Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

[Anonymous]

I feel like this thread would have been better served by saying "I need to complain about how overworked I feel" and then go and do so. But it is phrased as "I need YOU to understand how overworked I feel" and trust me, we know you feel overworked. Partly because many of us also feel overworked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?

In my school district, yes, that's how we are paid.

I earn a salary of $83,320/year. I'm paid for 22 pay periods. My yearly health care insurance premiums, long term disability, pension contributions, etc are divided up for the year by 22 and the amount is paid from that paycheck. The school district's share of our premiums and contribution to our pensions comes during those 22 pay periods, as well.

From each paycheck about 1/6 of my gross pay (actually 18%) is withheld (after taxes). They keep that for teachers in a "Summer Pay" fund. We get 4 paychecks in the summer from that fund. But all our premiums are paid from the 22 salary paychecks. Not from the 4 summer fund paychecks.

You realize what they withhold from your paychecks doesn’t cover the entire premium, don’t you? The school pays most of the premium, even for those summer months when you're not working.

This really isn’t that complicated.

Let me walk you through this with some sample numbers so you can understand where I am coming from.

Scenario 1:
Health care for employer per year is 12,000
Health care for employee per year is 8,000 ( 800a month for 10 months, or 666.6 a month for 12)

Scenario 2:
Lets say the board decides to lower their payment to 10,000 and pass the extra 2 to the employee. Now it is

Health care for employer per year 10,000
Health care for employee per year 10,000 ( 1,000 per month for 10 months or 833 per mont for 12 month pay)


I'll admit to not knowing much about this, but both of these seem viable options.
Please provide me with an explanation to show how local school boards decide how much premium they pay vs the insurance. You can also let me know how schools choose health providers and negotiate payment and decide how much they pay vs their employees. I will be honest and say I don't know how any employer does this, but it seems like any employer can change the formula and I am not sure how you would know the breakdown between employer and employee.

You can not just "change the formula". The employer is required by law to pay at least 50% of the premium for the insured person. If you pay 75% of one employee, you must pay 75% of all, etc. but the minimum you must pay is 50%

Ok thanks so the formula can be anywhere between 50%-100% for all employees? Are you saying the board cannot change the amount paid from 60% to 50% for all employees? I am genuinely asking because I don't know.

DP. They could. And they can, and do, pay more for some plans, when they offer their employees a choice of plans. I can’t confirm the pp’s comment about not paying larger amounts for certain employees, but it would sort of make sense.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these policies are not purchased by the year. If you have a qualifying life event, or you leave the job, you can cancel. Coverage and premium charges would stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?

In my school district, yes, that's how we are paid.

I earn a salary of $83,320/year. I'm paid for 22 pay periods. My yearly health care insurance premiums, long term disability, pension contributions, etc are divided up for the year by 22 and the amount is paid from that paycheck. The school district's share of our premiums and contribution to our pensions comes during those 22 pay periods, as well.

From each paycheck about 1/6 of my gross pay (actually 18%) is withheld (after taxes). They keep that for teachers in a "Summer Pay" fund. We get 4 paychecks in the summer from that fund. But all our premiums are paid from the 22 salary paychecks. Not from the 4 summer fund paychecks.

You realize what they withhold from your paychecks doesn’t cover the entire premium, don’t you? The school pays most of the premium, even for those summer months when you're not working.

This really isn’t that complicated.

Let me walk you through this with some sample numbers so you can understand where I am coming from.

Scenario 1:
Health care for employer per year is 12,000
Health care for employee per year is 8,000 ( 800a month for 10 months, or 666.6 a month for 12)

Scenario 2:
Lets say the board decides to lower their payment to 10,000 and pass the extra 2 to the employee. Now it is

Health care for employer per year 10,000
Health care for employee per year 10,000 ( 1,000 per month for 10 months or 833 per mont for 12 month pay)


I'll admit to not knowing much about this, but both of these seem viable options.
Please provide me with an explanation to show how local school boards decide how much premium they pay vs the insurance. You can also let me know how schools choose health providers and negotiate payment and decide how much they pay vs their employees. I will be honest and say I don't know how any employer does this, but it seems like any employer can change the formula and I am not sure how you would know the breakdown between employer and employee.

