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

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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 [/quote]
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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]
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.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics