As a teacher How do handle so many days off?

Question

Presidents day, mlk day, columbus day, spring break, summer break, christmas break and every dang weekend. Congrees works more than that. I work two to three times more than teachers and teachers gets paid two to three times more than me. Teachers has no right to complain about their pay. shut up and babysit my kid.

Answer 1

Let's see. . .I used today to create 3 webquests, and put together my classroom webpage. When I was done, I choreographed a routine for the high school flag squad that I coach.

This week, I will have flag practice each morning for an hour before school begins, conditioning 3 days after school for 1 hour, and rehearsal 3 days for an additional hour. This is on top of my 40 hour work week--and it is voluntary. All teachers who do extras like this do not get paid, or they get paid a small stipend.

I will have meetings and trainings every day after school ends. I will tutor students for 45 minutes 3 days this week. Both of these are parts of my contracted job. When my work day is over, I will go to my second job tutoring English. Every Saturday, I will go to a continuing education class for 4 hours.

All told, being a teacher on a typical week results in working from 6:00 am until 4:00 pm--that's a 50 hour work week. This does not include grading papers at home. During football and winterguard season, that bumps up to 7:00pm Monday through Thursday, attendance at all football games, and Saturday rehearsals that run from 8am to noon.

I went to one of the best private liberal arts college in the midwest. I graduated with honors. I speak 2 languages, I have a Masters degree. Yet, I must continue to take classes to gain knowledge and skills in my field. I am surrounded by literate, well-educated, capable people. Schools today have some of the highest percentages of employees with graduate level education. We are not babysitters, we are well-educated professionals!

How dare you write such a nasty slanted question. How dare you judge me. How dare you judge us. We do this job because we love and value children in general and our students in particular. Teaching is a calling not a job. We do this because we believe that our nations children deserve nothing but our best.

We step in where other areas leave off. We are often the first to notice if a child is suffering from abuse. We are often the first to celebrate students' accomplishments and commisserate with them in sorrow.

This question is rude, and shows your ignorance of a typical teacher's day. In addition to this, your question shows a complete lack of understanding of the stresses that are attendant with our job.

I work with at risk youth, and I would not trade that job for the world, but it's emotionally exhausting. I have worked with fetal alcohol syndrome children, kids who are still as teens dealing with the aftereffects of being born addicted to crystal meth or crack. I have worked with kids who go home to abuse, and those who go home to no house at all. All in a class of 25-30 students.

We help kids through all sorts of challenges that they face in adolescence. It's tiring and teachers burn out. We lose approximately 30% of our teachers each year, and I am a veteran after teaching at my current school only 4 years. We work out butts off, and vacation days help us not burn out as fast.

I would never judge your parenting skills, and yet you feel perfectly comfortable judging me, when you show no proof that you are qualified to do so. How dare you!

Answer 2

If the school systems paid us the going rate for "babysitting" for every kid in our classes we would make a lot more than we make now. If you call it babysitting, then we babysit between 23-29 kids a day--for 6 or more hours. At the same time. If you think we have no right to complain (even though most people complain at some point or another about their jobs/salaries but teachers get slammed for it), go get a teaching degree and try it yourself please. Oh, and then try to pay off the teaching degree loans with your current salary. Oh, and by the way, Congress doesn't work that much. They recently pledged to do a five day work week--they used to work three days. Even so, they will still take off holidays, etc...and still work many a three day work week. If you don't believe me, check out this http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/16634580/. I'm sure you work very, very hard. I'm not slamming your job, whatever it is. I only ask that you don't make assumptions about mine.

Answer 3

Half of all teachers quit the profession in six years. If this was such an easy job why does this happen?
I have had five fist fights in my class room.
I have have a principal that told me to stay away from the union or she will fire me at the end of the school year.
I had two children bring a knife to class.
I am trying to get children (60% of my children) that read three levels below the grade I teach to achieve school work.
I start my day at 7:00 a.m. and Finish at 7:00 p.m. every day.
This is not an easy job and if they want to keep more teachers, then free market principles say they should pay more.

Answer 4

The fact that you want someone to "babysit your kid" is enough to let people know that you probably shouldn't have had the child in the first place. Also, if you look at sending your child to school as a break from him/her then your child is probably a discipline case. That points the finger back at you. As a matter of fact, there's so many parents out there that for whatever reason refuse to discipline their own children they probably really do look at school time as "a break" or time with "the babysitter". If it weren't for the few in the classroom that has never been taught any manners or respect teachers would be able to do a lot more with what little time with they have with their students. You're right in that a school year isn't all that long in the grand scheme of things. So how about you do your job as a parent so we can do our jobs as teachers! As for your money situation, you'd be surprised what a difference a piece of paper makes. Its funny how no one could've convinced you of that in high school. Get a better education, and you'll have a better salary. Simple as that.

