latest calendar survey

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

I'm usually a big defender of teachers, but please stop talking about comments. FCPS uses a drop down menu, it's not like other school districts that input unique comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

How on earth are you spending 9 hours filling out fcps report cards for 25-ish elementary students??

DP
It’s at least 2,000 that you have to enter for most classes of 25 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

There was a TW the day after Memorial Day but I’m sure most teachers actually used it for vacation.

That was too early to start the kids still had lots of graded work to do.

That is what the afternoon of the 17th and the TW day on the 18th are (supposedly) for. Of course, if you’re trying to takeoff early, that’s not a convenient day.

What? You can’t work on grades after they are sent home. Progress Reports are sent home with the students in the last day of school. Grades are due a week or so before that.

Not for high school. They get mailed later.

That teacher cannot possibly be a fcps teacher.

FCPS Progress Reports are sent home with the ES students. Teachers can’t work on them on the 17th and 18th. How is that difficult to understand?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

How on earth are you spending 9 hours filling out fcps report cards for 25-ish elementary students??

DP
It’s at least 2,000 that you have to enter for most classes of 25 students.

2 seconds per click and one minute per kid to read over the report card for accuracy.

That come to roughly 120 minutes, or two hours of work for a class of 25 students. E hours if you are slow and diligent.

There is zero chance that you are a fcps teacher taking 9 hours of your personal weekend time outside of the mandated paid teacher work days to complete 25 elementary school report cards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

Shhh…a lot of FCPS teachers actually don’t use their workdays. They will “work from home” but that usually translates to not actually working. They make it up on a different weekend. But if the teacher workday is paired with a holiday, forget it. They aren’t really working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

Shhh…a lot of FCPS teachers actually don’t use their workdays. They will “work from home” but that usually translates to not actually working. They make it up on a different weekend. But if the teacher workday is paired with a holiday, forget it. They aren’t really working.

DP I’m sure you’re right but I still don’t think the poster is a FCPS teacher in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

Are you dense? I explained it to you already. The teacher chose not to work on their workday and took the extended Memorial Day vacation like most of us did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

Are you dense? I explained it to you already. The teacher chose not to work on their workday and took the extended Memorial Day vacation like most of us did.

Also it was probably too early to work on report cards at that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

Are you dense? I explained it to you already. The teacher chose not to work on their workday and took the extended Memorial Day vacation like most of us did.

Unless the teacher put in for PTO, you’re accusing the teacher of fraud. I think we should not jump immediately to that conclusion about public employees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

Are you dense? I explained it to you already. The teacher chose not to work on their workday and took the extended Memorial Day vacation like most of us did.

Also it was probably too early to work on report cards at that time.

It’s also possible that the teacher worked on other tasks. It’s not like report cards are the only thing that need to be completed 3 weeks before the end of the school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't like the calendar this year at all.

Some of it was outside of the school's control. The snowcrete never-ending closure was an anomaly that frustrated me, but I can't really blame on FCPS. This was the second year in a row of pretty bad snow and the county has got to develop a better plan to clear it if snow is going to be a more regular occurrence in our region. The closures for special elections were also frustrating. I appreciated that they at least tried to combine them with TWs, but they just felt like one more thing on top of a bad situation.

Overall, though, there were entirely too many TWs/SPs. Do teachers really need 2.5 days at the end of every quarter? On top of that, as an elementary parent, we had these completely unjustified monthly half-days. I was annoyed last year when they introduced them to help teachers learn a last-minute new curriculum, but at least there was a reason for them. This year they just...decided to keep them for fun?

I really don't mind a few extra student holidays to allow minority religion families to celebrate some of their major holidays. Part of what I like about living in Fairfax is how diverse it is and I liked that the days off prompted my kid to ask why and learn a little bit about Yom Kippur and Ramadan and Diwali, in addition to Christmas and Easter. It doesn't cover every holiday, nor is that feasible, but I like the message that it sends. And since sometimes those holidays fall on weekends or over the summer, I would leave them alone. This year happened to fall a lot mid-week and was exacerbated by the other closures, but generally-speaking, if we reigned in the TWs and monthly half-days, I think the calendar could be a lot better without having to throw holidays under the bus.

Were there more TW/SP days though? Teachers have had 195 day contracts for years. 5 or 6 TW days fall before school starts and 1 or 2 fall after it ends. The rest fall somewhere in between.

I’d be ok with eliminating the early release days, but I think a TW should occur around the time 4th quarter grades are due (now).

ES Teacher

+1 I just took a personal day to write report cards so I could write comments and actually them and think about the kids and their work. I worked from 5:30am- 2:30 with a few breaks. I guess they don’t mind subs at the end of the year?

I don’t think people realize how long it takes to complete ES Progress Reports.

I have a ton of sympathy for teachers. I was a high school English teacher (writing). My mom and grandma plus one sister were elementary teachers, pre computers when everything was done manually, including creating your own lesson plans. It is a ton of work, especially grading well.

But... and I mean this very kindly... it often feels that teachers who post here don't realize how much every other worker, especially salaried professionals but also hourly career workers, work beyond their regular work hours, especially during busy seasons. Every vacation, every weekend, every weekend, my salaried spouse and other salaried workers work hours in the evening and weekends, take calls and meetings on vacation, and put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet pressing deadlines or to successfully push the team or appease clients during busy seasons or big deadlines. I put in far more overtime hours running my own business during busy season than I ever did grading papers or preparing report cards. Your work might be more valuable to society, but the volume of work is not unusually burdensome or voluminous.

This type of work expectation is not unique to teachers nor an extraordinary unusual ask. It is part and parcel of being a salaried profesdional worker.

Maybe? My spouse took a call this morning, did a little work, went to the gym took a shower, jumped on another call did some work, waited around for a while for work to be done and repackaged that work a little and sent it to the client. 6 hours of billable time today.

Me, I worked on comment from 5am-2 pm on my personal day off then worked on my end of year documentation for my SMART goal for a while. While I understand professional jobs have lots of things to do beyond their regular hours, but it is the main focus of your job. Your job is to appease clients and do those things. Our main job is to teach/watch the kids and all the stuff you do to appease clients is all added on to a job where we can’t just go out to lunch when we need a break. Our main job is to be in a room for 6 hours a day with kids teaching them. That is emotionally draining, and then on top of that we have a ton of admin tasks we can’t delegate to someone else on the team.

Why did you leave to run your own business? It wasn’t just the personal time, it is also that teaching is HARD on top of then having to lose personal time for admin tasks.

You still have a week of school left. Then you have several mandatory paid teacher work days to complete report cards in the school building at work.

If you are completing the grades 2 weekends early, and spending 9 hours on elementary grades picking numbers and canned comments from a drop down menu, 2 weeks before school ends, on your personal weekend instead of your required teacher work days, then something very wrong is happening with your time management.

DP
That’s not true. There is one TW after the school year ends. And for yet another time, if that teacher is working in an ES grade, the progress reports go home on the last day of school. Grades have to be entered a little over a week before the last day.

What were you doing on your 2 teacher work days last week?

It's not posdible that this person is a FCPS teacher.

Loudoun County perhaps? Private school?

There weren’t 2 teacher workdays last week - only 1. Monday (May 25) was Memorial Day. Tuesday (May 26) was the teacher workday and Eid was Wednesday (May 27). Eid was a religious holiday.

OK, but the “teacher” says it took a full day. Why not use Tuesday?

“Teacher” here yeah it took a full day. I teach in a different district in a program with no pre generated comments. My kids go to FCPS but we get zero days to work on report cards where I teach.
My point is those work days are important. Also the Tuesday after Memorial Day is too early to get finalized grades.