MCPS asks for 4 days off so teachers can prepare building for in-person instruction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pray someone from Central office with any authority is reading this thread. For gods sake, you’ve had a YEAR to plan for this and you act like you’re surprised we might actually return to a school building, like ever. I never thought I’d have to beg for the CHOICE to send my kid to school.

New poster here. I agree with nearly everyone here. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Open the schools, teachers can prepare any afternoon after classes end - or before 9am when classes start. You're only teaching like 4-5 hours a day.

Honestly, rooms just won’t get set up then.

If I told my boss, “you are not giving me extra time off to do something that is essential for my job, so I’m just going to ship it,” I would get fired. I work for a nonprofit and don’t get paid a lot, but I am a professional. I am salaried and do what it takes to get my job done. This past year has been a nightmare and work got much busier than usual because I work on issues related to the pandemic. I worked late into the night most nights to get the work done, with no extra time off and no extra pay.

Thankfully, not all teachers have your attitude.

Except teachers are not asking for “time off”, they are asking for time to set up rooms for in-person instruction that you demanded. I’m a career-changer. I used to work a salaried position in two different state governments. If we had a physical setup for events ( time sensitive) to complete that took us away from a public-facing duty, we got the time. We were not told to come in on a Saturday or work from 5 pm until whenever multiple nights.

Setting up a classroom is not the same as an extra intellectual task. It’s physical labor.

There are multiple teachers telling you that rooms will not get set up. It’s the logical outcome of not having sufficient time provided for the task. Personally, I don’t think my students need more than a desk and a screen. They will have to stay seated in their taped off square anyway. The walls will stay bare and it will be okay. Because, according to you, in-school is automatically thousands of times better instruction somehow. This is the product you purchased.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pray someone from Central office with any authority is reading this thread. For gods sake, you’ve had a YEAR to plan for this and you act like you’re surprised we might actually return to a school building, like ever. I never thought I’d have to beg for the CHOICE to send my kid to school.

New poster here. I agree with nearly everyone here. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Open the schools, teachers can prepare any afternoon after classes end - or before 9am when classes start. You're only teaching like 4-5 hours a day.

Honestly, rooms just won’t get set up then.

If I told my boss, “you are not giving me extra time off to do something that is essential for my job, so I’m just going to ship it,” I would get fired. I work for a nonprofit and don’t get paid a lot, but I am a professional. I am salaried and do what it takes to get my job done. This past year has been a nightmare and work got much busier than usual because I work on issues related to the pandemic. I worked late into the night most nights to get the work done, with no extra time off and no extra pay.

Thankfully, not all teachers have your attitude.

Except teachers are not asking for “time off”, they are asking for time to set up rooms for in-person instruction that you demanded. I’m a career-changer. I used to work a salaried position in two different state governments. If we had a physical setup for events ( time sensitive) to complete that took us away from a public-facing duty, we got the time. We were not told to come in on a Saturday or work from 5 pm until whenever multiple nights.

Setting up a classroom is not the same as an extra intellectual task. It’s physical labor.

There are multiple teachers telling you that rooms will not get set up. It’s the logical outcome of not having sufficient time provided for the task. Personally, I don’t think my students need more than a desk and a screen. They will have to stay seated in their taped off square anyway. The walls will stay bare and it will be okay. Because, according to you, in-school is automatically thousands of times better instruction somehow. This is the product you purchased.

That takes four days? Or is it a reason to push some things around a room, take the rest of the week off, then throw a temper tantrum right before and not come back anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone should’ve told me I shouldn’t be working Wednesdays! I’m meeting with groups of students all morning and in meetings all afternoon.

To everyone volunteering my personal, unpaid time to set up classrooms, post your email and I’ll send you the volunteer sign up genius!

I’m getting sick and tired of the teacher trash talk. I love teaching and love watching your children grow and learn but all this vitriol doesn’t make the $25/hr after taxes worth it. You need to realize, this will drive away the really good teachers, the ones that have options. Then you’ll really have something to complain about when the teachers that are left are inexperienced or inept.

Do you know how many hours I work at home, outside of my pay. I am sure millions of others do the same. It is a SALARIED position. You are not an hourly employee.

Exactly. All of us are exhausted and doing way more than is listed on our job descriptions! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a ton of extra work to do, plus of course caring for their own kids. I get frustrated when teachers imply that their circumstances are unique.

