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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is hard. I've worked in two other professional fields for 3 and 4 years respectively. It is slightly less intellectually challenging depending on the courses I'm assigned to teach and the particular students I get. This one career is definitely hardest on the body. For example, I had to have varicose veins treated due to standing all day. It's also emotional hard in a way that maybe only clergy, health care workers, and social workers understand. Financially, it is a lot harder. Not only am I paid relative little for my education and experience, but I shell out hundreds each year for basic classroom supplies.

A typical day:

I'm a morning person so I put in 2 hours of grading or prep for my classes at home before I wake up my children. I arrive at work a half an hour before the required duty time. I'm not the earliest staff member to arrive.

I have hot tea and a Greek yogurt while I handle email or make copies. This is important because I may not eat again until I arrive home.

Colleagues start arriving. This is when the important "meetings" happen. Information about students is exchanged, we learn which staff will be out and need someone to support their sub.

I make adjustments to my lesson and hit the bathroom. This is my one guaranteed opportunity to go before 1 pm. There is one female staff bathroom near my room, it has a single stall, and we are not allowed to use student bathrooms.

Students start arriving. Like all teachers, I have hall duty between classes, but I also am one of the few teachers with a locker key so I dash up and down the halls dealing with jambs and forgotten combinations. At the same time, students are looking for me to solve other issues: needing a pass to retake a quiz at lunch, a missing book, a crisis with a partner on a project.

I teach my first two classes and go to a team meeting during my "planning period" that could have been handled via email.

I teach a third class and tutor through lunch.

I teach my fourth class.

Finally, I have my real planning period. I dash to the bathroom. I'd love to sit in my room quietly to eat my lunch while I set up the next day's lesson, but my classroom is used by another teacher. I go to the media center and plan there. I have to post homework and any upcoming assessment information to Edline before 3 pm so I usually do that before the bell rings to change classes.

I teach my last class of the day.

I set up my room for the next day. Answer emails. Pack a bag with grading and print out anything that has to be copied the next morning. It's useless to try to copy after school because that's when flyers for the whole school and IEPs are run.

I head home. From now until they go to bed, I belong to my own children. I will sneak in emails while they are at sports practice or in bathroom, but I am not at my best at 3:30 so I try to conserve my energy and good will for them.

As I drift off, I do think now and then of something I want to do in the classroom so I keep a pad beside the bed for jotting down a quick note or making a simple sketch. If I really can't sleep, I get up and grade since light doesn't bother my partner but noise from tv does.

Grading, prepping, and dealing with email is also a big chunk out of each weekend.

I haven't even delved into dealing with confidential student records. I used to get IEPs at a glance. Our RTSE stopped the case managers from giving them because a few teachers didn't keep theirs locked up. Now I need to access the entire thing on MyMCPS to find the one piece of info I need.

This is actually a pretty good day. A bad day involves a student with SN having a meltdown mid class, technology failures (like bldg svcs unplugging my Chromebook cart overnight) and all the times I have taught sick because it's more effort to plan for a sub than to drag my feverish self in.

Despite this vent, the first 3 weeks of this school year were the easiest of my decade and a half long PS teaching career. By that, I mean that, I didn't sit in too many long and useless staff meetings, the copiers didn't break down, and the materials that I stored over the summer weren't misplaced or thrown away when building services cleaned my room.

However, all the usual stresses and strains that occur behind the scenes were still there. I received a new shipment of textbooks (finally) at 3 pm the Friday before school opened. I had no choice but to come in Saturday unpaid to inventory them and get them on shelves if I didn't want 10 boxes in the middle of my classroom floor.

I teach at a MS that is not only known for being a pressure cooker for MoCo's affluent kids and a good place for twice exceptional children, but is experiencing a small demographic shift. We doubled our ESOL enrollment in the short time I've been there. I'd be willing to bet my entire salary that none of these students are the illegal immigrants that DCUM's armchair pundits like to wail about. In fact, the majority aren't even Latino or lower income. But they still have enormous unique educational and socioemotional needs that we are struggling as a school to meet. I know my Down County colleagues have it harder.[/quote]

Thank you! Our middle school sounds very similar to our MCPS school. The teachers clearly work hard and make themselves available to students before and after school and during lunch. Like you, many share classrooms. Not every teacher in our middle school is terrific but the majority seem very dedicated. I think teaching middle schoolers must be the most unpleasant job in the world,  but my daughter's teachers tell me they enjoy it. My daughter is thinking about being a middle school teacher when she grows up which I believe is a direct reflection of the caring and commitment of her teachers.

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