demoralized in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These conversations remind me of a teacher who was awarded rookie or the year and teacher of the year. This was about 30 years ago in a different school system. She used to report to work at least 90 minutes before the start of the school day. The principal thought very highly of her until his own wife took over the classroom when she left to participate in month long seminar in London. The wife, a recently retired educator, was flabbergasted and I remember her telling me how she needed to “spoon feed“ each one of these 3rd graders who were supposedly excelling in every subject.
People, getting to work early does not necessarily translate to excellence in teaching.

Who has argued teachers should show up 90 min early? Getting to work ON TIME is the issue. Can you not see the difference between lauding early arrive and being concerned that a teacher is habitually late?

[Anonymous]

What gets me about the time thing is that the rules aren't the same for everyone. I work in an elementary school and the SDT, reading specialist and math specialist pretty much come and go as they please. Come in late, leave early, work from home if they have a sick kid or just don't feel well enough to come into work, bring their kids into work during pre service so they don't have to pay for camps etc. They leave to go to their own kids' school events all the time and they're allowed to flex their time. None of the rest of us are allowed to do any of that. It's so frustrating when I go to ask one of them a question at 3:00 (dismissal is at 3:30) and they brush past me on their way out the door to make sure Larla gets to karate on time.

If you're not going to allow everyone to have some modicum of flexibility, then you can't allow just a few people to have that level of flexibility. It just breeds resentment, especially when those people are the ones needing your help to provide coverage when there isn't a sub. I asked if I could attend my kid's Valentine's Day party since my class's party will be earlier than my own kid's party, I have a special at the end of the day and my teammates already agreed to let me send my kids to their classes for dismissal. I was told I need to take 4 hours of leave and get a sub. This is for a party that begins at 2:30pm and it only takes me 10 minutes to get there from my own school. Meanwhile the three aforementioned people will be nowhere to be found that afternoon.

[Anonymous]

pp, you nailed it. Add to the list the Focus teachers who practically have no set schedule, as well as the ESOL people who change their very small group student contact time as they wish because of “meetings” , only to go inside their rooms and work on their side hassles.

[Anonymous]

To improve morale, the solution isn’t to micromanage everyone, it’s to give everyone more flexibility and autonomy. I came to MCPS from another field and knew it was a bizarre way to treat adults, but it wasn’t until I left for another school system that I realized it wasn’t a “school thing” per se, but an MCPS thing. Other systems are managing people in a much more professional way. So many of the principals in MCPS are homegrown, they have no ability to look at all of this with fresh eyes. It’s all they know. It’s a shame so many good teachers are fleeing, but I don’t blame them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:pp, you nailed it. Add to the list the Focus teachers who practically have no set schedule, as well as the ESOL people who change their very small group student contact time as they wish because of “meetings” , only to go inside their rooms and work on their side hassles.

Sorry that has been your experience but I'm an elementary ESOL teacher and I've never worked with any ESOL teachers like that. If anything we tend to get less planning than classroom teachers because ours isn't protected and we are often asked to cover classrooms without subs, recess or the cafeteria during our planning time. We attend extended team planning for multiple teams but that counts as most of our planning time for the week. Please let me know where you work--I'd love to make the switch! But what PP described about the 3 specialists is also accurate in my building.

[Anonymous]

All teachers are started on a PAR program which stands for Punative Administrative Retaliation or something like that. You play ball or you will be retaliated against. Save all ur emails for a rainy day lawsuit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once MD school systems start using test scores in evaluations, some of y’all are screwed. So you should be motivated to try to prop up SLOs as long as you can since you won’t quit and let someone who can teach take your place.

ha! You're a moron.

We've lost three teachers - 15+ years - already.

EXCELLENT teachers who just walked out . . .

Keep bashing, hon. Soon public ed will be dead bc of people like you.

doubtful because these are jobs that can pay six figures where you get great benefits, pension and only work 180 days a year

Imploding systems also translate into revolving doors. If you're happy with teachers coming and going, then good for you. You should be happy.

Average employee at places like Google lasts about 1.5 years. Seems like that's the norm these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once MD school systems start using test scores in evaluations, some of y’all are screwed. So you should be motivated to try to prop up SLOs as long as you can since you won’t quit and let someone who can teach take your place.

ha! You're a moron.

We've lost three teachers - 15+ years - already.

EXCELLENT teachers who just walked out . . .

Keep bashing, hon. Soon public ed will be dead bc of people like you.

doubtful because these are jobs that can pay six figures where you get great benefits, pension and only work 180 days a year

Imploding systems also translate into revolving doors. If you're happy with teachers coming and going, then good for you. You should be happy.

Average employee at places like Google lasts about 1.5 years. Seems like that's the norm these days.

If anything, incompetent and/or unhappy teachers in place for 10-20 years is odd. I’d love it if we had to not just recertify on paper with the state every 5 years, but actually reinterview.

