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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]News Flash. If a teacher wants to schedule a doctor appointment on a Monday or Friday, they can. Just like you can at your job.  Oddly enough, [b]the teachers aren’t tracking your absences[/b].  I get being worried about your kid when a teacher is out for months at a time. My son has had two long term subs this year.  I don’t hold it against the teacher-unless they come back and never grade anything. [/quote]

Go look at some of the bitter teacher threads from this winter. There are teachers who say they won’t provide make up work, slamming parents for taking children to visit relatives overseas, and look I get it — social media.  But it is absolutely not the case that the schools don’t take a hyperactive interest in

In my experience, the schools take a hyperactive interest in your child’s absences when they impact your child’s performance or when you complain the teachers isn’t doing their job, yet your student has accrued 25 absences. My kids have never been slammed for a trip because they’re held accountable for what they miss.  [b]Their absence does not create more work for the teacher. [/b]

The school takes no interest in your absences as an adult. Teachers are adults who’ve earned sick and personal days. They should be able to use them.  Parents don’t get to dictate teachers’ use of benefits. [/quote]

With all due respect, it absolutely does still create more work for teachers. Even the most diligent, unicorn student who misses a week of school creates additional work.  Whether it's preparing the work early, needing support clarifying things they didn't understand when they return, scheduling missed tests requiring me to stay after school late, handing me a stack of work upon their return that takes longer to grade since it's one off instead of a whole class of assignments, delaying my ability to pass back assessments to their peers since they didn't take them on time...it's a lot of little things that compound to a significant amount of time and energy.

I will never complain to your face, so you might not see any of the extra tasks your vacation causes a teacher, but they are absolutely there. To say, "My vacation doesn't impact anyone else" is incorrect. The job is easiest when everyone is present every day. Any absence, for any reason, causes teachers additional work.[/quote]

+1. Take your vacation. I’m not going to stop you, nor do I really care. But let’s not pretend it isn’t additional work for me. I won’t say anything other than “have a great time, and let me know how I can help.” But secretly, I’m calculating what I need to do to accommodate this. [/quote]

Its not additional work. Its the job you’re paid for, which includes preparing make up work for absent students. [/quote]

So, if you are doing a job, and someone does something that impacts the amount of work you have to do, that isn't additional work?  If you take your toddler to a restaurant and they throw food around, do you try to clean it up, or do you say "well, it's no additional work for the people who work here, because they are being paid?"  If your boss asks you to stay a few hours late to fix a mistake they made at 4:59 p.m. do you say "Oh, of course, I don't mind staying late, it's the job I'm paid for."

Does this apply to all professions?  Or is this another one of those rules that only applies to teachers, like the one where it's only "work" if you're in the room with children?  [/quote]

Right. If I’m a doctor, a patient coming in with double pneumonia isn’t “making more work for me“ than a patient coming in with an ear infection. Caring for both them is the job. Providing make up work is in the contract, and is FCPS policy.

I sent my kids to school already able to read, did that somehow make the teacher do “less work” I don’t think so.[/quote]

Doctors literally code differently and charge more for patients who are more complex, because they are additional work.

But your analogy of more and less difficult diagnoses to treat would apply to things like ELL status or disabilities or making an extra reading group for your kid who came in reading well.  That's our job. 
[/quote]

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