Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You saying that you sometimes work late is not even remotely the same as expecting TWO MONTHS of unpaid work. Teachers work after school, on weekends, and on vacations, as well, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find another profession where you are essentially furloughed for several months each year and people demand that you continue working during that time. We have strict contracts regarding hours worked, and our jobs are not like office jobs. I can't waltz in with a latte at 10:00 am as most of the people who work in offices do, or take a leisurely hour and a half lunch and expense it to the company. If I walk in the door at 8:01, disciplinary action is taken. If I walk out the door before 3:00, disciplinary action is taken. I can't flex my hours and leave at 1:00 so I can go the doctor, get ready to host Thanksgiving dinner, catch an earlier flight, pick someone up at the airport, etc. I can't decide I'm working from home when the weather is bad like my friends who work in corporate can, and then screw around all day. We don't accrue vacation time. I also don't get any of the perks that corporate workers do-a stipend for my phone, my internet, my car, etc. Teachers don't get performance bonuses, either. Maybe take a look around at all the perks offered in the corporate world before telling teachers they have it so good.

I also have a feeling your coworkers don't hit each other, try to run out the door, bite you, or come in coughing and refuse to leave. Your job is not the same, so just stop trying to compare your compensation and your job expectations with ours.

Lots of teachers phoned it in in March-June. Parents saw that and frankly that is what’s driving this push to get better options for fall. Now you need to do better, All those rules you just recited? Are not going to happen with asynchronous DL.so just cut it.

No idea what you're talking about, as I had to punch in and out every single day of remote learning at our regularly scheduled times, or I would be docked time/pay. You have no idea what I did so you can stop patronizing me. Stay in your lane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You saying that you sometimes work late is not even remotely the same as expecting TWO MONTHS of unpaid work. Teachers work after school, on weekends, and on vacations, as well, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find another profession where you are essentially furloughed for several months each year and people demand that you continue working during that time. We have strict contracts regarding hours worked, and our jobs are not like office jobs. I can't waltz in with a latte at 10:00 am as most of the people who work in offices do, or take a leisurely hour and a half lunch and expense it to the company. If I walk in the door at 8:01, disciplinary action is taken. If I walk out the door before 3:00, disciplinary action is taken. I can't flex my hours and leave at 1:00 so I can go the doctor, get ready to host Thanksgiving dinner, catch an earlier flight, pick someone up at the airport, etc. I can't decide I'm working from home when the weather is bad like my friends who work in corporate can, and then screw around all day. We don't accrue vacation time. I also don't get any of the perks that corporate workers do-a stipend for my phone, my internet, my car, etc. Teachers don't get performance bonuses, either. Maybe take a look around at all the perks offered in the corporate world before telling teachers they have it so good.

I also have a feeling your coworkers don't hit each other, try to run out the door, bite you, or come in coughing and refuse to leave. Your job is not the same, so just stop trying to compare your compensation and your job expectations with ours.

Lots of teachers phoned it in in March-June. Parents saw that and frankly that is what’s driving this push to get better options for fall. Now you need to do better, All those rules you just recited? Are not going to happen with asynchronous DL.so just cut it.

Anonymous wrote:You saying that you sometimes work late is not even remotely the same as expecting TWO MONTHS of unpaid work. Teachers work after school, on weekends, and on vacations, as well, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find another profession where you are essentially furloughed for several months each year and people demand that you continue working during that time. We have strict contracts regarding hours worked, and our jobs are not like office jobs. I can't waltz in with a latte at 10:00 am as most of the people who work in offices do, or take a leisurely hour and a half lunch and expense it to the company. If I walk in the door at 8:01, disciplinary action is taken. If I walk out the door before 3:00, disciplinary action is taken. I can't flex my hours and leave at 1:00 so I can go the doctor, get ready to host Thanksgiving dinner, catch an earlier flight, pick someone up at the airport, etc. I can't decide I'm working from home when the weather is bad like my friends who work in corporate can, and then screw around all day. We don't accrue vacation time. I also don't get any of the perks that corporate workers do-a stipend for my phone, my internet, my car, etc. Teachers don't get performance bonuses, either. Maybe take a look around at all the perks offered in the corporate world before telling teachers they have it so good.

I also have a feeling your coworkers don't hit each other, try to run out the door, bite you, or come in coughing and refuse to leave. Your job is not the same, so just stop trying to compare your compensation and your job expectations with ours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this.

Those of us in the professional world are managing ourselves via zoom or goto meetings.

To the PP who hasn't done anything because there hasn't been any direction: why on earth would you wait until the last minute to figure out how YOU are going to handle this? Why aren't you working out some options for teaching the content that you, presumably, teach every year?

I get that kids are different animals than adults - sure they are. But DL does NOT need to be that hard.

Frankly, if these kids can play those effing first person shooter games and the like for HOURS on end, it's time for the excuses that DL can't work to STOP. They are MORE than happy to be on their computers for five hours a day. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to acknowledge that this portion of this generation - and their teachers - are going to have to ADAPT.

Create a syllabus, create expectations (Larla must be present and paying attention on the zoom, just as she would be expected to in class, or there are consequences), and deliver the education you are being paid to deliver.

Is it optimal? Perhaps not. Will some kids struggle? Undoubtedly. Might some kids have to be left back, because of x, y, or z, reason? Possibly. But it's time for teachers to stop whining about what they CAN'T do, and figure out the alternative options they CAN offer.

FFS.

You would think that our educators would have a wealth of both creative and critical thinking skills. Figure it out, people.