+1000, teachers are not the only people who have had to adjust in the past year and the continued implication that they are unique is so frustrating. Many of us are putting in hours well above and beyond our normal tours of duty, some of which is attributable to the fact that schools remain closed, so do I get to pass around a sign up genius for you to do portions of my job in exchange for the portions of your job that I am currently doing?

+10000 - MCPS employees have truly shown this year how little they care about students at a time they were supposedly rolling out a new program about the physical, social, and emotional support of students. I have sat with my child to get him online and have him work in the dining room and classes are abysmal soul sucking experience. One teacher’s class yesterday was “independent work”. No review or instruction for the major unit test. Just directions to log of and work on your own. Another teacher was driving his car during class. DL is a sh$t show.

Two of my daughter's five teachers don't even turn THEIR cameras on. I just found this out yesterday at dinner. I am not home while they are at school. I actually get out of the house to do my job and have to leave my kids home for "school"

You would have known if you were more involved. Do your kids turn their cameras on?

Hey beotch teacher, I work 6:45am to 3:45pm as an RN 5 days a week. I am tired as all hell but I am involved. I emailed all of their teachers to make sure their cameras are on. I wrongly assumed the teachers would be. Your profession will never get respect with a holes like you. DO YOUR JOB!!!!

Not a teacher and its not the teachers job to monitor your kids, its yours. No one cares if you are tired. Figure it out. Do your job as a parent. You want a prize for working?

If teachers are posting things like this, it may be why teachers are not respected on this forum. The poster said two teachers did not have their videos on, and then you trash this parent’s parenting skills. Nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone should’ve told me I shouldn’t be working Wednesdays! I’m meeting with groups of students all morning and in meetings all afternoon.

To everyone volunteering my personal, unpaid time to set up classrooms, post your email and I’ll send you the volunteer sign up genius!

I’m getting sick and tired of the teacher trash talk. I love teaching and love watching your children grow and learn but all this vitriol doesn’t make the $25/hr after taxes worth it. You need to realize, this will drive away the really good teachers, the ones that have options. Then you’ll really have something to complain about when the teachers that are left are inexperienced or inept.

Do you know how many hours I work at home, outside of my pay. I am sure millions of others do the same. It is a SALARIED position. You are not an hourly employee.

Exactly. All of us are exhausted and doing way more than is listed on our job descriptions! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a ton of extra work to do, plus of course caring for their own kids. I get frustrated when teachers imply that their circumstances are unique.

+1000, teachers are not the only people who have had to adjust in the past year and the continued implication that they are unique is so frustrating. Many of us are putting in hours well above and beyond our normal tours of duty, some of which is attributable to the fact that schools remain closed, so do I get to pass around a sign up genius for you to do portions of my job in exchange for the portions of your job that I am currently doing?

+10000 - MCPS employees have truly shown this year how little they care about students at a time they were supposedly rolling out a new program about the physical, social, and emotional support of students. I have sat with my child to get him online and have him work in the dining room and classes are abysmal soul sucking experience. One teacher’s class yesterday was “independent work”. No review or instruction for the major unit test. Just directions to log of and work on your own. Another teacher was driving his car during class. DL is a sh$t show.

Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.

My contracted planning time is the hour your children are at lunch. So far this week, I spent my non-instructional and personal time:
-Planning synchronous and asynchronous activities for my students (each 45 minute lesson takes over an hour to plan and create google slides, none of my lessons are repeated)
- Planning lesson supports for my ESOL and Students with special needs
- Making phone calls and filling out forms because of an immediate student need
- grading, giving each student feedback, and entering those grades
- taking screenshots of completed assignments and filing them to be printed for the EOL file
- meeting with 2 different teams
- running to Target to purchase headphones for a student and delivering them to the student
- emailing and meeting over zoom with a parent to help resolve a tech issue
- During my 30 minute lunch- on Monday I had a meeting but meet with students on Tuesday for a lunch bunch
- meeting with a student in crisis and finding supports for that child

My classroom is currently packed up in about 50 boxes. In a normal year I spent roughly 20-30 hours of time setting up my classroom, and that doesn’t include meetings and planning. Don’t tell me I’m selfish, lazy, stupid, entitled and that I don’t care about my students. Ultimately teachers do what is needed to be done in the best interest of our students. OTOH, I’m a mother first and I’m unwilling to sacrifice any more of my time with them. Maybe you have different priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pray someone from Central office with any authority is reading this thread. For gods sake, you’ve had a YEAR to plan for this and you act like you’re surprised we might actually return to a school building, like ever. I never thought I’d have to beg for the CHOICE to send my kid to school.