You can not just "change the formula". The employer is required by law to pay at least 50% of the premium for the insured person. If you pay 75% of one employee, you must pay 75% of all, etc. but the minimum you must pay is 50%

Employers can pay different amounts for different categories of employees. e.g., they can pay different amounts for full-time versus part-time employees, or for different positions, and for different levels of seniority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers need to quit whining. Even this thread is about why nobody supposedly acknowledges how overworked teachers are. We get it, you feel stressed out, but so are many other professionals. We've already heard you complain about it 1000 times. Why do you think you're special and get to whine louder than everyone else?

I don’t think you can appreciate the stress of teaching unless you’ve done it. Is it the ONLY hard job? Of course not. Are teachers extremely overworked? Yes.

-career changer who has worked in the corporate world. I hard rough weeks in that job, but teaching is considerably more time-consuming and stressful to me.

Fact is that many middling college students who'd rather not get stressed out over grad school self-select into the teaching profession because they think it's an easier gig with lots of vacation time. And then those people get all upset when they realize that teaching is just as hard as many other jobs. So it's not the work per se but the false expectations about teaching that's causing all the whining.

My friend in college was like that.

Well I agree I was stressed about paying for medical school and am now a teacher. I got a full ride for undergrad and living at home with my parents was not an option for me after 18. I worked 35 hours a week, had a full ride and put myself through school. I wanted to be a pediatrician, but didn't want to take on the debt load involved and so I became a teacher. Over time, I figured identifying ear infection after ear infection after strep throat after ear infection while not earning that much (in the beginning) and having student debt made teaching look better and more fulfilling. Plus I really like kids and I wanted to see them when they were healthy not only sick.

I don't think that means I should end up taking crap from people about my job. I still think I am worth of respect. I could have gone to med school and done well. I could have been an engineer, but I chose teaching. The working conditions are very hard and there is a layer of patriarchy in our society that makes people further denigrate teachers.

Right now things are particularly bad in education. As people are looking to rebuild relationships and reenter society after COVID, I think they are understandably upset that our social fabric was torn apart with COVID. People are looking for something to help mend and heal the tear. They really want teachers to be the ones to start the process since we are an archetype for all women everywhere and we work with children and we have always pulled together "for the children."
The problem is we are so very tired also that we aren't willing right now to soothe all the worries away and take in all the behaviors from parents and kids we are dealing with right now. We are trying but we are tired too, just like all caring professions. During times of stress, things that are fragile tend to break. School systems have always relied on teachers to cover up their mistakes from buying too many supplies, to being the face of the system to parents. We are tired of doing this.
Carry on with your "you caused this" rants, but know that root of what you are doing comes from a place of misogyny and patriarchy (Cue defensive, angry posts now)

When you speak about lack of respect and parent behaviors, are you talking about your daily interactions with parents of kids you teach or the way the teaching profession is discussed here and on other platforms? What specific parent behaviors are problematic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?

In my school district, yes, that's how we are paid.

I earn a salary of $83,320/year. I'm paid for 22 pay periods. My yearly health care insurance premiums, long term disability, pension contributions, etc are divided up for the year by 22 and the amount is paid from that paycheck. The school district's share of our premiums and contribution to our pensions comes during those 22 pay periods, as well.

From each paycheck about 1/6 of my gross pay (actually 18%) is withheld (after taxes). They keep that for teachers in a "Summer Pay" fund. We get 4 paychecks in the summer from that fund. But all our premiums are paid from the 22 salary paychecks. Not from the 4 summer fund paychecks.

You realize what they withhold from your paychecks doesn’t cover the entire premium, don’t you? The school pays most of the premium, even for those summer months when you're not working.

This really isn’t that complicated.

Let me walk you through this with some sample numbers so you can understand where I am coming from.

