds and more hours than anyone can count once in service, on training and continual professional development, find themselves in a position where they can no longer do the job that they love on the Isle of Man?

Too many teachers are now leaving the profession altogether, or leaving to educate in countries where teaching is still respected, and there are too few new recruits to replace those leaving.

Ask yourself this, why would anyone want to work in a country where the government is cutting funding?

Where workloads are increasing year on year due to responsibilities being added on to roles?

And where they are subjected to hatred and vitriol on a daily basis online, when instead they could be teaching in a country which fully funds its education system, looks after its teachers and financially compensates them for the hours worked.

A recent scroll through Facebook shows comments towards, and about educators such as: ‘They don’t want to work’, ‘They’re all piss takers’, ‘They don’t care about our children’, ‘They’re out of touch with the young adults of today’s society’, ‘They’re incompetent’, ‘Heartless b******ds’

Yet these same teachers, who have these comments directed to them every day, show up to educate, feed and sometimes even clothe the children in our care.

We give up countless hours to support some of the most vulnerable young adults, ensuring their health and safety, sometimes even giving up our own time with family to ensure that our pupils are safe.

We are seen to be almost robotic or as though we don’t matter. The feelings of our pupils and their parents or carers are important, but our own feelings aren’t.

We are human too, we have our own lives, stresses, financial worries, family illnesses, but these do not seem to matter.

Teaching has become a deeply problematic field that has been conditioning educators to believe that their job requires constant self-sacrifice and self-harm, and our governments are no longer our advocates. As the saying goes, you cannot pour from an empty cup and let me tell you now, our cups are dry.

Teaching remains a profession with amongst the highest number of unpaid working hours, with well above the international average hours which is unsustainable and leads to burnout.

Many assume that the teacher’s day is from 9am to 3.30pm. If only that were the case.

From my own personal perspective, which I would assume is the same as my peers, to teach a full day in school requires me to have prepared and planned my lessons for that day.

These lessons cannot be carbon copies of the year before as that would be ignorant to the wide variety of learning needs I have before me in my classrooms.

Each lesson I teach must be modified and differentiated to suit the individual needs of the pupils in my room, taking also into consideration the outcomes from the previous lesson which must influence the way in which the next lesson goes.

My resources must be prepared in advance for these lessons in order to deliver an outstanding lesson, however, I cannot plan, modify, differentiate and prepare these lessons and resources during the working day, or even during the previous working day, as my working hours are spent with the children in my classroom in front of me.

This means that I must use my own personal time to ensure that this is done, often resulting in me not leaving the actual school building till around 6pm.

I also personally arrive in the school building at 7.30am to check that my day is fully set and ready to go.

That is over a 10-hour day in school, and I am paid for approximately 6.5 of those hours, creating a surplus of at least 3.5 hours per day, 17.5 hours per week and 70 hours per month of unpaid work whilst physically present in the school building.

This doesn’t take into account the time then spent on my laptop, or marking books or assessments once I get home which can range up to an additional three hours per night.

Currently, our contracts states that we receive three PPA (planning, preparation and assessment) lessons per week. This is ‘non-contact’ time for which we are to use to complete our planning and preparation. As someone who was on a full capacity timetable, these three PPAs per week amount to six minutes of planning and preparation time per lesson I teach in the week, which means I am forced to carry out unpaid overtime, in order to actually fulfil my contractual agreements as a teacher in the classroom.

But what about the holidays? Thirteen weeks of ‘holiday’ seems plentiful.

However, what is often unnoticed or unmentioned, is the amount of time during those holidays that we actually spend in work.

Just because the students are not in school doesn’t mean that our work has stopped.

This is often the time that we use to catch up on marking that we may not have been able to get to yet, where we review our schemes of work, not to mention following up on our most vulnerable pupils during this time to ensure that they are ok and safe and run half-term revision and transition sessions.

This is also the time that we give up to decorate our classrooms, updating our displays to ensure they are filled with relevant material to help our pupils when they return, as we won’t have time otherwise.

It is safe to say our ‘holidays’ are very rarely an actual holiday.

There seems to be an assumption that we are paid for this time which is most certainly not the case.

Yes, we still receive a monthly ‘pay’ in our bank accounts, but this is our yearly salary for our contracted hours, which has been split into 12 payments, so that we can still pay our monthly bills.

We do NOT get paid for this time off from work.

We have a lack of support staff. We need and love our support staff and they are leaving for the same reasons we are.

There is a huge work/life imbalance. Who has time to actually enjoy leisure activities or help their own children with their homework when there is a mounting pile of grading, planning or responding to parents

There is a severe lack of genuinely qualified people to handle some of the more serious emotional needs of our children, due to lack of funding and the teachers are told to deal with it, whilst also having 29 other pupils in the classroom to look out for.

There are parents who are totally demonising teachers.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some absolutely amazing and supportive parents, who realise that we are doing the very best we can with continually depleting resources and support, but on the other side, there are parents who call us babysitters on social media and routinely criticize us for everything that is wrong with education, despite it largely being out of our control.

Our quality of life is decreasing. With rent and house prices constantly on the rise, some teachers are having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Yes, we didn’t go into teaching for the money, but we at least deserve a living wage, we do have advanced professional degrees.

There are developmentally inappropriate curriculum standards. Too much content is being pushed into curriculums each year, with not enough processing time for our pupils to digest it, and then the blame is placed back on teachers for the pupils not grasping it.

Although this may seem a negative letter, this actually comes from a place of love. I say all of the above because I love my job and I am genuinely fearful for the future of education on the Isle of Man if it continues down this path.

I honestly don’t believe that we are yet at the point of no return, but I do feel we are close to it.

The Isle of Man is in such a unique position as a crown dependency, with its own government.

They could be paving the way for education globally, but instead are following many of the failings of the UK government where education policies are concerned.

Fair compensation and appropriate working conditions are important for attracting, developing and retaining the outstanding teachers which our children so rightfully deserve.

It is important for our government to carefully consider the salaries and career prospects of their teachers and to ‘right the ship’, to ensure the longevity of a high-class education system on the Isle of Man.