RANT: Teachers, why are you so whiny?

[Anonymous]

16 people trying to move entire classrooms full of stuff in one day with one cart? That is ridiculous. Students are not allowed to help either. Thankfully my DS will be finished school and said he would invite 2 of his friends to come help out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16 people trying to move entire classrooms full of stuff in one day with one cart? That is ridiculous. Students are not allowed to help either. Thankfully my DS will be finished school and said he would invite 2 of his friends to come help out.

Pay the PPs no mind. If it’s so easy to be a teacher then they should absolutely switch careers and become one. Or at least sub in a few schools. Just like everyone should have experience working in a restaurant, everyone should have experience working in a school so they can see what it actually entails. Most would run away screaming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16 people trying to move entire classrooms full of stuff in one day with one cart? That is ridiculous. Students are not allowed to help either. Thankfully my DS will be finished school and said he would invite 2 of his friends to come help out.

My ten year old son used to help moving the heavy stuff. he was in hot demand with all the teachers on the hall. It's ridiculous. They should hire moving crews. It's only a matter of time until someone is seriously hurt, paralyzed...

[Anonymous]

so glad Monday is my last day in this profession

You people are vicious & sick. Let’s see who’s around to teach your kids & grandkids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:23:27,

you mean by “full pension” and where in teaching can you get it after only 20 years? Virginia’s pension (VRS) provides about 50% of the highest three years’ average. The only way you could get that with 20 years experience is if you were at least 40 years old when you started.

Someone has teaching confused with military service!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget dismantling all the bulletin boards and removing anchhors and other things from the walls.

Do most office workers frequently have to do the equivalent of cleaning out one office in a day or two, and then having to completely redecorate and organize the new office in just a day or so (gotta look Pinterest-y for the parents and kids at Open House) a few months later?

We are told to remove every staple from the bulletin boards and strips in the hallways and in our classrooms. The principal actually goes around and does a staple check before you're allowed to check out on the last day.

See, this is an example of exactly what everyone here is talking about. I read this and my honest reaction is....okay? So remove all the staples...this doesn't sound like some big horrible draconian abusive task, it sounds like one of those (little!) things that's annoying to have to do but you have to do oh well. We all have them...it's called work. Parts of every job include annoying little things you don't really feel like doing. If you think a staple inspection before your annual 3 month break is above and beyond...you're being whiny

Great. Come volunteer and do it. It will only take a few minutes, right? I have 3 bulletin boards and 5 bulletin strips. You can use my stepladder or a chair.

Lol. You really can't see that you're completely proving OP's point?

(No, no one said it would only take a few minutes. I'm sure it's annoying to have to do...just like every job requires you to do annoying tasks that you don't really feel like doing! You're being whiny.)

YEP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:23:27,

you mean by “full pension” and where in teaching can you get it after only 20 years? Virginia’s pension (VRS) provides about 50% of the highest three years’ average. The only way you could get that with 20 years experience is if you were at least 40 years old when you started.

Someone has teaching confused with military service!

Why do they do that? I don’t know how many times people asked me if I was “20 and done” when I had around 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:16 people trying to move entire classrooms full of stuff in one day with one cart? That is ridiculous. Students are not allowed to help either. Thankfully my DS will be finished school and said he would invite 2 of his friends to come help out.

My ten year old son used to help moving the heavy stuff. he was in hot demand with all the teachers on the hall. It's ridiculous. They should hire moving crews. It's only a matter of time until someone is seriously hurt, paralyzed...

I love that they make us watch a video about slips and falls in order to CYA but the expectation is that we actually stand on chairs, ledges and ladders (that we have to bring from home) to take things down and put things back up on the walls. Or the most ridiculous—to cover what’s already on the walls with more paper and then uncover when we come back. Today I was standing on a narrow ledge trying to cover my alphabet while my coworker held my ankles steady.