Scenario 1:
Health care for employer per year is 12,000
Health care for employee per year is 8,000 ( 800a month for 10 months, or 666.6 a month for 12)

Scenario 2:
Lets say the board decides to lower their payment to 10,000 and pass the extra 2 to the employee. Now it is

Health care for employer per year 10,000
Health care for employee per year 10,000 ( 1,000 per month for 10 months or 833 per mont for 12 month pay)


I'll admit to not knowing much about this, but both of these seem viable options.
Please provide me with an explanation to show how local school boards decide how much premium they pay vs the insurance. You can also let me know how schools choose health providers and negotiate payment and decide how much they pay vs their employees. I will be honest and say I don't know how any employer does this, but it seems like any employer can change the formula and I am not sure how you would know the breakdown between employer and employee.

You can not just "change the formula". The employer is required by law to pay at least 50% of the premium for the insured person. If you pay 75% of one employee, you must pay 75% of all, etc. but the minimum you must pay is 50%

Ok thanks so the formula can be anywhere between 50%-100% for all employees? Are you saying the board cannot change the amount paid from 60% to 50% for all employees? I am genuinely asking because I don't know.

DP. They could. And they can, and do, pay more for some plans, when they offer their employees a choice of plans. I can’t confirm the pp’s comment about not paying larger amounts for certain employees, but it would sort of make sense.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these policies are not purchased by the year. If you have a qualifying life event, or you leave the job, you can cancel. Coverage and premium charges would stop.

Interesting and thanks. When I took my academic leave of absence for COVID year, we paid a lump sum for Sept- Dec, and then had to pay a lump sum for Jan-Sept because the rate could change from one calendar year to another. This made me think the school system pays for things on annual basis, but I don’t have real knowledge of the process.

[Anonymous]

Because they are too busy working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?

In my school district, yes, that's how we are paid.

I earn a salary of $83,320/year. I'm paid for 22 pay periods. My yearly health care insurance premiums, long term disability, pension contributions, etc are divided up for the year by 22 and the amount is paid from that paycheck. The school district's share of our premiums and contribution to our pensions comes during those 22 pay periods, as well.

From each paycheck about 1/6 of my gross pay (actually 18%) is withheld (after taxes). They keep that for teachers in a "Summer Pay" fund. We get 4 paychecks in the summer from that fund. But all our premiums are paid from the 22 salary paychecks. Not from the 4 summer fund paychecks.

You realize what they withhold from your paychecks doesn’t cover the entire premium, don’t you? The school pays most of the premium, even for those summer months when you're not working.

This really isn’t that complicated.

The school pays the insurance premiums, and their contribution to our pension, and our salary, in 22 increments, which covers the full year. No one is paying any premiums at all during the 4 "Summer Pay" periods. At that point all the premiums have been paid already.

My comments were in response to someone posting these comments:

"The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?"

and

"They take your share of the premiums out of your pay to cover the summer months— the district is still paying their share during the summer months. That’s a lot of money. A few small outside employment conditions is still an incredibly good deal for the teachers."

You probably don't work Saturdays and Sundays, but your employer's contribution to your health care insurance also covers those days, right? I guess if you want to be technical about it, you could say that your employer is "subsidizing" your weekend health insurance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers need to quit whining. Even this thread is about why nobody supposedly acknowledges how overworked teachers are. We get it, you feel stressed out, but so are many other professionals. We've already heard you complain about it 1000 times. Why do you think you're special and get to whine louder than everyone else?

Hi, whiny parent!

Seriously parents whine endlessly-can't wait till snow days start

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?

In my school district, yes, that's how we are paid.

I earn a salary of $83,320/year. I'm paid for 22 pay periods. My yearly health care insurance premiums, long term disability, pension contributions, etc are divided up for the year by 22 and the amount is paid from that paycheck. The school district's share of our premiums and contribution to our pensions comes during those 22 pay periods, as well.

From each paycheck about 1/6 of my gross pay (actually 18%) is withheld (after taxes). They keep that for teachers in a "Summer Pay" fund. We get 4 paychecks in the summer from that fund. But all our premiums are paid from the 22 salary paychecks. Not from the 4 summer fund paychecks.