Answer 5

Okay Lobo - (and I can't even believe I'm dignifying this question)

First - I do not get paid for holidays. I get paid for 180 days of teaching, plus a several days of teacher work days. And I do not get a paycheck over the summer in my district.

Now - let's talk about those 180 days:
Most teachers arrive 1 hr. early each day - UNPAID and leave about 1 hour after the kids UNPAID and spend say 2 hours grading/planning each night UNPAID.

That is 4 hours x 180 days = 720 hours/40 hour per normal work week = 18 weeks of UNPAID "comp" time.

Summer for teachers is about 8 weeks. Mid June to Mid Aug. And really - truth be told - often I am taking college classes to KEEP my job - out of MY pocket. Then I start getting my classroom ready 2 weeks before school starts. Often with supplies out of MY OWN POCKET.

So you, Mr. Taxpayer, owe me 10 weeks pay & classroom supplies.

Answer 6

Lobo, we do not get paid for all of those days off. We sign a contract to work a certain number of state mandated days. Used to be that teachers only got paid one paycheck a month while they worked, so they went without paychecks in the summer. Then it went to one paycheck for 12 months. Now school districts stretch the pay teachers get for those 180-210 paid days--and they pay the teachers throughout the calendar year.

Teachers do have a right to take issue with their pay. For the level of schooling required to do their job, obtain their certifications, maintain their certifications, attend more college throughout their careers, on top of teaching students in an increasingly more high-stakes-test oriented environment, along with lesson planning and paper grading at home, teachers deserve what they get paid and more.

None of the teachers I know have time to babysit anybody's kid--we're too busy creating interesting lesson plans, trying to come up with ways to engage kids in learning something important, teaching someone to read, or helping teach someone how to think critically to take the time to babysit. It's offensive to claim that that's what teachers do.

Answer 7

Yea, we love all those days off, so we can create new curriculum and go to all those manditory meetings and professional development seminars on our own time and at our own expense. Luckily, all those nasty off days are interrupted by school - related activities like sports training, competitions, fund raisers, detentions, make-up Saturdays, teacher conferences and student arts events. Plus, I personally always feel better when I don't have time for my own family because I'm too busy leaving phone messages for you because your kids don't know how to act in class. (By the way, you never called me back last week when your kid skipped my class.) But that's ok because I'm there every day at least an hour before school starts so I can tutor your kid because you never bother to check his progress. And he can always find me at school after 5:00 because I'm still there anyway, grading papers. I just love it when it's lunchtime and I get to choose between going to the bathroom for the first time that day or getting some actual food, not just cold coffee because I have a whole 30 minutes, but if I eat in the cafeteria your kid comes to interrupt my lunch because she needs me to go unlock my door so she can get her purse. Summer break is a whole three months, right? Right. If you even looked at your kid's school calendar you wouldn't know the half of it. Do you really think we ha ha actually have ha ha all those days off? You are a bright one.

Answer 8

if teachers were babysitting they would get paid say $6 an hour per child at 7 hours a day so that would be $42 a day per child then multiply again by 28 for $1186 a day...babysitting does pay more than teaching. Even at $100 a week(bargain day care) per child that would be $2800 a week...day care pays more than teaching...and around here-if the work week is shortened for holidays then daycare gets paid even though the kids do not go...babysit your kid? at these prices? of course

Answer 9

Well, you've heard from everyone on this list. You know you simply must be wrong. I've worked with several business professionals that changed to a teaching career, and they have all stated that teaching is much more difficult.

Now, if you're working two or three jobs and are only bringing home about $20,000, that speaks volumes about you. You had choices to make when you were younger. You obviously chose the wrong path. I feel bad for your son. Hopefully you aren't sharing your negative feelings about teachers with him. He may end up not appreciating caring teachers, and well, end up just like you...working ten jobs for no pay.

Answer 10

Teachers make more than you do? Where do you work? McDonalds?

As a teacher, I highly suggest you:

A. Go to college
B. Conduct and Defend a 450-page Masters Research Project C. Spend a year or so putting together your portfolio.
D. Apply to a district and go through the interviewing process.
E. Work grueling hours for tenure.
F. Spend those so-called "holidays" researching, grading and planning.

G. Spend your own time and money going through career-long, required, post-graduate professional develoment classes

E. Get up to 150 students to increase their literacy skills in order to pass a developmentally inappropriate State exam.

F. Deal with ignorant, rude and clueless parents like yourself.

When you do all this, come back to me in a year or so and let me know how that works out for you.