New poster here. I agree with nearly everyone here. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Open the schools, teachers can prepare any afternoon after classes end - or before 9am when classes start. You're only teaching like 4-5 hours a day.

Honestly, rooms just won’t get set up then.

If I told my boss, “you are not giving me extra time off to do something that is essential for my job, so I’m just going to ship it,” I would get fired. I work for a nonprofit and don’t get paid a lot, but I am a professional. I am salaried and do what it takes to get my job done. This past year has been a nightmare and work got much busier than usual because I work on issues related to the pandemic. I worked late into the night most nights to get the work done, with no extra time off and no extra pay.

Thankfully, not all teachers have your attitude.

Except teachers are not asking for “time off”, they are asking for time to set up rooms for in-person instruction that you demanded. I’m a career-changer. I used to work a salaried position in two different state governments. If we had a physical setup for events ( time sensitive) to complete that took us away from a public-facing duty, we got the time. We were not told to come in on a Saturday or work from 5 pm until whenever multiple nights.

Setting up a classroom is not the same as an extra intellectual task. It’s physical labor.

There are multiple teachers telling you that rooms will not get set up. It’s the logical outcome of not having sufficient time provided for the task. Personally, I don’t think my students need more than a desk and a screen. They will have to stay seated in their taped off square anyway. The walls will stay bare and it will be okay. Because, according to you, in-school is automatically thousands of times better instruction somehow. This is the product you purchased.

That takes four days? Or is it a reason to push some things around a room, take the rest of the week off, then throw a temper tantrum right before and not come back anyway?

No, it won’t take 4 days to push the desks around and pile up boxes. Some of would prefer to make the room as inviting as possible because we know school will feel very different and we want to make it to feel as comfortable and inviting as possible. I am an MCPS teacher and this post is the first I am hearing about the 4 day request. It certainly wasn’t something I voted on or asked for. That said, if I have to choose between using before school, after school, and lunch to support a severely at risk student or making my classroom inviting, I am choosing the academic support every time. The reality is that many of your children are learning and you can’t possible understand how much time we are putting in doing extra sessions with the kids that aren’t. I work with kids the vast majority of Wednesday’s but I am inviting the kids that are not doing well or can’t attend consistently due to family obligations including supporting younger children in the home. I will choose to use my time with kids and my classroom can stay in disarray until the summer. Please, don’t complain that the walls are bare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone should’ve told me I shouldn’t be working Wednesdays! I’m meeting with groups of students all morning and in meetings all afternoon.

To everyone volunteering my personal, unpaid time to set up classrooms, post your email and I’ll send you the volunteer sign up genius!

I’m getting sick and tired of the teacher trash talk. I love teaching and love watching your children grow and learn but all this vitriol doesn’t make the $25/hr after taxes worth it. You need to realize, this will drive away the really good teachers, the ones that have options. Then you’ll really have something to complain about when the teachers that are left are inexperienced or inept.

Do you know how many hours I work at home, outside of my pay. I am sure millions of others do the same. It is a SALARIED position. You are not an hourly employee.

Exactly. All of us are exhausted and doing way more than is listed on our job descriptions! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a ton of extra work to do, plus of course caring for their own kids. I get frustrated when teachers imply that their circumstances are unique.

+1000, teachers are not the only people who have had to adjust in the past year and the continued implication that they are unique is so frustrating. Many of us are putting in hours well above and beyond our normal tours of duty, some of which is attributable to the fact that schools remain closed, so do I get to pass around a sign up genius for you to do portions of my job in exchange for the portions of your job that I am currently doing?

+10000 - MCPS employees have truly shown this year how little they care about students at a time they were supposedly rolling out a new program about the physical, social, and emotional support of students. I have sat with my child to get him online and have him work in the dining room and classes are abysmal soul sucking experience. One teacher’s class yesterday was “independent work”. No review or instruction for the major unit test. Just directions to log of and work on your own. Another teacher was driving his car during class. DL is a sh$t show.

Two of my daughter's five teachers don't even turn THEIR cameras on. I just found this out yesterday at dinner. I am not home while they are at school. I actually get out of the house to do my job and have to leave my kids home for "school"

You would have known if you were more involved. Do your kids turn their cameras on?

Hey beotch teacher, I work 6:45am to 3:45pm as an RN 5 days a week. I am tired as all hell but I am involved. I emailed all of their teachers to make sure their cameras are on. I wrongly assumed the teachers would be. Your profession will never get respect with a holes like you. DO YOUR JOB!!!!