Many teachers (myself included), are doing just that, working to completely overhaul their curricula during the summer. Where the "no guidance" comes in is that it's disheartening to consider that I'll be spending an enormous quantity of time making plans that may never see the light of day because leadership hasn't decided what the fall looks like yet. This is time that's totally uncompensated, material costs out of pocket, etc., but, honestly, that doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is the vast waste of critical time. Instead of embracing distance learning, working to train teachers who struggled during the fall, because it's a totally different pedagogy than in-person learning (I literally have a master's degree in this, my MP3 and MP4 were tight and well-executed, I'd love to work to support teachers who don't have that expertise). But, instead, we've all been left to our own devices, to reinvent the wheel school by school, department by department, teacher by teacher.

This is not a new problem; this is just exposing pre-existing failures to coordinate, communicate, and invest in professional development. Remember when MCPS rolled out the flagship Canvas myMCPS platform, and didn't train anyone - teachers, students, or parents? We haven't put in the groundwork to properly support the entire county overhauling the way it conducts education in a few months. This isn't "Mr. So-and-So is a lazy teacher, and didn't plan well!" - this is a total collapse of the institution of schooling, and we're all doing our best to keep up.

So ... we are doing things. This is a global catastrophe, and, actually, I don't begrudge you your annoyed, flippant attitude. The fall is going to be a mess, but it's not because teachers aren't working, or because unions are obstructing this or that. It's because our entire country from the federal government on down has dragged its feet making the hard decisions. Nobody wanted to hear "we'll be remote in the fall", and so we haven't announced it yet, even though it should be clear to everyone that that's where we're heading.

Best,
a DCC AP teacher <3

Anonymous wrote:

So ... we are doing things. This is a global catastrophe, and, actually, I don't begrudge you your annoyed, flippant attitude. The fall is going to be a mess, but it's not because teachers aren't working, or because unions are obstructing this or that. It's because our entire country from the federal government on down has dragged its feet making the hard decisions. Nobody wanted to hear "we'll be remote in the fall", and so we haven't announced it yet, even though it should be clear to everyone that that's where we're heading.

Best,
a DCC AP teacher <3

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this.

Those of us in the professional world are managing ourselves via zoom or goto meetings.

To the PP who hasn't done anything because there hasn't been any direction: why on earth would you wait until the last minute to figure out how YOU are going to handle this? Why aren't you working out some options for teaching the content that you, presumably, teach every year?

I get that kids are different animals than adults - sure they are. But DL does NOT need to be that hard.

Frankly, if these kids can play those effing first person shooter games and the like for HOURS on end, it's time for the excuses that DL can't work to STOP. They are MORE than happy to be on their computers for five hours a day. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to acknowledge that this portion of this generation - and their teachers - are going to have to ADAPT.

Create a syllabus, create expectations (Larla must be present and paying attention on the zoom, just as she would be expected to in class, or there are consequences), and deliver the education you are being paid to deliver.

Is it optimal? Perhaps not. Will some kids struggle? Undoubtedly. Might some kids have to be left back, because of x, y, or z, reason? Possibly. But it's time for teachers to stop whining about what they CAN'T do, and figure out the alternative options they CAN offer.

FFS.

You would think that our educators would have a wealth of both creative and critical thinking skills. Figure it out, people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this.

Those of us in the professional world are managing ourselves via zoom or goto meetings.

To the PP who hasn't done anything because there hasn't been any direction: why on earth would you wait until the last minute to figure out how YOU are going to handle this? Why aren't you working out some options for teaching the content that you, presumably, teach every year?

I get that kids are different animals than adults - sure they are. But DL does NOT need to be that hard.

Frankly, if these kids can play those effing first person shooter games and the like for HOURS on end, it's time for the excuses that DL can't work to STOP. They are MORE than happy to be on their computers for five hours a day. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to acknowledge that this portion of this generation - and their teachers - are going to have to ADAPT.

Create a syllabus, create expectations (Larla must be present and paying attention on the zoom, just as she would be expected to in class, or there are consequences), and deliver the education you are being paid to deliver.

Is it optimal? Perhaps not. Will some kids struggle? Undoubtedly. Might some kids have to be left back, because of x, y, or z, reason? Possibly. But it's time for teachers to stop whining about what they CAN'T do, and figure out the alternative options they CAN offer.

FFS.

You would think that our educators would have a wealth of both creative and critical thinking skills. Figure it out, people.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. I teach elementary self-contained special education. Why would I create a syllabus? That's totally developmentally inappropriate. I also have no ability to set expectations. That's up to the district and my administration. I can't just demand that all students do x without the directive coming from above. If my administration says that students can just log in and write "I hate school!" on google classroom and that counts as their daily attendance, then that's the policy. You have no idea what I did with my class in the spring, so telling me that it was poorly done and inadequate is meaningless. You don't have any evidence either way. Likewise, I could say that you were inept and unwilling to support your child's learning throughout DL, but I don't have any information to back that up. That's why I would never make a baseless claim like that about another person's work ethic.

You're also wrong to suggest that I should be working throughout the summer to better meet your expectations in the fall. You have no idea what I did with my class in the spring. We are ten month employees, and we do not get paid for the two months that school is not in attendance. Anything that I do over the summer is on my time and is absolutely voluntary. I don't owe parents, students, or administrators a single minute of my summer. Districts that want teachers to participate in specific trainings have the option of offering them paid on a per session basis, and they do so. We have not been offered that. For people who think that teachers should just "love students" so much that money is not important, please stop arguing that you need to go back to work in the fall. Do you not "love" your own children so much that your salary is of no consequence at all? One would expect parents would have a higher bar for love of children than teachers, and they should be able to just cast aside their own material needs. No? Then pay me for MY work.

If you allow your child to play shooting games for hours each day that then you should really take a look in the mirror-that's really abysmal parenting.