Teachers who have been DL for a year - tell us what you haven't had to put up with

[Anonymous]

No more off-work, outside of school hours duties requiring teachers to 'volunteer' to monitor bake sales, kids home games (like football or basketball), bus drop-off or pick-up, hall monitoring, clubs like chess or the debate team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach ESOL and gather my students from the classroom (pullout model) for 30 minutes of instruction each day.

In actuality it is 20 minutes of instruction because I have to walk to the classroom, get the students, and walk them to my classroom. I try to streamline of course but it really takes 5 minutes each way -- at LEAST.

With virtual learning, I lose very little time. Essentially I have 50% more instructional time now with my students!

I also do not miss doing lunch duty and bus duty.

Seems like there's a lot less of the idiotic testing we needed to do every few weeks. I think parents would have revolted with all the SLO testing we had to do for each teacher and so they eliminated them this year -- I will be sad to have to give those completely useless assessments again whenever we go back.

I am an ESOL teacher too. Where are you that you don't have to do SLOs? I'm jealous. We still have to do them and it's absurd. Between parents trying to give their kids the answers on assessments and kids who log in but don't respond (or who don't log in at all), it's been a circus this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fire drills
Shooter drills
Tornado drills
Phone calls from the office to release so and so
Counselor coming to get kids
Kids roughhousing in the back of class
Kids stealing from me or each other
Phones going off all the time

+1

[Anonymous]

I've been able to go to the bathroom when I need to go. At school, I would rely on someone walking down the hall to stand in my classroom. Now if I have to go, I put on a YouTube sight word review video and go. It's been amazing! I can finally drink more water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of the discipline issues that eat away at instructional time. The kids with behavioral issues don't show up to class (or rarely). Their parents don't want to deal with them so they don't make them do anything they don't want to do. We still have meetings about them but it usually boils down to poor parenting or lack of parenting and the parents tell us they don't want to deal with them.

I no longer have to wait with students whose parents don't pick them up after school. That was an almost daily occurrence.

+1 We are getting so much more done without the discipline problems. It is like getting 2 or 3 days worth of school work done in 1. It has been AMAZING.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No more off-work, outside of school hours duties requiring teachers to 'volunteer' to monitor bake sales, kids home games (like football or basketball), bus drop-off or pick-up, hall monitoring, clubs like chess or the debate team.

I’m still running 3 clubs. And serving on multiple committees. Not all school scrapped the extras.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No more off-work, outside of school hours duties requiring teachers to 'volunteer' to monitor bake sales, kids home games (like football or basketball), bus drop-off or pick-up, hall monitoring, clubs like chess or the debate team.

I’m still running 3 clubs. And serving on multiple committees. Not all school scrapped the extras.

It takes me a good 3+ hrs to plan and create my lessons now. Add in grading and contacting parents, I have zero time or energy to do anything extra. Kids also haven't shown an interest in online clubs so we decided not to do them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of the discipline issues that eat away at instructional time. The kids with behavioral issues don't show up to class (or rarely). Their parents don't want to deal with them so they don't make them do anything they don't want to do. We still have meetings about them but it usually boils down to poor parenting or lack of parenting and the parents tell us they don't want to deal with them.

I no longer have to wait with students whose parents don't pick them up after school. That was an almost daily occurrence.

Please quit your job, you are an embarrassment to the profession. No teacher should be glad all of the adults have simply given up on a child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the discipline issues that eat away at instructional time. The kids with behavioral issues don't show up to class (or rarely). Their parents don't want to deal with them so they don't make them do anything they don't want to do. We still have meetings about them but it usually boils down to poor parenting or lack of parenting and the parents tell us they don't want to deal with them.

I no longer have to wait with students whose parents don't pick them up after school. That was an almost daily occurrence.

Please quit your job, you are an embarrassment to the profession. No teacher should be glad all of the adults have simply given up on a child.

Well, every profession does have people who suck at it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the discipline issues that eat away at instructional time. The kids with behavioral issues don't show up to class (or rarely). Their parents don't want to deal with them so they don't make them do anything they don't want to do. We still have meetings about them but it usually boils down to poor parenting or lack of parenting and the parents tell us they don't want to deal with them.

I no longer have to wait with students whose parents don't pick them up after school. That was an almost daily occurrence.

Please quit your job, you are an embarrassment to the profession. No teacher should be glad all of the adults have simply given up on a child.

We spend way more time trying to work with these students than any other student. In school, we are able to get them counseling and work with them using behavior contracts, etc. At home, their parents rarely answer phone calls, texts, emails or the door for home visits. We have offered parental support through parenting classes and one-on-one counseling, etc. They say they are not interested. Short of removing the students from their homes, there is little that can be done. But go ahead and call us an embarrassment if that makes you feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the discipline issues that eat away at instructional time. The kids with behavioral issues don't show up to class (or rarely). Their parents don't want to deal with them so they don't make them do anything they don't want to do. We still have meetings about them but it usually boils down to poor parenting or lack of parenting and the parents tell us they don't want to deal with them.

I no longer have to wait with students whose parents don't pick them up after school. That was an almost daily occurrence.

Please quit your job, you are an embarrassment to the profession. No teacher should be glad all of the adults have simply given up on a child.

I find it interesting that you categorize it as 'giving up'. Maybe the parent is now taking personal responsibility for where their child is? The fact that teacher is not required to wait beside a kid for 20-30 minutes after school has already ended because the parent was too distracted or selfish or whatever to be on time is not their problem.

They've done their job. Do yours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No more off-work, outside of school hours duties requiring teachers to 'volunteer' to monitor bake sales, kids home games (like football or basketball), bus drop-off or pick-up, hall monitoring, clubs like chess or the debate team.

I’m still running 3 clubs. And serving on multiple committees. Not all school scrapped the extras.

It takes me a good 3+ hrs to plan and create my lessons now. Add in grading and contacting parents, I have zero time or energy to do anything extra. Kids also haven't shown an interest in online clubs so we decided not to do them.

Not bragging. This is my principal’s expectation. I sleep about six hours a night and work non-stop. I’d love to scrap the extras. We were told it’s business as usually. The only thing we don’t have to do is chaperone dances or sports events.

[Anonymous]

Yelling parents insisting their precious snowflake couldn't possibly be the class clown, not doing the work, or is misunderstood. Every interaction I have with students now is recorded, including student-teacher conferences, and all of their work is online so its very clear immediately which assignments they aren't or aren't doing.

Virtual PT conferences are also kind of nice. No delay, sharing information on screens is easy too.

[Anonymous]

Seems like behavioral issues were eating up a lot of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yelling parents insisting their precious snowflake couldn't possibly be the class clown, not doing the work, or is misunderstood. Every interaction I have with students now is recorded, including student-teacher conferences, and all of their work is online so its very clear immediately which assignments they aren't or aren't doing.

Virtual PT conferences are also kind of nice. No delay, sharing information on screens is easy too.

Aa a parent, I like these too.