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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Would they be paid additional money or just have a reduced school day to make up for the hours they are working now?

DP.. they could make the hours reduced in summer school.

Many teachers have been working their usual hours at home anyway. They helped students work through the online lessons given on 3/13. Others served on committees trying to plan for distance learning. You would need to pay them extra if school was open this summer. See how you like your taxes then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Teachers I know have been working on changing their instruction to fit distance learning and getting everything set up at home. That's what the two weeks have been for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I won't go into some of the disastrous live sessions with high school settings. Friends (parents) have been sharing incidents. unbelievable what kids say - And Lord help us if the teacher taped such a session and uploaded it.

[Anonymous]

Mute the mikes lol not even adults can handle the one job.

[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.

I didn't compare teaching kids to conference calls. I agree teaching is harder. I admire those teachers who are in it for the love of teaching kids. My kids have had some really great teachers.

But the point was not about whether teaching was harder, but that teachers are not that tech savvy. If I were to be really nasty, I would say that it's not hard to do a web conference where you talk through your lesson while presenting whatever you were going to present online. You then use chat features for questions, and/or you create a shared trix doc to put the questions/comments for you to review.

We've had large scale web conferences (think 100+ people) with Q&A as well as doing training via these web conferences. Not exactly the same as teaching kids, but the mechanism isn't that dissimilar.

Again, I don't blame teachers. It's a huge learning curve for most of them. I told my kids to be patient.

[Anonymous]

Personally, as a MS teacher, I am in the middle of recreating three different curriculums and learning a new complicated online system. Also trying to reconnect to 150 students. I wish I was less busy....

[Anonymous]

OP, you are either a troll or just a nasty person.

The teachers are reaching out to each student's parent asking if we can access everything. They are also learning new technology.

Be patient instead of trying to find fault with everything they do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Personally, as a MS teacher, I am in the middle of recreating three different curriculums and learning a new complicated online system. Also trying to reconnect to 150 students. I wish I was less busy....

Me too. I’ve spent the last two day since using interpreters to call a huge amount of non-English speaking parents. They all need help navigating how to access the online platform they’ve never before. As a matter of fact, we spend hours at night after trying to contact parents watching the recorded webinars so we can learn how to use the platform ourselves. We have multiple meetings everyday and tons of spreadsheets to fill out regarding our contact with parents. Most of the parent contact numbers are disconnected so waiting 20+ minutes on hold for an interpreter to find out that all of the numbers are either disconnected or their is no way to leave a message. Ugh. I just want to go back to school and teach my kids.

[Anonymous]

Troll 100%

[Anonymous]

Teachers are learning a whole new way to do their job as well as managing their own kids. Most of us are just in a new location. They're working 12 hours a day. Back off.

[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.

Amen to that. I'm a registered nurse and can't take a day off from work for the last 2 months. Now forget to even think about taking any time off. I only have a preschooler at home, so she doesn't have home work yet, but I still get all these projects and ideas to work with my child. I don't have time for none of it.

[Anonymous]

Do you have any idea how much planning and prep goes into a few 30 min lessons per day? And all the assignments assigned to Seesaw?

[Anonymous]

+1 for teacher love! We all need to be patient, it will continue to get better as teachers and students learn and become comfortable with the new platforms, and what works well for an online class and what doesn't.

Also +1,000 that this is par for the course with MCPS. Bad administration and planning trickling down to make teachers the bad guys.

[Anonymous]

Be thankful you aren’t paying $45k a year for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Would they be paid additional money or just have a reduced school day to make up for the hours they are working now?

DP.. they could make the hours reduced in summer school.

Many teachers have been working their usual hours at home anyway. They helped students work through the online lessons given on 3/13. Others served on committees trying to plan for distance learning. You would need to pay them extra if school was open this summer. See how you like your taxes then.

Depends on the school system. In MCPS the first contact we had with our teachers was today. It is an MCPS curriculum not something the teachers did.