I READ with despair Michael Short's column (LET, October 18) in which he disparaged the efforts of teachers and jumped on the age-old bandwagon of discussing the holidays that teachers are 'lucky' enough to get.

He stated that 'teachers are a bunch of people who never technically left school'.

I left school at 18 and having failed my A levels went to work in a bank. After doing this for 13 years, with a great deal of success, I decided to return to education and, with two children to bring up, managed, with the help of Accrington and Rossendale College, to complete a degree in Cultural Studies.

I then went back to work and during the next five years worked for a charity and then various local firms as a temporary clerical worker.

In 1999, having saved enough money to take a year out from work, I enrolled on a teacher training course because I believed I owed a debt to the society that allowed me to succeed in what I failed to do as a teenager.

I have been teaching for five years and love the job. As a teacher who 'technically' left school a long time ago I admit this is the hardest job I have ever done. Yes, we have holidays but this is the time we catch up on marking and planning.

Yes, we 'have to put up with the horrible brats' but they are a minor part of the day. Imagine a day that involves teaching up to 150 teenagers and trying to raise standards and preparing them for the constant round of examinations.

Today I spent my 15-minute morning break talking to a child who, like many Year 11 pupils, is drowning in the demands of coursework. I spent my lunchtime supervising over 70 children in a library where they take refuge during Ramadan when they are fasting.

Having taught all day, I came home, armed with the usual pile of marking, to help my own son prepare for his Key Stage 2 SATS examinations.

On a day-to-day basis OFSTED are not important. The children we try to prepare for life are.

Perhaps I do not fit your stereotype of a teacher but most don't. Forget chewing gum and sweets -- they don't matter. Teachers will tell you that children are important, as are their families.

As a teacher I don't have a 'miserable' life. What I have now, compared with the life I had before, is a career in which I am not the important one but in which the important ones are the children I teach.

DIANNE PARKINSON, teacher of English and Media Studies, Beardwood High School, Blackburn.