Why are our teachers being paid to do 0-30 minutes of teaching every day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all sound like stay at home moms. I'm sure this is relaxing for you and you are posting cool pictures of you cooking with your kids and doing all your homeschooling but for those of us with health care jobs this is a disaster.

+1. What is even better is seeing people in my town that were previously SAHM with their 2 kids in school, and they are now posting how hard it is to have to take care of their kids. Forget about academics...these people are just complaining that their kids are home. (elementary school kids mostly). I find this one of the saddest things I have seen beyond the health implications of this pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shut up. I have a lot of problems with MCPS and whiny teachers, but seriously: They are learning brand new skills. They are trying to figure out a new way to educate our kids. They may be trying to do their work with their own children underfoot. The world has changed in completely unexpected ways in the last 2.5 weeks. Give everyone including teachers a break. Your kids, and mine, and everyone else's, will catch up later.

DP... I work in high tech and have been wfh for a while. I was just thinking today that I'm used to working remotely, dealing with zoom, google chat, email... etc.. it's not hard. BUT, I realized that most people, especially teachers, probably aren't used to doing that much online, and so their learning curve is a lot higher.

Have patience, people. I know everyone is frazzled and frustrated. Believe me.. I've lost my cool with my kids several times, and I'm not super happy with the lack of learning, either.

not being disrespcteful

But teaching 130+ kids online isn't the same as managing a conference call and multitasking by answering emails.

I've been on both sides, and teaching is a hell of a lot harder. I know three LMS for that matter.

It's less than 18-27 kids in elementary and the way they do it is they mute the mikes. So basically you just lecture a bit. You could take smaller groups. Lots of other school districts are making it work. MCPS has the worst plan of all the ones I have seen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:STFU. The teachers I know have been in several zoom meetings every day trying to help create new ways to teach. They’ve been communicating with their students and parents. They have been researching and preparing appropriate optional online learning activities. They didn’t choose this, remember?

I'm in a different district and feel like I'm getting notifications from seesaw every 20 minutes. I wish it was less

[Anonymous]

Funny that everybody is like “save the restaurants order out!” and “keep paying your housekeepers and nannies if you can afford it” and yet people feel like TEACHERS shouldn’t be getting paid???

Goodness, they take care of your kids and educate them for very little money, and then they like everybody else are being thrown into a new world where we have to deal with being in our houses and around our kids ALL THE TIME and two weeks in people are demanding some kind of smooth transition into an learning system literally nobody is prepared for.

If I had it my way teachers would just be given the rest of the year off but, 3 months of formal learning out of years and years of education isn’t worth all the hassle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:STFU. The teachers I know have been in several zoom meetings every day trying to help create new ways to teach. They’ve been communicating with their students and parents. They have been researching and preparing appropriate optional online learning activities. They didn’t choose this, remember?

MCPS told teachers NOT to communicate this entire time and I had not heard a peep from DD's teachers until today when MCPS said they would email. What are you even talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't mind them being paid. But it seems like teachers just don't understand what the rest of us are going through either being laid off or working full time plus telework.

I think they should have to work in the summer if this ends in June. July and August could be 2 months of instruction.

Agree... Kids will be so behind.

I agree that adding time in the summer could make sense. MCPS also had a 2 week emergency closure where everyone was paid and no work going on. MCPS administrators could have been figuring out distance learning the first week and getting teachers up to speed on training the 2nd week. I personally think we should cancel spring break and have classes continue. Nobody is going anywhere mid-April.

I have high school and middle school-aged kids. My high schooler has had one teacher that has kept up assignments and learning since the start of this. I know of other high school teachers that have continued to teach as well. Teachers are getting a raw deal, with being expected to ramp up distance learning with no training (and for some at the ES level, no training on a new curriculum). This is par for the course with MCPS. Bad administration and planning trickling down to make teachers the bad guys.

[Anonymous]

Nasty, nasty OP.

[Anonymous]

More proof that teachers are seen as nothing more than educated babysitters by most parents.

I'm seeing complaint post after complaint post from parents on FB about how they can't "handle" teaching their 1-3 kids. Throwing in the towel and giving up after one or two difficult days. Now try doing that but with 20+ kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny that everybody is like “save the restaurants order out!” and “keep paying your housekeepers and nannies if you can afford it” and yet people feel like TEACHERS shouldn’t be getting paid???

Goodness, they take care of your kids and educate them for very little money, and then they like everybody else are being thrown into a new world where we have to deal with being in our houses and around our kids ALL THE TIME and two weeks in people are demanding some kind of smooth transition into an learning system literally nobody is prepared for.

If I had it my way teachers would just be given the rest of the year off but, 3 months of formal learning out of years and years of education isn’t worth all the hassle.

I think teachers should get paid. But I also think they should teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More proof that teachers are seen as nothing more than educated babysitters by most parents.

I'm seeing complaint post after complaint post from parents on FB about how they can't "handle" teaching their 1-3 kids. Throwing in the towel and giving up after one or two difficult days. Now try doing that but with 20+ kids.

You don't seem to understand that some of us actually have jobs right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nasty, nasty OP.

Grow up, teacher. Your comments are really immature.

[Anonymous]

I'm in DCPS, but my job these past weeks has been to call every family and talk them through how to access platforms, address technology concerns, help them get free wifi, how/where to pick up packets, many at odd times because parents are still working. And there are still parents that I can't get in touch with or just did in the past few days, so this has been going on for a while. You might not be seeing much teaching yet, but making sure that everyone can access the work, and that everyone's concerns are addressed is the first priority for me right now AND it's a full time job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all sound like stay at home moms. I'm sure this is relaxing for you and you are posting cool pictures of you cooking with your kids and doing all your homeschooling but for those of us with health care jobs this is a disaster.

+1. What is even better is seeing people in my town that were previously SAHM with their 2 kids in school, and they are now posting how hard it is to have to take care of their kids. Forget about academics...these people are just complaining that their kids are home. (elementary school kids mostly). I find this one of the saddest things I have seen beyond the health implications of this pandemic.

I don’t care who you are or what you do, having *anybody* attached to your hip for 14 hours a day is going to drive you crazy. I’m in the “let’s show everybody a little grace” camp.

[Anonymous]

Should they go on welfare instead? They're members of our community. Grow a heart, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I'm a teacher, different district with kids in MCPS. We have received almost no guidance from our district but that means very little work over these few weeks.

It's tough as I have three little kids but the truth is I am not really working.

Can we all just try to get through this by granting grace to one another and realize that our teachers, parents, children, workers, unemployed, are all just trying to do the best we can under unimaginable circumstances. We are in unprecedented times. The urge to want everything to go back to normal immediately is understandable, but it's not practical. People are living in fear, living with death, and/or are sick themselves. Please be kind and compassionate. Teachers are on these boards - they are mothers and fathers, too. Don't post on this board something that you would not have the courage to say to your child's teacher directly. And if you don't have children and are complaining about the teachers - shame on you. Just shame.