Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha. I certainly have not read all 40-something pages of this thread, but in response to the title: lol. I CONSTANTLY hear about how teachers are exhausted / overworked etc etc. Teachers complain more than any other profession I can think of. If anything, this is OVER acknowledged.

If the title has been “why does no one acknowledge how overworked nurses/childcare workers/sales managers/etc are”, you would have had my attention

This is the schools and education forum. Why would there be a thread on overworked sales managers or nurses? If you aren’t interested in issues related to education, there are millions of other places to look.

DP. The reason it's relevant to this forum is that parents are constantly being told that teachers are overworked, but guess what? SO. ARE. PARENTS. That's the point. Everyone is overworked. Like, are you kidding me, on year three of a pandemic that has seen most parents working full time while also needing to keep kids home for months during school closures, or weeks during quarantines, scrambling to find childcare after daycares and aftercare programs shuttered or limited their services due to Covid?

The reason this thread is getting so much pushback is that DCUM is, primarily, a forum for parents, and it feels really rich to say to a bunch of parents "Hey, how come you all aren't acknowledging how overworked teachers are" when (1) most parents I know DO acknowledge this, and (2) there is no acknowledgement that parents, too, are overworked and exhausted and are not really in a position to alleviate the burden on teachers.

Perhaps go find the forum for school district leadership or city council members and ask them why they won't acknowledge that teachers AND parents are overworked and their policies don't seem to recognize the crisis that we are in with regards to education right now. Parents are not the problem and the fact that you think they are indicates that you don't really understand what is going on here.

Yeah, after the two years of the pandemic, parents on these boards showed their true colors. Not all of them, but enough to definitely let me know how the collective "you" felt about us.

[Anonymous]

I'm a GS-15 fed. Ph.D. social scientists with 8 years experience make less as a GS-9 at my federal agency than a first year teach with a BA and a license at my son's school. The first several years I was in a "prestigious" fellowship after grad school, I lived in subsidized public housing and had two additional jobs, one under the table as a personal assistant so I could pay my student loans and another job at night and on weekends working in public health outreach (think going to gay clubs and handing out condoms and giving HS students at a HS clinic pregnancy and STI tests). Everyone thought I "made" it and I was living in a closet in my grad school's studio apartment in Columbia Heights.

My mom, brother and several other family members are teachers. With the exception of my mom who worked nights and weekends as a manager at KMart, no one else had a second job or was considered underpaid where we lived. And they get paid a lot less than DMV teachers and my mom has a highly skilled, highly sought after specialty and two masters degrees and national board certification as a teacher.

[Anonymous]

Another fed here. I think this is true with female dominated careers. I'm a social worker. In the pandemic, I worked in person, plus had a second job at my agency. I had OT. I have not been able to go on vacation except a few days at the holidays where I am constantly "on call". I didn't get maternity leave and had to advance my leave or take leave without pay. For years, I didn't get OT resulting in a class action lawsuit. I travel every other week and have two young elementary students. My husband is active duty military and deployed and my parents are young and still work. I am routinely sexually harassed by my patients, attacked, chairs thrown, spit at, urine thrown at me, people smear pee and poop all over that I have to clean up, cursed at, groped, licked, bit...all from my patients who are veterans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a GS-15 fed. Ph.D. social scientists with 8 years experience make less as a GS-9 at my federal agency than a first year teach with a BA and a license at my son's school. The first several years I was in a "prestigious" fellowship after grad school, I lived in subsidized public housing and had two additional jobs, one under the table as a personal assistant so I could pay my student loans and another job at night and on weekends working in public health outreach (think going to gay clubs and handing out condoms and giving HS students at a HS clinic pregnancy and STI tests). Everyone thought I "made" it and I was living in a closet in my grad school's studio apartment in Columbia Heights.

My mom, brother and several other family members are teachers. With the exception of my mom who worked nights and weekends as a manager at KMart, no one else had a second job or was considered underpaid where we lived. And they get paid a lot less than DMV teachers and my mom has a highly skilled, highly sought after specialty and two masters degrees and national board certification as a teacher.

GS-15 government employees will receive a base salary of between $117,518.00 and $152,771.00, depending on their General Schedule Step. After 8 years a dcps teacher with a PHD makes 96,000. Do you know how many years it would take to meet the 152k number. It's not even in the realm of possibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers lost all credibility when they chose not to teach and sold the idea that it didn't really matter

They did teach. Their employers set the conditions of their employment, not you. Enjoy staying ignorant.

Most did not teach and did not oppose the teaching bans.


The profession is dead.

good parenting seems to be dead too.

Difference is, we don't pay parents $100k+ plus lifelong pensions for being good parents, do we?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha. I certainly have not read all 40-something pages of this thread, but in response to the title: lol. I CONSTANTLY hear about how teachers are exhausted / overworked etc etc. Teachers complain more than any other profession I can think of. If anything, this is OVER acknowledged.