Not a teacher and its not the teachers job to monitor your kids, its yours. No one cares if you are tired. Figure it out. Do your job as a parent. You want a prize for working?

If teachers are posting things like this, it may be why teachers are not respected on this forum. The poster said two teachers did not have their videos on, and then you trash this parent’s parenting skills. Nice.

Person said I'm not a teacher....I guessnyiu didn't read the previous post?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pray someone from Central office with any authority is reading this thread. For gods sake, you’ve had a YEAR to plan for this and you act like you’re surprised we might actually return to a school building, like ever. I never thought I’d have to beg for the CHOICE to send my kid to school.

New poster here. I agree with nearly everyone here. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Open the schools, teachers can prepare any afternoon after classes end - or before 9am when classes start. You're only teaching like 4-5 hours a day.

Honestly, rooms just won’t get set up then.

If I told my boss, “you are not giving me extra time off to do something that is essential for my job, so I’m just going to ship it,” I would get fired. I work for a nonprofit and don’t get paid a lot, but I am a professional. I am salaried and do what it takes to get my job done. This past year has been a nightmare and work got much busier than usual because I work on issues related to the pandemic. I worked late into the night most nights to get the work done, with no extra time off and no extra pay.

Thankfully, not all teachers have your attitude.

Except teachers are not asking for “time off”, they are asking for time to set up rooms for in-person instruction that you demanded. I’m a career-changer. I used to work a salaried position in two different state governments. If we had a physical setup for events ( time sensitive) to complete that took us away from a public-facing duty, we got the time. We were not told to come in on a Saturday or work from 5 pm until whenever multiple nights.

Setting up a classroom is not the same as an extra intellectual task. It’s physical labor.

There are multiple teachers telling you that rooms will not get set up. It’s the logical outcome of not having sufficient time provided for the task. Personally, I don’t think my students need more than a desk and a screen. They will have to stay seated in their taped off square anyway. The walls will stay bare and it will be okay. Because, according to you, in-school is automatically thousands of times better instruction somehow. This is the product you purchased.

That takes four days? Or is it a reason to push some things around a room, take the rest of the week off, then throw a temper tantrum right before and not come back anyway?

No, it won’t take 4 days to push the desks around and pile up boxes. Some of would prefer to make the room as inviting as possible because we know school will feel very different and we want to make it to feel as comfortable and inviting as possible. I am an MCPS teacher and this post is the first I am hearing about the 4 day request. It certainly wasn’t something I voted on or asked for. That said, if I have to choose between using before school, after school, and lunch to support a severely at risk student or making my classroom inviting, I am choosing the academic support every time. The reality is that many of your children are learning and you can’t possible understand how much time we are putting in doing extra sessions with the kids that aren’t. I work with kids the vast majority of Wednesday’s but I am inviting the kids that are not doing well or can’t attend consistently due to family obligations including supporting younger children in the home. I will choose to use my time with kids and my classroom can stay in disarray until the summer. Please, don’t complain that the walls are bare.

I don't think many posters (aside from the DL advocates actually) would have a problem with the 4-day request if they actually believed/trusted teachers would follow through on coming back.

[Anonymous]

I am beyond frustrated. Maybe it is just my kids school. The teachers are never available at the homeroom time, after school and all have the exact same same 50 minute window on Wednesday. They they say, sorry you didn’t come in for help at the set time out of luck. Too bad you don’t understand calculus with 60 minutes of teaching a week, go google videos. Couldn’t go to your one help session (that half the time is prerecorded) because the other teacher has quizzes and presentations at that time. They are so unhelpful it is pathetic. And rude, the way they talk to the kids is horrible-talking their frustration out on kids. Sorry to bother you to actually teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am beyond frustrated. Maybe it is just my kids school. The teachers are never available at the homeroom time, after school and all have the exact same same 50 minute window on Wednesday. They they say, sorry you didn’t come in for help at the set time out of luck. Too bad you don’t understand calculus with 60 minutes of teaching a week, go google videos. Couldn’t go to your one help session (that half the time is prerecorded) because the other teacher has quizzes and presentations at that time. They are so unhelpful it is pathetic. And rude, the way they talk to the kids is horrible-talking their frustration out on kids. Sorry to bother you to actually teach.

