Why is there a teacher shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I'm not the PP but in my district the contract says that as long as the meetings are related to the School Improvement Plan (SIP), administrators pretty much can do what they want. Since schools with high populations of low SES students often need their data to improve the most, there are typically more meetings than schools with high populations of high SES students.

I am not a classroom teacher, but here are the meetings I have to attend weekly:

Extended team planning (for 2 grade levels)--no actual planning gets done--just discussion about planning. Admin and reading/math specialists attend and listen to what will be taught in the upcoming week. But it's not a time to actually prepare materials. Just discuss curriculum and identify potential barriers to learning and how we will address them.

Team meeting: discuss and delegate administrative work and other "housekeeping" topics

We also have a meeting every Monday after school until 5:10 pm. It's a rotation of staff meeting, collaborative problem solving, committee meetings and instructional leadership team meetings.

Monthly we have grade level math and reading data chats which take place during our planning time. Since I work with 2 grade levels, it's essentially one more weekly meeting.

So this week I had actually zero individually managed planning time, unless you count the 25 minutes between when my duty day begins and when the students arrive. Then I have bus duty daily until the last bus leaves. I also had an IEP meeting scheduled during my 30 minute duty free lunch this week, and one of the data chat meetings took my lunchtime as well. I actually use lunchtime as time to catch up on emails and prep materials while I stuff something in my mouth, so losing lunch is equivalent to losing planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure we all know the answer to this.

Low pay + long hours + low respect =/= high demand

+ Impossible demands from administration

Impossible demands and expectations from parents.
Bratty, entitled students
Low pay

[Anonymous]

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

In my experience, our building representatives were terrible. They called meetings, too. They were also some of the worse teachers on our faculty (one in particular was the laziest woman I have ever seen.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I'm not the PP but in my district the contract says that as long as the meetings are related to the School Improvement Plan (SIP), administrators pretty much can do what they want. Since schools with high populations of low SES students often need their data to improve the most, there are typically more meetings than schools with high populations of high SES students.

I am not a classroom teacher, but here are the meetings I have to attend weekly:

Extended team planning (for 2 grade levels)--no actual planning gets done--just discussion about planning. Admin and reading/math specialists attend and listen to what will be taught in the upcoming week. But it's not a time to actually prepare materials. Just discuss curriculum and identify potential barriers to learning and how we will address them.

Team meeting: discuss and delegate administrative work and other "housekeeping" topics

We also have a meeting every Monday after school until 5:10 pm. It's a rotation of staff meeting, collaborative problem solving, committee meetings and instructional leadership team meetings.

Monthly we have grade level math and reading data chats which take place during our planning time. Since I work with 2 grade levels, it's essentially one more weekly meeting.

So this week I had actually zero individually managed planning time, unless you count the 25 minutes between when my duty day begins and when the students arrive. Then I have bus duty daily until the last bus leaves. I also had an IEP meeting scheduled during my 30 minute duty free lunch this week, and one of the data chat meetings took my lunchtime as well. I actually use lunchtime as time to catch up on emails and prep materials while I stuff something in my mouth, so losing lunch is equivalent to losing planning.

Interesting, but why would you write that you're not a classroom teacher and not say what kind of teacher you are, what school district you're in, how much planning time you're allotted? There's also no reference to what your local union has done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

[Anonymous]

No unions in Virginia. Right to work state so no bargaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

The meetings are about data. That's all it boils down to anymore. Everything revolves around constant streams of data. It is weren't for us using students' names, you might think we are accountants. Our union is pretty useless and attempts to limit meetings have gotten us more meetings (or it seems like it anyway).

[Anonymous]

Here's why I left teaching:
1. Disrespectful kids whose parents have taught them they're always right and everyone else should work around them
2. Everyone having "special needs" like being allergic to perfume, being vegan, gluten free, nut free, non verbal learning disorder, etc. I couldn't deal with it all.
3. Standardized testing preparation. Instead of doing fun lessons, for a large part of the year we were doing test prep

Yes, if the pay was better and I felt kids and parents would respect me and other teachers, I'd love to teach again. I think I was a great and very creative teacher, but it's just draining and not worth it to me anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

I'm in an FCPS middle school, and I get 450 minutes a week without kids (90 minutes per day). That said, 2 blocks (180 minutes) are CT, and 60 minutes per week are lunch duty. Still, I supposedly have 210 minutes of planning each week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

It's a Fairfax County Schools reg. for elementary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

I'm in an FCPS middle school, and I get 450 minutes a week without kids (90 minutes per day). That said, 2 blocks (180 minutes) are CT, and 60 minutes per week are lunch duty. Still, I supposedly have 210 minutes of planning each week.

Is your lunch duty separate from your own lunch time? Just asking because you are supposed to have a duty free lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

I'm in an FCPS middle school, and I get 450 minutes a week without kids (90 minutes per day). That said, 2 blocks (180 minutes) are CT, and 60 minutes per week are lunch duty. Still, I supposedly have 210 minutes of planning each week.

Is your lunch duty separate from your own lunch time? Just asking because you are supposed to have a duty free lunch.

Yes, lunch duty is part of my planning period. I do have a 30 minute lunch, though core teachers have been requested to help kids with makeup work or tutoring during lunch until late bus s start in a couple weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I told my DS that I would not finance his education to become a teacher. I'm in my 5th year in a inner city school and they keep adding more and more work but cutting our planning time. I am guaranteed 3 planning period per week of 45 mins. This week, I had 3 meetings during those planning periods so I got no grading or planning done. School ended 10 minutes ago and I will be here until at least 6:00 working. I get here appr. 30 minutes early each day. I can't get here any earlier b/c my child's before school program opens at 7am. I am here until 5:30 every day and still have at least an hour of work to do at home every night. I estimate I work 15-20 hrs each week beyond my contracted hours (more than that at the beginning of the year). For this, I am paid in the mid $50,000s. If I could afford to quit, I would.

What were your meetings about? Can teachers use their unions to advocate for less meetings?

I teach in an elementary school. My district guarantees at least 300 minutes of planning per week. Of that a minimum of 240 minutes is teacher directed and a minimum of 60 is to be used for team planning (PLC/CLT). I can choose to meet during some of my 240, but I don't have to do so.

300 minutes? Wow! Where is this shangri la?

I'm in an FCPS middle school, and I get 450 minutes a week without kids (90 minutes per day). That said, 2 blocks (180 minutes) are CT, and 60 minutes per week are lunch duty. Still, I supposedly have 210 minutes of planning each week.

Is your lunch duty separate from your own lunch time? Just asking because you are supposed to have a duty free lunch.

Yes, lunch duty is part of my planning period. I do have a 30 minute lunch, though core teachers have been requested to help kids with makeup work or tutoring during lunch until late bus s start in a couple weeks.

"Requested". So you can decline.