Burgundy Farm
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Anonymous
These excuses and questions are ridiculous. excuses to get out of teaching. I used to think teachers were so special. Especially at Burgundy. Just full of excuses. |
Anonymous
I am not the rude PP and we adore our Burgundy teachers. What would it take for you to feel safe? Sincere question. Is there anything we can, or is it only a vaccine that will make you feel safe? |
Anonymous
+1000 |
Anonymous
when testing turnarounds are not being reported to be 10-14 days and when cases aren't higher than they were at the low point in June? I think teachers here and around the country are scared to go back to work when the numbers are either going up or are staying around the same as they were when things were bad. Also knowing that rules will be followed. That can happen if there are shorter interactions with students and they are successful at the mitigating protocols. Teachers love teaching class outside but that is not realistic for an entire day and everyone 6 feet apart. |
Anonymous
Thank you for confirming my decision to pull my kid from this school -- if you are a teacher with this type of attitude. |
Anonymous
People like you and the other jerks on this thread are why I am leaving the teaching profession as soon as this pandemic is over. I am an award-winning educator with years of experience and an advanced degree. I absolutely LOVE my job - I love curriculum, working with the students, all the parts that are actually teaching. Every teacher I know worked double time all spring to re-plan every single lesson to make them as engaging as possible. All while being given zero time to prepare and next to no resources from our school. This summer we had professional development, but it was next to useless. The time we spent completing busy work for that PD would have been better spent preparing amazing DL lessons for the fall. But we couldn’t do that, because no one was willing to admit that DL was a possibility. Instead the admin just kept insisting that we would be in person, so all of my time this summer was spent re-designing my curriculum to fit the new schedule that we will have in the fall (specifically for in-person COVID learning), accommodate social distancing, and the million other tiny things that end up necessitating huge changes to the curriculum: attempting to prevent spread by not using paper, no more art or lab supplies, no more communal classroom supplies, additional class time needed to sanitize, being outside whenever possible... the list goes on and on. Now, we were just told last week that we will be DL (at least at the start of the year). I can give up my entire summer to re-plan for one scenario, but there was literally not enough time to recreate two new plans for both scenarios. Teachers are in a hopeless situation. The reality is that every job you people keep bringing up is completely different from being trapped in a room with fifteen kids all day. Even with masks, they aren’t perfect. And having to constantly watch and enforce mask protocol is yet another thing that will be taking me away from teaching. Our HVAC system sucks. Grocery store workers deal with tons of people every day, but the amount of time they are exposed to each potentially infectious individual is small - that affects the likelihood of transmission in a huge way. Truck drivers and delivery people - not trapped in a room with potentially viral people all day. Office workers - last I checked, not trapped in a 30x30 foot room with 15 kids for the entire day. There aren’t many other jobs I can think of that place workers in this uniquely worrisome situation. What I’ve seen on these threads is just heartbreaking. I am in this for the kids, but I wonder how much they’ll get out of my teaching if they overhear the awful things their parents say about their teachers. I hate knowing that so many parents think teachers are just lazy, think we deserve special treatment, think that schools just shut down because of teachers (newsflash: my school didn’t take a formal measure of what the faculty wanted even once, and I know no one talked to me. It’s not about the teachers). The things teachers are bringing up aren’t just empty excuses - they are real issues. And it is just so frustrating, because I know that the in-person experience is going to be awful compared to regular school. When kids are kept apart from each other all day, no opportunities for hands-on learning, I can’t actually get close enough to them to directly help them with anything - this is not a situation that allows for any of the progressive teaching practices that I’ve spent years learning about implementing. It’s going to suck, because it’s an impossible situation, and teachers are going to get blamed for that too. We will make it as awesome as we can, but it will never be the same as regular in-person learning (cue the parents chiming in and telling me that if I was just a better / more creative / more innovative teacher, that I’d find a way). And, what makes this even more frustrating, is that if anyone had listened to the teachers and acknowledged at the start of the summer that DL was a very real possibility, we could have spent the summer investing our resources into DL, and making it incredible. There is so much research on online learning environments that is really exciting, but we are just turning a blind eye. I spent so much time on Zoom with my students this spring, and it was so cool getting to know them as individuals in their home environments. We could really be taking advantage of this year, but instead, we’re going to force everyone into school for a learning experience that isn’t possible right now. Can’t wait to move on to another career after everything I’ve read here. I will deeply miss my work with the kids, but it just isn’t worth it when I know what all the parents really think of teachers. We’re just lazy, expendable, fear-mongering babies in your eyes. |
Anonymous
| I am sorry to any teachers reading who may have been offended by any of the comments in this thread. The more I learn, the more it is clear to me that teachers were not involved early enough in the planning process. Just like administration has failed families, they have likely also failed the teachers. You don't deserve to be taking the blame. There are many wonderful teachers at Burgundy and we adore you. |
Anonymous
Honestly, the issue is likely that there are more people qualified to coach soccer ready willing and able to immediately step into his job. |
Anonymous
No, no you couldn't. Because nothing can make DL "incredible" for 6 year olds. And no parents in their right mind want to pay 35K for DL while having to pay a nanny to supervise their kids while they work. No offense to you, but people are just not willing to do that, unless they are so rich that they're just burning money, and have no sense. The school should have been more honest about what it was willing to offer, and the situation may not be the teachers' fault, but that's about the end of my agreement with you. |
Anonymous
Can you explain why you are waiting for the pandemic to be over? |
Anonymous
In my mind, the service private schools provide is greater than that of a single year’s education for a single student. Private schools offer students and families freedom from the bureaucratic, test-driven environment of many public schools (not that there aren’t fantastic teachers there - they just have their hands tied by so many things out of their control. Private schools provide an opportunity to move pedagogy forward in innovative ways, because the teachers are allowed to. I firmly believe that if you truly believe in the school community your child has attended, that you should be willing to shell out the tuition for distance learning. If you and enough others don’t, then the school may not be around much longer. |
Anonymous
Definitely. I just feel like it would be a huge disservice to my school to put them in the position of having to hire someone to fill my role during these times. It’s so hard already to find qualified teachers, but it’s even harder to get an accurate sense of someone’s abilities when it’s unsafe to meet them or see them teach in person. It just seems like there is so much going on that to add one more thing on top of that would be unkind. And, since I designed the entire curriculum for the grade / subject I teach, it will make the transition trickier (I will definitely leave all of my curricular info behind, but it can be tough for someone new to use resources that they didn’t have a hand in creating). |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Meh. My son has attended both private and public schools. Certainly, public has some drawbacks, but to us, we valued him having more diverse classmates. Probably the reason I'm so irritated now is that we were never totally sold on the switch. |
Anonymous
| One of the biggest sorrows for me in this whole thing is just such disappointment in my fellow school parents. I get that people are grieving, angry and all the feelings, but you are embarrassing yourselves and us with so many ill informed and naive statements and points. Let’s do better than comparing a volunteer soccer coach to a professional teacher if you don’t know what goes into to teaching. Let’s not complain about reduced costs for running a school when remote (really you need to question the electrical bills) when you don’t know about annual planning and operating budgets. The list goes on and on. It’s really disappointing and frankly shocking to me. It’s making me question Burgundy far more than any mistakes the school may have made in this whole process. I hope you let your kids stay at burgundy so they can learn research and critical thinking. |