Reply to Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teachers need to quit whining. Even this thread is about why nobody supposedly acknowledges how overworked teachers are. We get it, you feel stressed out, but so are many other professionals. We've already heard you complain about it 1000 times. Why do you think you're special and get to whine louder than everyone else?[/quote]

I don’t think you can appreciate the stress of teaching unless you’ve done it. Is it the ONLY hard job? Of course not. Are teachers extremely overworked? Yes.

-career changer who has worked in the corporate world. I hard rough weeks in that job, but teaching is considerably more time-consuming and stressful to me.  [/quote]

Fact is that many middling college students who'd rather not get stressed out over grad school self-select into the teaching profession because they think it's an easier gig with lots of vacation time. And then those people get all upset when they realize that teaching is just as hard as many other jobs. So it's not the work per se but the false expectations about teaching that's causing all the whining. [/quote]

Teachers get very little paid vacation time and that time is dictated to them. They do not have the option of working for more than the ~190 days of the school year without applying for another, different,temporary job. For all practical purposes, they are furloughed every summer. [/quote]
I have missed three family weddings and will miss putting my child on the bus for his first day of kindergarten. This isn’t to mention missing every school concert, ceremony, party, field trip, and event because teaching offers zero flexibility. But yes, I get the summer off, unpaid. I teach at a camp then, instead. It’s hard seeing people who make three times what I do being able to flex hours or work remotely to take their kid to the doctor, take a long weekend, or go visit their kid’s class. [b]They certainly aren’t working harder or more than I am. [/b]Sorry. [/quote]

How do you know that?  Just because someone can flex their hours doesn't mean they don't work hard.  [/quote]
I didn’t say they aren’t working hard. I said they aren’t working harder or more than I am. I know this because this is describes many of my friends and family members. A lot of them work from home and have entire days that they are “working” but have nothing at all to do, or have a couple brief phone calls. I never have a day at school like that, and I certainly can’t work from home if my kid is sick or a plumber is coming. I also see a tremendous amount of parents at school concerts at 11:00. Or parents who are both in the car for drop off AND pickup. Do you both only work five hours a day? Or not at all? This is on an everyday basis. How demanding can your jobs be if you can just block out that time every single day to sit in the school parking lot?[/quote]

Right. If you look at threads about SAHM/WAHM there are so many posters claiming that they are working moms with high incomes but they don't have to sacrifice time with their kids because they really only have to work during school hours and it's totally flexible for school events during the day, etc. [/quote]

Teaching is difficult because there is little flexibility when school is in session. That's absolutely true. The lack of flexibility requires teachers to have to miss their own kids' school events, which many of us can attend. I keep asking if there isn't some way to improve on that, whether through teaching as teams or having a floating backup at school, or some other way to give teachers a chance to take an occasional day off without too much stress.

On the other hand, you don't know what other people have done to earn or keep flexible work arrangements. When my kids were in early elementary school, many of the moms who had been SAHMs were looking for jobs and were dissatisfied with what they could find. They would tell me how "lucky" I was to have a part-time job. I did consider myself to be fortunate to have that part-time position, but before getting that, I worked countless hours as a litigator, almost around the clock, in order to have time with my kids. Even that "part-time" job required more hours than I was paid for and often saw me up at 4:00 a.m. working to make up for the "flexibility" to be there for my kids during the day.

You never know.

But I agree that teachers have to work harder than they should and will tell anyone willing to listen that the busy administrative work that takes time away from actual teaching needs to go ASAP.[/quote]

Understood. It is unfortunate with teaching though that even if you have seniority, have been a high achiever, etc, you will never get to a place where you have "earned" this high amount of flexibility and reduced hours that many other working moms on DCUM speak of as if it's expected. And pretty much all of these other jobs pay (way) more than teaching. 
Now, I get that some of this should be known before becoming a teacher, which is why I always wanted to be a SAHM once I had kids. Some of it, however, was difficult to understand until I started working in the school system. [/quote]

NP and I don’t feel overworked but what has started to bother me about the job is that seniority, experience, strong performance gets me nothing.  That part of the job gets tiring especially when co workers who don’t have those qualities get the same schedule, courses, etc as me.[/quote]

+1,000 I mean the ESL teachers pull
Small groups of 4 or less kids and get paid the same. Why am
I putting up with parents and 23 kids + sped inclusion. Also why is that equitable for anyone- children or teachers [/quote]