[Anonymous]

We had these really unsteady and unsafe ladder type things in my school. I emailed my principal and said I felt unsafe using them. Turns out that when you put something like that in writing and are really, super nice and beg for a safe one, they will buy one. They don't want a lawsuit when there is proof in writing of safety issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers, it's not that I dislike you. I don't. I have 3 school-aged kids and I work as a para in an elementary school, so I am around teachers and work closely with them all day. Most of my friends are teachers. I just get so tired of the whining. I am speaking from my own experiences with elementary teachers in a good school district. I realize other teachers' situations can be much different

The pay thing. I'm gonna say it. Someone has to. Teachers, I think your pay is fair. I'm sorry, but I do. First of all, your degree was not that hard. It's not rocket science. And you only work about 180 days a year. You get summers, spring break, winter break, as well as many other days off. I know you all claim to work all summer on lesson planning. I'm sure that's true for the most dedicated teachers, as it's true that most dedicated employees do some work off the clock. But the teachers I know walk out of school at the end of the year vowing to not even think about their job until the last two weeks of summer. I heard one teacher suggest to her team that they meet once over the summer to plan. They all said forget it, and that it's above their pay grade to waste a summer day thinking about work. For my job, I have to time in/out and leave at exactly 4:15 every day. ALL of the teachers are already gone by then! They usually arrive after us as well. And no, they are not taking papers home to grade. Those days are gone. Kids self grade most of their work. Often it is actually just a completion grade and nobody even grades it. Teachers have parent and HS volunteers who come in to help with copies, project prep, grading, etc. They also get an hour of plan time each day and other times when kids are at recess, reading quietly, or working independently at stations. I spend my entire day in classrooms and I can tell you that these teachers spend about two hours per day actually teaching. Again, just my personal experience and all of this will vary from one school to the next.

Side note: The other paras that I work with complain about our pay as well. I actually think our pay is pretty fair. I get about $15/hour. It seems about right for the amount of work I do and the hours I work. Before kids, I had a job in my field utilizing my degree. It didn't actually pay much more than I'm making now and was MUCH harder work. Much more intense, tons of travel, stressful. Granted, I would be making good money by now if I hadn't left to raise my kids. But still.

Teachers, I get soooo tired of hearing you complain about parents. One minute you are whining that you get so many parent emails and the next minute you are claiming parents are just not involved and don't care. I wonder if you could survive one day in the corporate world, dealing with emails from clients instead of parents. Maybe we need to have a Take A Teacher To Work day so that you can see what your students' parents do all day instead of fretting about whether or not they should email you regarding their kid's 4th grade math test.

When a student has an issue, you automatically blame the parents. you say he must get away with that at home. That's not usually the case. Whatever issue you are having is likely the same issue the parents are having at home. Let's work together instead of pointing fingers. We can't program our kids any better than you can. If we do say that we have not seen that behavior at home, we are not lying or claiming that you are lying. We are saying that we really had no idea and we are grateful that you brought it to our attention. A sudden change in behavior is cause for concern. Now let's work together to figure out why it's happening at school.

You also complain about parent teacher conferences and having to talk with each parent for 20 whole minutes twice a year! Did you not realize this would be a part of your job when you chose this career? In the corporate world, you would be spending a lot more time than that meeting with clients. Or how about being in the med field, talking with patients and families about serious health concerns? Please do us a favor and make the most of those 20 minutes. We made arrangements to be there. Parents take time off work and find babysitters so that they can speak with you. Don't just tell us the info we can get online and then try to push us out after 5 minutes.

And finally, it really makes me cringe every year around the holidays when teachers start the Just Buy Us Gift Cards campaign. you complain about all the candles, lotions, stationery, etc and you just want gift cards. Well, here's the thing. Most of us let our child pick out your gift. The point is for them to do something nice for you and show their appreciation. They get excited about this. Kids think it's boring to give gift cards and they think you will find it boring as well. It makes them feel good to see you unwrap a pretty candle. If you don't like it, donate or re-gift it. No other profession leaves work with a carload of gifts for a 2-3 week holiday break so just BE GRATEFUL for what you get. I realize you don't know what to do with all those candles, but guess what. I also have no idea what to do with the pipe cleaner cat a student made me for Christmas. But I love it anyway because it's thoughtful. I won't request that he give me a gift card instead next year.

One last thing, I get so tired of you guys gushing about how awesome you are. My fb feed is full of teachers posting about how amazing and hard-working teachers are. Please stop embarrassing yourselves by posting these self-congratulatory memes. I know you want to tell everyone how grueling and difficult your job is. Think about the people who read your posts - doctors, nurses, military. Lots of people do good and important work without pointing it out every day.