You realize what they withhold from your paychecks doesn’t cover the entire premium, don’t you? The school pays most of the premium, even for those summer months when you're not working.

This really isn’t that complicated.

The school pays the insurance premiums, and their contribution to our pension, and our salary, in 22 increments, which covers the full year. No one is paying any premiums at all during the 4 "Summer Pay" periods. At that point all the premiums have been paid already.

My comments were in response to someone posting these comments:

"The school is still paying the same share of the premiums over the summer as they do the rest of the year. Did you really think you were paying the full premium over the summer? Or that they were taking the full premiums for the summer out of your paychecks during the school year?"

and

"They take your share of the premiums out of your pay to cover the summer months— the district is still paying their share during the summer months. That’s a lot of money. A few small outside employment conditions is still an incredibly good deal for the teachers."

You probably don't work Saturdays and Sundays, but your employer's contribution to your health care insurance also covers those days, right? I guess if you want to be technical about it, you could say that your employer is "subsidizing" your weekend health insurance.

The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

They are. And it’s discussed on other threads, mainly about why there aren’t 1:1 aides or why disruptive kids are clearing classrooms. School systems can’t hire because no one wants to be a para.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para.

Nice. A teacher saying paras don't work hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

So, I will agree that having "summers off" is the number one perk of being a teacher. (#2 is, of course, having snow days and #3, your own kids' vacation day schedule, if you have kids).

Continuing to have dental, vision, LTD premiums coverage those months (I get my health insurance through my husband's plan) is a perk as well. It's just 4 pay periods out of a total of 26, it's not like it's some big huge benefit or anything, but yes, there is a benefit there. It's part of the understanding we have when we sign our contract.

There's an alternative: School districts could just pay us for the 22 pay periods we work, and consider us "temporarily unemployed" for the 4 pay periods we don't work. We could file for COBRA, we could file for unemployment. Our biweekly paycheck would go up 18%. Their contribution to our health insurance premiums would go down by 18% -- and then we'd need to lose health coverage for those 4 pay periods unless we contributed it on our own. That seems really complicated to me logistically for a profession where everyone is on the same summer schedule -- where you can anticipate that there will be 8 weeks where people aren't working. To me, it makes sense that part of the salary package includes health insurance for 26 pay periods, not just the 22 you are actively working. But I don't work in HR or Payroll. Maybe it would be easier to do it a different way?

I personally don't feel that would be a decent tradeoff as it really doesn't solve any problems, except maybe it would make parents like you feel better that teachers weren't getting some great summer benefit in keeping their employer subsidized health insurance premiums for 4 pay periods?

I have to add, I don't feel there are any major restrictions on teacher summer jobs. Its true you aren't allowed to tutor your own students or students at your school for pay, but there are summer school options, and you can tutor thousands of other kids who aren't at your school. I don't think it would be a problem if I wanted to work at a bar or anything. Probably working as a stripper would cause some issues. Summer job choice is not a major issue of complaint for any teacher I know, anyhow.

It *is* hard to find summer employment that would be at the same rate as my usual salary.

(My biggest complaint in terms of vacation or days off is actually that all my vacation needs to be taken in the summer or at school breaks, and that I have to take 4 hours off at a time... can't just do one hour here or there (because of sub coverage). As an older teacher and member of the sandwich generation, I need a lot of time off now for medical care for family members. But my district won't let me take just one hour off, it has to be a half day or a full day. I would gladly give up an entire week of summer vacation, just to have a few more hours off when I need it during the school year.)

But none of these concerns come close to the most challenging aspect of teaching and the reason so many are leaving - it's the absolutely unrealistic teaching demands and expectations being placed on teachers to have students reach certain benchmarks despite the fact that they enter our classrooms without the foundational skills they need to be doing grade level work. We can write a million "I can..." statements on our board, and we can implement your curriculum with fidelity as required, and we can monitor progress and adapt the lessons and scaffold them and keep anecdotal records and implement Tier two interventions, but if students are working severely below grade level these little "mini-lessons" aren't going to cut it. They need actual lessons. Actual, below grade level lessons on below grade level skills, and that doesn't happen in a 15 minute mini-lesson. Yet we aren't being allowed to teach below grade level skills with fidelity; it's just impossible to do it in the time you give us. So we do our best, but we know it is't enough, and it just makes work even harder for the teachers the next grade up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

So, I will agree that having "summers off" is the number one perk of being a teacher. (#2 is, of course, having snow days and #3, your own kids' vacation day schedule, if you have kids).