Again, if being an ESOL teacher is such a sweet gig, why are there so many vacancies in this area? Could it be that’s challenging in different ways?  :roll: [/quote]

I just ordered the praxis study guide and will take the praxis and take a job.  I will be glad to take up that vacancy.  Many teachers at my job are doing similar the ESOL teacher said, “everyone is asking me about that and thinking about switching.” I’ll report back next year.  I’m guessing no report cards, no parent conferences, fewer meetings, and no whole group behavior management will definitely be easier.[/quote]

ESOL teacher here. I'm not sure which district you work in but in my district, ESOL teachers do grades 8 times per year. 4 progress reports and 4 report cards, just like any other teacher. We are required to attend parent conferences (although many parents don't attend) and we have meetings about meetings. I probably have twice as many meetings as classroom teachers do. Yes, smaller groups means simpler classroom management but all it takes is one student to make a class or group hell. I can't have large groups because I teach in closets (yep, the supply closet), the food pantry, the hallway, the cafeteria stage, etc. [/quote]

Seems easier to me!

1.You aren’t really doing the whole report card, just a sentence and a few objectives.

2.  If you have a chair thrower, you can more easily take 4-5 other kids somewhere else and call for help in the middle of the hallway. If I have a chair thrower, there are 20 other kids to keep safe and worry about.

3. Again, the parent conference isn’t run by you, you just sit there and nod and add a statement or two about English progress and go to the next one.  You aren’t assuming any responsibility for the complaints parents have, you just nod and go to the next one.

4. At the meetings, you again don’t have to assume as much responsibility. When they put the data on the wall, it isn’t your name the call when so and so isn’t making progress, it is the classroom teacher’s at the top of the list. You get to “add to the discussion” but you aren’t really called out as the primary responsible person.

So, yeah it is a good gig from where I sit.  You meet with your little groups in a closet, if someone throws a chair, you can easily get safety for the other 4-5 kids.  You can return the problem kids after the 45 minute session is up and the classroom teacher will handle the lovely for the other 5 hours each day.

[/quote]

Another ESOL teacher here.  PP I will concede that as a teacher who does pull out classes, my behavior management difficulties are less than yours. If I have a "chair thrower" I might even arrange to work with him one on one, just to mitigate loss of learning time with my other students.

Needing to be knowledgeable about all grade level curriculum (k-5) is not easy, though. And I don't know how it works in your state and district, but in Maryland, ESOL student progress is 10% of our school report card. I'm the only ESOL teacher at our school, so if students in ESOL aren't making progress, and aren't exiting by 3rd or 4th grade -- yes that IS my name on the chart and yes, people ARE looking at me. And I'm the one who had them in K, 1st 2nd and 3rd grade so if they aren't making progress, it's really on me.

I do need to assign one grade per week x 67 students = 67 grades each week.  That's not so many. However, I have a LOT of preps. I teacher grades k, 1, 2, 3 newcomer, 3 intermediate, 4+5 newcomer (science/SS), 4 intermediate, 4+5 advanced.  I further separate my K and 1 students by lower literacy and higher literacy so that's even more preps.  10 preps in all. So coming up with different activities and rubrics for each of the 10 preps is a little more work than it may seem.

I have seen many classroom teachers make the switch to being an ESOL teacher. About half like it and stay; the other half usually return to the classroom within 3 years. They preferred the ability to be more in control that they had as a classroom teacher; especially the teachers for grades 3-5 who were doing departmentalization.  A fourth grade teacher in our school may ONLY teach math all day, so just one lesson plan for the entire day, with some adjustments for SPED and ESOL accommodations.  They are given a curriculum that they need to follow and it already has all the assignments in it. In ESOL you may have 10 preps, no actual curriculum (or one that you need to heavily modify) and any given day, your class may be cancelled for all sorts of reasons. Some teachers just really don't like it.

That said, we do get paid the same amount as classroom teachers, and it is pretty easy for a classroom teacher to get certified to teach ESOL. In Maryland it's just a matter of passing the ESOL praxis. So if you think it looks easier, I welcome you to give it a try! We have a huge need for ESOL teachers. Just be sure that you know how to help students progress and exit ESOL within a few years. The worst thing is teachers who think ESOL is easy but then fail to actually instruct the students properly in the small groups.[/quote]

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