Rant over. I really do love you, teachers. I just wish you could spend more time focusing on all the positive aspects of your job. Thanks for all you do for our kids. Just stop complaining about it.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach Pre-Kindergarten. PRE-KINDERGARTEN. In the past six weeks I've written a 100+ page classroom portfolio for NAEYC accreditation, screened 32 four year olds and wrote a report on the aggregate data, retroactively entered student assessments from fall into our cloud based curriculum program that wasn't available when it was actually fall (because the city didn't pay the company for it in time), entered said assessments for winter into the system, conducted parent-teacher conferences, and written myriad lesson plans.

This is all in addition to teaching, caring for, and just being with 16 four and five year olds 5 days a week for many hours per day. And Monday I have an observation wherein a person unknown to me will come into my classroom for three hours to write down everything I do and say, and then "grade" my performance. I will only get the results in September, when I won't remember anything about what happened during the observation.

I really am about to collapse. Just so, so weary. Friday afternoon I had a dentist appointment and was actually looking forward to it because I could recline in a chair for a little while without doing any work. So please excuse me if I seem a little whiny, a little cranky. Sorry not sorry.

You are proving everyone's point! Here's the thing. MOST of us who work could come here and write a long exhaustible list of all the things we've done at work over the past month...it would be long and boring and tiring sounding, just like your rant. It's called work for a reason. We just choose not to, because we know it's ridiculously boring to have to listen to someone catalogue every single task they've been paid to do all week - something teachers don't seem to have picked up on, Do you not think other people are expected to complete lots of different difficult and strenuous tasks at work?? It seems like that is honestly how teachers who rant and whine all the time feel...you are coming on here and doing exactly what people in this thread are talking about. As a PP said, it does not make you guys look very intelligent.

You are MISSING the point. All the paperwork and desk time is IN ADDITION to PP being in a classroom with small children doing his/ her primary job (teaching) for I imagine over 30 hours a week. So that's almost a full work week right there. Do you know how exhausting it is body and soul to do just that? And then pile on all the other stuff, which I imagine is being done at home?

+100. I don't know why we don't just let teachers teach. A 100 page portfolio? WTH?

Amen. And now they want teachers to be held responsible for children's lives by taking down crazed gunmen who burst into schools with machine guns. What next?

Machine guns? Really? Are you that stupid?

What other kind of gun could shoot scores of people in a short time?

Machine guns are not legal, haven’t been for over 30 years. No mass shootings were done with “machine guns” so you look stupid when you say someone will “burst in with machine guns”. It does not help your argument when you have no idea what you are talking about.

Columbine was carried out with pistols and shotguns, VA tech was pistols. Not machine guns.

OMG. Scores of people are dead from mass shootings. They were all done with GUNS. Guns that could shoot many bullets in a short time. Stop being pedantic.

More people are dead from CARS, CARS that get into accidents.... no one is dead from machine guns, which is what the person was so worried about. No one.

Wow, you are not very smart. If you cannot figure out that the person is saying that asking teachers to put their lives on the line (and even carry guns), as has been suggested as a "reasonable" response to all the school gun violence in recent years, you are either just being a total TOOL, or stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers, it's not that I dislike you. I don't. I have 3 school-aged kids and I work as a para in an elementary school, so I am around teachers and work closely with them all day. Most of my friends are teachers. I just get so tired of the whining. I am speaking from my own experiences with elementary teachers in a good school district. I realize other teachers' situations can be much different

The pay thing. I'm gonna say it. Someone has to. Teachers, I think your pay is fair. I'm sorry, but I do. First of all, your degree was not that hard. It's not rocket science. And you only work about 180 days a year. You get summers, spring break, winter break, as well as many other days off. I know you all claim to work all summer on lesson planning. I'm sure that's true for the most dedicated teachers, as it's true that most dedicated employees do some work off the clock. But the teachers I know walk out of school at the end of the year vowing to not even think about their job until the last two weeks of summer. I heard one teacher suggest to her team that they meet once over the summer to plan. They all said forget it, and that it's above their pay grade to waste a summer day thinking about work. For my job, I have to time in/out and leave at exactly 4:15 every day. ALL of the teachers are already gone by then! They usually arrive after us as well. And no, they are not taking papers home to grade. Those days are gone. Kids self grade most of their work. Often it is actually just a completion grade and nobody even grades it. Teachers have parent and HS volunteers who come in to help with copies, project prep, grading, etc. They also get an hour of plan time each day and other times when kids are at recess, reading quietly, or working independently at stations. I spend my entire day in classrooms and I can tell you that these teachers spend about two hours per day actually teaching. Again, just my personal experience and all of this will vary from one school to the next.