Continuing to have dental, vision, LTD premiums coverage those months (I get my health insurance through my husband's plan) is a perk as well. It's just 4 pay periods out of a total of 26, it's not like it's some big huge benefit or anything, but yes, there is a benefit there. It's part of the understanding we have when we sign our contract.

There's an alternative: School districts could just pay us for the 22 pay periods we work, and consider us "temporarily unemployed" for the 4 pay periods we don't work. We could file for COBRA, we could file for unemployment. Our biweekly paycheck would go up 18%. Their contribution to our health insurance premiums would go down by 18% -- and then we'd need to lose health coverage for those 4 pay periods unless we contributed it on our own. That seems really complicated to me logistically for a profession where everyone is on the same summer schedule -- where you can anticipate that there will be 8 weeks where people aren't working. To me, it makes sense that part of the salary package includes health insurance for 26 pay periods, not just the 22 you are actively working. But I don't work in HR or Payroll. Maybe it would be easier to do it a different way?

I personally don't feel that would be a decent tradeoff as it really doesn't solve any problems, except maybe it would make parents like you feel better that teachers weren't getting some great summer benefit in keeping their employer subsidized health insurance premiums for 4 pay periods?

I have to add, I don't feel there are any major restrictions on teacher summer jobs. Its true you aren't allowed to tutor your own students or students at your school for pay, but there are summer school options, and you can tutor thousands of other kids who aren't at your school. I don't think it would be a problem if I wanted to work at a bar or anything. Probably working as a stripper would cause some issues. Summer job choice is not a major issue of complaint for any teacher I know, anyhow.

It *is* hard to find summer employment that would be at the same rate as my usual salary.

(My biggest complaint in terms of vacation or days off is actually that all my vacation needs to be taken in the summer or at school breaks, and that I have to take 4 hours off at a time... can't just do one hour here or there (because of sub coverage). As an older teacher and member of the sandwich generation, I need a lot of time off now for medical care for family members. But my district won't let me take just one hour off, it has to be a half day or a full day. I would gladly give up an entire week of summer vacation, just to have a few more hours off when I need it during the school year.)

But none of these concerns come close to the most challenging aspect of teaching and the reason so many are leaving - it's the absolutely unrealistic teaching demands and expectations being placed on teachers to have students reach certain benchmarks despite the fact that they enter our classrooms without the foundational skills they need to be doing grade level work. We can write a million "I can..." statements on our board, and we can implement your curriculum with fidelity as required, and we can monitor progress and adapt the lessons and scaffold them and keep anecdotal records and implement Tier two interventions, but if students are working severely below grade level these little "mini-lessons" aren't going to cut it. They need actual lessons. Actual, below grade level lessons on below grade level skills, and that doesn't happen in a 15 minute mini-lesson. Yet we aren't being allowed to teach below grade level skills with fidelity; it's just impossible to do it in the time you give us. So we do our best, but we know it is't enough, and it just makes work even harder for the teachers the next grade up.

DP. You make great points. Thank you for acknowledging that summers off is a real benefit. So many teachers claim that they don't get any time off during the summer because they ae taking classes, planning or doing training, but none of the teachers I know IRL spend their entire summers doing that.

Your last two statements are also huge - having snow days off and having breaks at the same time your kids do. Too often, teachers don't seem to understand how difficult it is to work and arrange for care on the many scheduled school days off and then deal with snow days on top of that. It's hell! Having certainty about those days off is a huge benefit. It saves so much money, stress, and personal leave time that other working professionals have to deal with.

As to your last points about what makes teaching unworkable, do you have any solutions? Do more kids need to be held back?