If the title has been “why does no one acknowledge how overworked nurses/childcare workers/sales managers/etc are”, you would have had my attention

This is the schools and education forum. Why would there be a thread on overworked sales managers or nurses? If you aren’t interested in issues related to education, there are millions of other places to look.

DP. The reason it's relevant to this forum is that parents are constantly being told that teachers are overworked, but guess what? SO. ARE. PARENTS. That's the point. Everyone is overworked. Like, are you kidding me, on year three of a pandemic that has seen most parents working full time while also needing to keep kids home for months during school closures, or weeks during quarantines, scrambling to find childcare after daycares and aftercare programs shuttered or limited their services due to Covid?

The reason this thread is getting so much pushback is that DCUM is, primarily, a forum for parents, and it feels really rich to say to a bunch of parents "Hey, how come you all aren't acknowledging how overworked teachers are" when (1) most parents I know DO acknowledge this, and (2) there is no acknowledgement that parents, too, are overworked and exhausted and are not really in a position to alleviate the burden on teachers.

Perhaps go find the forum for school district leadership or city council members and ask them why they won't acknowledge that teachers AND parents are overworked and their policies don't seem to recognize the crisis that we are in with regards to education right now. Parents are not the problem and the fact that you think they are indicates that you don't really understand what is going on here.

Yeah, after the two years of the pandemic, parents on these boards showed their true colors. Not all of them, but enough to definitely let me know how the collective "you" felt about us.

Certainly, we hear from teachers every day how you feel about "us". Please don't pretend that teachers have universally been modelling good behavior on this board or really anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha. I certainly have not read all 40-something pages of this thread, but in response to the title: lol. I CONSTANTLY hear about how teachers are exhausted / overworked etc etc. Teachers complain more than any other profession I can think of. If anything, this is OVER acknowledged.

If the title has been “why does no one acknowledge how overworked nurses/childcare workers/sales managers/etc are”, you would have had my attention

This is the schools and education forum. Why would there be a thread on overworked sales managers or nurses? If you aren’t interested in issues related to education, there are millions of other places to look.

DP. The reason it's relevant to this forum is that parents are constantly being told that teachers are overworked, but guess what? SO. ARE. PARENTS. That's the point. Everyone is overworked. Like, are you kidding me, on year three of a pandemic that has seen most parents working full time while also needing to keep kids home for months during school closures, or weeks during quarantines, scrambling to find childcare after daycares and aftercare programs shuttered or limited their services due to Covid?

The reason this thread is getting so much pushback is that DCUM is, primarily, a forum for parents, and it feels really rich to say to a bunch of parents "Hey, how come you all aren't acknowledging how overworked teachers are" when (1) most parents I know DO acknowledge this, and (2) there is no acknowledgement that parents, too, are overworked and exhausted and are not really in a position to alleviate the burden on teachers.

Perhaps go find the forum for school district leadership or city council members and ask them why they won't acknowledge that teachers AND parents are overworked and their policies don't seem to recognize the crisis that we are in with regards to education right now. Parents are not the problem and the fact that you think they are indicates that you don't really understand what is going on here.

+1

This was said pages ago, but the thread title is the thing that grates. The thread title is largely complaining about parents. It isn't "hey teachers are overworked!" It's "why don't YOU care about teachers being overworked?" So it is accusatory in a unnecessary way, that just seems to fuel the parent/teacher conflicts so prevalent on this site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha. I certainly have not read all 40-something pages of this thread, but in response to the title: lol. I CONSTANTLY hear about how teachers are exhausted / overworked etc etc. Teachers complain more than any other profession I can think of. If anything, this is OVER acknowledged.

If the title has been “why does no one acknowledge how overworked nurses/childcare workers/sales managers/etc are”, you would have had my attention

This is the schools and education forum. Why would there be a thread on overworked sales managers or nurses? If you aren’t interested in issues related to education, there are millions of other places to look.

DP. The reason it's relevant to this forum is that parents are constantly being told that teachers are overworked, but guess what? SO. ARE. PARENTS. That's the point. Everyone is overworked. Like, are you kidding me, on year three of a pandemic that has seen most parents working full time while also needing to keep kids home for months during school closures, or weeks during quarantines, scrambling to find childcare after daycares and aftercare programs shuttered or limited their services due to Covid?

The reason this thread is getting so much pushback is that DCUM is, primarily, a forum for parents, and it feels really rich to say to a bunch of parents "Hey, how come you all aren't acknowledging how overworked teachers are" when (1) most parents I know DO acknowledge this, and (2) there is no acknowledgement that parents, too, are overworked and exhausted and are not really in a position to alleviate the burden on teachers.

Perhaps go find the forum for school district leadership or city council members and ask them why they won't acknowledge that teachers AND parents are overworked and their policies don't seem to recognize the crisis that we are in with regards to education right now. Parents are not the problem and the fact that you think they are indicates that you don't really understand what is going on here.

Yeah, after the two years of the pandemic, parents on these boards showed their true colors. Not all of them, but enough to definitely let me know how the collective "you" felt about us.