Side note: The other paras that I work with complain about our pay as well. I actually think our pay is pretty fair. I get about $15/hour. It seems about right for the amount of work I do and the hours I work. Before kids, I had a job in my field utilizing my degree. It didn't actually pay much more than I'm making now and was MUCH harder work. Much more intense, tons of travel, stressful. Granted, I would be making good money by now if I hadn't left to raise my kids. But still.

Teachers, I get soooo tired of hearing you complain about parents. One minute you are whining that you get so many parent emails and the next minute you are claiming parents are just not involved and don't care. I wonder if you could survive one day in the corporate world, dealing with emails from clients instead of parents. Maybe we need to have a Take A Teacher To Work day so that you can see what your students' parents do all day instead of fretting about whether or not they should email you regarding their kid's 4th grade math test.

When a student has an issue, you automatically blame the parents. you say he must get away with that at home. That's not usually the case. Whatever issue you are having is likely the same issue the parents are having at home. Let's work together instead of pointing fingers. We can't program our kids any better than you can. If we do say that we have not seen that behavior at home, we are not lying or claiming that you are lying. We are saying that we really had no idea and we are grateful that you brought it to our attention. A sudden change in behavior is cause for concern. Now let's work together to figure out why it's happening at school.

You also complain about parent teacher conferences and having to talk with each parent for 20 whole minutes twice a year! Did you not realize this would be a part of your job when you chose this career? In the corporate world, you would be spending a lot more time than that meeting with clients. Or how about being in the med field, talking with patients and families about serious health concerns? Please do us a favor and make the most of those 20 minutes. We made arrangements to be there. Parents take time off work and find babysitters so that they can speak with you. Don't just tell us the info we can get online and then try to push us out after 5 minutes.

And finally, it really makes me cringe every year around the holidays when teachers start the Just Buy Us Gift Cards campaign. you complain about all the candles, lotions, stationery, etc and you just want gift cards. Well, here's the thing. Most of us let our child pick out your gift. The point is for them to do something nice for you and show their appreciation. They get excited about this. Kids think it's boring to give gift cards and they think you will find it boring as well. It makes them feel good to see you unwrap a pretty candle. If you don't like it, donate or re-gift it. No other profession leaves work with a carload of gifts for a 2-3 week holiday break so just BE GRATEFUL for what you get. I realize you don't know what to do with all those candles, but guess what. I also have no idea what to do with the pipe cleaner cat a student made me for Christmas. But I love it anyway because it's thoughtful. I won't request that he give me a gift card instead next year.

One last thing, I get so tired of you guys gushing about how awesome you are. My fb feed is full of teachers posting about how amazing and hard-working teachers are. Please stop embarrassing yourselves by posting these self-congratulatory memes. I know you want to tell everyone how grueling and difficult your job is. Think about the people who read your posts - doctors, nurses, military. Lots of people do good and important work without pointing it out every day.

Rant over. I really do love you, teachers. I just wish you could spend more time focusing on all the positive aspects of your job. Thanks for all you do for our kids. Just stop complaining about it.

+100

+200

[Anonymous]

This is really funny. In my neighborhood, when I run into the moms at the store or at the park or at camp drop off, they are dying. You would not believe the moaning and complaining about their own kids. Several are families of kids I have taught. By August, they are practically begging for me to go back to work because they cannot handle their own children. And people say teachers complain, hahaha!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is really funny. In my neighborhood, when I run into the moms at the store or at the park or at camp drop off, they are dying. You would not believe the moaning and complaining about their own kids. Several are families of kids I have taught. By August, they are practically begging for me to go back to work because they cannot handle their own children. And people say teachers complain, hahaha!

Nope. I always look forward to the summer when I haven't got to deal with the incessant demands from the teachers and the meaningless busy work homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is really funny. In my neighborhood, when I run into the moms at the store or at the park or at camp drop off, they are dying. You would not believe the moaning and complaining about their own kids. Several are families of kids I have taught. By August, they are practically begging for me to go back to work because they cannot handle their own children. And people say teachers complain, hahaha!

Nope. I always look forward to the summer when I haven't got to deal with the incessant demands from the teachers and the meaningless busy work homework.

For every parent that complains about homework there is a parent that complains you don't give enough homework. There is no way to win. So don't have your kid do the busy work and ask the teacher for the specific purpose of the homework assignment. They should have a reasonable answer. If not, don't do it.