On this, I can't imagine. I had to work my butt off as a student (5 days a week, in-person obviously) to have a shot at understanding and keeping up with calculus. I can't imagine that, aside from a few cases of overachievers, that most kids have truly been taught a subject like that this year.

[Anonymous]

Enjoy your uncredentialed substitutes and teachers on visas because that's where this is going to go if you keep this up these terrible attitudes towards teachers. It's been a rough year, why do people need to insist on making it worse? Glad I left the profession I felt guilty at first but now I see that my compassion was just being taken advantage of. You'll get what you get even if you pitch a fit.

[Anonymous]

I teach in person in a private elementary school. We would have loved to have had time to make the bulletin boards and classrooms beautiful for our kids, as many are in weird makeshift spaces. But we didn't have time, and we had to learn a ton of new tech, but guess what? Once we were back, especially once kids were doing projects, we got the rooms and bulletin boards looking nice and welcoming. I don't think the kids suffered for the extra week it took for us to get it looking nice. In the meantime, all of the MCPS building services are working full time with less to do, so have them set up the desks and chairs now. The administrators are by and large in the buildings, and many of them are former teachers. They can get to work on the bulletin boards in the halls. Front office staff can cut out stencilled letters and make welcome back signs, or print name tags so teachers recognize students behind masks, or can get to know new ones. Kids care a lot more about the people saying hi and knowing their name than whether the room is colorful. Principals also can ask for teacher volunteers to help. Some of them might enjoy helping and connecting with admin, and then it's not mandatory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Enjoy your uncredentialed substitutes and teachers on visas because that's where this is going to go if you keep this up these terrible attitudes towards teachers. It's been a rough year, why do people need to insist on making it worse? Glad I left the profession I felt guilty at first but now I see that my compassion was just being taken advantage of. You'll get what you get even if you pitch a fit.

And when teachers pitch a fit, we get the crap known as DL. And are teachers on visas a bad thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone should’ve told me I shouldn’t be working Wednesdays! I’m meeting with groups of students all morning and in meetings all afternoon.

To everyone volunteering my personal, unpaid time to set up classrooms, post your email and I’ll send you the volunteer sign up genius!

I’m getting sick and tired of the teacher trash talk. I love teaching and love watching your children grow and learn but all this vitriol doesn’t make the $25/hr after taxes worth it. You need to realize, this will drive away the really good teachers, the ones that have options. Then you’ll really have something to complain about when the teachers that are left are inexperienced or inept.

Do you know how many hours I work at home, outside of my pay. I am sure millions of others do the same. It is a SALARIED position. You are not an hourly employee.

Exactly. All of us are exhausted and doing way more than is listed on our job descriptions! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a ton of extra work to do, plus of course caring for their own kids. I get frustrated when teachers imply that their circumstances are unique.

+1000, teachers are not the only people who have had to adjust in the past year and the continued implication that they are unique is so frustrating. Many of us are putting in hours well above and beyond our normal tours of duty, some of which is attributable to the fact that schools remain closed, so do I get to pass around a sign up genius for you to do portions of my job in exchange for the portions of your job that I am currently doing?

Again you chose to have kids and you choose to parent them.

Ah the ever reliable you chose to have kids, so choose to parent them trope. I am not asking my kids’ teachers to parent them, what I am asking them to do is educate them, which is what they collect a paycheck for doing. The educating that teachers get paid to do is not the same thing as parenting. If everything fell under the parenting umbrella, teachers wouldn’t have jobs. You can’t have it both ways, either teachers are skilled workers or anyone who has a kid can do a teacher’s job. When a kid gets sick you bring them to the doctor, no one says well you chose to have that kid so figure it out yourself. The same goes for education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Enjoy your uncredentialed substitutes and teachers on visas because that's where this is going to go if you keep this up these terrible attitudes towards teachers. It's been a rough year, why do people need to insist on making it worse? Glad I left the profession I felt guilty at first but now I see that my compassion was just being taken advantage of. You'll get what you get even if you pitch a fit.

Retention of teachers was low 5 years ago, I can’t imagine what it is currently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Enjoy your uncredentialed substitutes and teachers on visas because that's where this is going to go if you keep this up these terrible attitudes towards teachers. It's been a rough year, why do people need to insist on making it worse? Glad I left the profession I felt guilty at first but now I see that my compassion was just being taken advantage of. You'll get what you get even if you pitch a fit.

Retention of teachers was low 5 years ago, I can’t imagine what it is currently.

Surprisingly high - you can work from home. Get a great pension and other benefits and only have to work 8 months of the year.