Certainly, we hear from teachers every day how you feel about "us". Please don't pretend that teachers have universally been modelling good behavior on this board or really anywhere.

This.

So many teachers lobbied to CLOSE schools for nearly two years. Obscene, anti-science, anti-parents and of course anti-kids.

[Anonymous]

Here: I acknowledge that teachers feel overworked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here: I acknowledge that teachers feel overworked.

Heck, I’ll take it. I notice you used “feel” instead of “are,” but this is still one of the nicer things on this thread. Thank you!

-A teacher heading into hour 11 of work today. Just 2 more hours of grading to go. (So… a normal day.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha. I certainly have not read all 40-something pages of this thread, but in response to the title: lol. I CONSTANTLY hear about how teachers are exhausted / overworked etc etc. Teachers complain more than any other profession I can think of. If anything, this is OVER acknowledged.

If the title has been “why does no one acknowledge how overworked nurses/childcare workers/sales managers/etc are”, you would have had my attention

This is the schools and education forum. Why would there be a thread on overworked sales managers or nurses? If you aren’t interested in issues related to education, there are millions of other places to look.

DP. The reason it's relevant to this forum is that parents are constantly being told that teachers are overworked, but guess what? SO. ARE. PARENTS. That's the point. Everyone is overworked. Like, are you kidding me, on year three of a pandemic that has seen most parents working full time while also needing to keep kids home for months during school closures, or weeks during quarantines, scrambling to find childcare after daycares and aftercare programs shuttered or limited their services due to Covid?

The reason this thread is getting so much pushback is that DCUM is, primarily, a forum for parents, and it feels really rich to say to a bunch of parents "Hey, how come you all aren't acknowledging how overworked teachers are" when (1) most parents I know DO acknowledge this, and (2) there is no acknowledgement that parents, too, are overworked and exhausted and are not really in a position to alleviate the burden on teachers.

Perhaps go find the forum for school district leadership or city council members and ask them why they won't acknowledge that teachers AND parents are overworked and their policies don't seem to recognize the crisis that we are in with regards to education right now. Parents are not the problem and the fact that you think they are indicates that you don't really understand what is going on here.

Teachers are also parents. What makes you think teachers just don’t understand the difficulties of being a working parent? We also work around childcare and illnesses. I had to call out for my kids HFM and COVID so far this year, and obviously I can’t work remotely in these cases. I was sitting in a training tonight and my toddler was crying and holding my legs and yelling my name. I woke up at 5:00 am to leave my house by 6:20 to drop my toddler off and drive to work. I have to set up the room and prep everything before the kids arrive, since I work from 8:00 straight through until 1:00 before I get a break without students. Oftentimes, I lose that break and wind up taking everything home, where I struggle to get through anything because of said toddler. When he goes down, I have two hours before I need to go to bed myself in which I have to get anything done around the house, from laundry to paying bills. If I want to exercise or read or relax or do anything else, this is also the only time I can do it. My husband doesn’t get home until after the kid’s bedtime, so this is the only time we have to spend together as well.
Being a teacher doesn’t mean you’re not a working parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here: I acknowledge that teachers feel overworked.

Heck, I’ll take it. I notice you used “feel” instead of “are,” but this is still one of the nicer things on this thread. Thank you!

-A teacher heading into hour 11 of work today. Just 2 more hours of grading to go. (So… a normal day.)

Maybe if you spent less time on DCUM…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here: I acknowledge that teachers feel overworked.

Heck, I’ll take it. I notice you used “feel” instead of “are,” but this is still one of the nicer things on this thread. Thank you!

-A teacher heading into hour 11 of work today. Just 2 more hours of grading to go. (So… a normal day.)

Maybe if you spent less time on DCUM…

Cute response. I am allowed to take a breather from grading every 3-4 essays, correct? I always tell my students to look up from studying every 30 minutes or so…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here: I acknowledge that teachers feel overworked.

Heck, I’ll take it. I notice you used “feel” instead of “are,” but this is still one of the nicer things on this thread. Thank you!

-A teacher heading into hour 11 of work today. Just 2 more hours of grading to go. (So… a normal day.)

Maybe if you spent less time on DCUM…

Cute response. I am allowed to take a breather from grading every 3-4 essays, correct? I always tell my students to look up from studying every 30 minutes or so…

Well if you’re taking breaks every 30 minutes I’m really not surprised you’re pulling 11 hour + days. I certainly do not take breaks from work every 30 minutes. And I definitely am not scrolling DCUM (I don’t even have access to it).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had water damage in my basement and needed a total overhaul. the construction team has been here for a week and they arrive at 7am and leave at 6pm. They have ripped out carpet, drywall, a bathroom and have dealt with mold, tiling, carpet installation, fixing of stairs, etc...

They seem overworked and no one is posting about them?

They, uh shouldn’t be there that long.

Are they speaking another language?

Did your contractor hire out unskilled day laborers or immigrants who are too afraid of being deported to require the contractor to stick to labor laws?

I’m not sure I would point this out as an example of a good way to hire and keep workers under US labor laws….