[Anonymous]

I'd love it if teachers had 50 + students per class, 10 + classes per day, lunches ever, mi imum wage pay, and got paid in peanuts. I was being ironic. Teachers need rights and protections because the unio, admins, and other honchos are facist bastards who want teachers to live in feat so they can be easily manipulated. Grow some balls and fight back against people trying to degrade education to nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once MD school systems start using test scores in evaluations, some of y’all are screwed. So you should be motivated to try to prop up SLOs as long as you can since you won’t quit and let someone who can teach take your place.

ha! You're a moron.

We've lost three teachers - 15+ years - already.

EXCELLENT teachers who just walked out . . .

Keep bashing, hon. Soon public ed will be dead bc of people like you.

doubtful because these are jobs that can pay six figures where you get great benefits, pension and only work 180 days a year

Imploding systems also translate into revolving doors. If you're happy with teachers coming and going, then good for you. You should be happy.

Average employee at places like Google lasts about 1.5 years. Seems like that's the norm these days.

If anything, incompetent and/or unhappy teachers in place for 10-20 years is odd. I’d love it if we had to not just recertify on paper with the state every 5 years, but actually reinterview.

I don’t have a problem with one-year contracts in theory, but I think it could give principals even more power to play favorites. So many are swayed by their inner circle of alpha types, and if one of them has a beef with someone else, they could poison the well and there could be a round of (unfair) non-renewals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once MD school systems start using test scores in evaluations, some of y’all are screwed. So you should be motivated to try to prop up SLOs as long as you can since you won’t quit and let someone who can teach take your place.

ha! You're a moron.

We've lost three teachers - 15+ years - already.

EXCELLENT teachers who just walked out . . .

Keep bashing, hon. Soon public ed will be dead bc of people like you.

doubtful because these are jobs that can pay six figures where you get great benefits, pension and only work 180 days a year

Imploding systems also translate into revolving doors. If you're happy with teachers coming and going, then good for you. You should be happy.

Average employee at places like Google lasts about 1.5 years. Seems like that's the norm these days.

If anything, incompetent and/or unhappy teachers in place for 10-20 years is odd. I’d love it if we had to not just recertify on paper with the state every 5 years, but actually reinterview.

I don’t have a problem with one-year contracts in theory, but I think it could give principals even more power to play favorites. So many are swayed by their inner circle of alpha types, and if one of them has a beef with someone else, they could poison the well and there could be a round of (unfair) non-renewals.

I wouldn’t want 1-2 years because ai think it can take 2 years to figure out a new school or a new grade level. But every 4-5 years would keep things fresh.

[Anonymous]

With the way things are going there will be no rights left in the future. If you don't play ball and inflate the grades for students who don't even show up you will get fired. One thing matters and that is selling you lazy disrespectful sons and daughters a six figures debt to college even if they can't read. It's not about education it's about people getting rich. No one care about teachers teaching and students learning. It's all about the benjamins babe and who is getting rich and news flash, teachers are made to be pawns who are easily intimidated to fraud everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once MD school systems start using test scores in evaluations, some of y’all are screwed. So you should be motivated to try to prop up SLOs as long as you can since you won’t quit and let someone who can teach take your place.

ha! You're a moron.

We've lost three teachers - 15+ years - already.

EXCELLENT teachers who just walked out . . .

Keep bashing, hon. Soon public ed will be dead bc of people like you.

doubtful because these are jobs that can pay six figures where you get great benefits, pension and only work 180 days a year

Imploding systems also translate into revolving doors. If you're happy with teachers coming and going, then good for you. You should be happy.

Average employee at places like Google lasts about 1.5 years. Seems like that's the norm these days.

DP

It doesn't have to be that way.

Pay well, appreciate your employees, create a decent work environment and you get employees who stick around. It's not that hard. There are lots of companies who DO have employees who stick around longer.

[Anonymous]

I’m quite familiar with this. Our son was bullied a lot last year and the school had a formula - minimize what the bully did (“maybe he punched and kicked you by mistake”) and make the victim part of the problem (“if you didn’t tell your friends he was bullying you, you wouldn’t have upset the bully so much”). These statements don’t even make sense because how could it be a mistake AND caused by my son?

My son’s favorite teacher left because of student’s bad behavior. She was wonderful to my son but he’d come home telling me how awful kids were to her. When I mentioned to his counselor that we were sad his teacher was leaving, I was told she didn’t control the class well enough. Nobody thought she was a bad teacher - just that the kids (12 year olds) were out of control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m quite familiar with this. Our son was bullied a lot last year and the school had a formula - minimize what the bully did (“maybe he punched and kicked you by mistake”) and make the victim part of the problem (“if you didn’t tell your friends he was bullying you, you wouldn’t have upset the bully so much”). These statements don’t even make sense because how could it be a mistake AND caused by my son?

My son’s favorite teacher left because of student’s bad behavior. She was wonderful to my son but he’d come home telling me how awful kids were to her. When I mentioned to his counselor that we were sad his teacher was leaving, I was told she didn’t control the class well enough. Nobody thought she was a bad teacher - just that the kids (12 year olds) were out of control.

Which school is this?