One time I read a guy’s blog where he was going on and on about the breaks teachers get. He had a problem with it. He calculated the time off with the pay and decided that we teachers were well paid afterall. I felt he missed some variables in his calculations. Like the price our nerves pay each day dealing with students who resent your trying to teach them something. We’re interrupting them, you know. They’d much rather be gabbing, texting, doodling, day dreaming, or just outright disrupting the learning environment. Or the price we pay each time admin sucks up our little measly 55 minute of planning time. When that happens, guess where all the paperwork ends up? – on our kitchen tables while we juggle leftover chili and red pens. Both get on us and the papers. Who pays for that time? No body. WE donate that.
I can’t plan a weekend gettaway during the school year. I can’t stay out too late on a school night. Essentially, I have no life while school is in session. I go to work with headaches, backaches, foot and eye aches. I fend off germs from snotty kids and try to stay well. I try to be reasonably pleasant toward kids and coworkers while my soul is scowling. By the time a break comes along, I’m so uptight that it takes several days just to decompress. By day 3 or 4, I can actually hear the thoughts in my head. I can talk to some adult without interruption from a kid who wants to know when they are going to have locker or restroom break, knowing full well it will be around the same time as usual. But I still can’t plan a weekend getaway – not on my salary.
I have a calculator too Mr. Blogger. I calculated that I could earn more money if I opened a day care center and had the same number of kids. (100). I could charge a bargain price of $100 and make — do the math — $10,000 per week. As it is, I have to work almost a 1/3 of the year to make that much. And that’s before taxes, union dues, and health insurance.
He must have hated school. He probably passes this on to his children, if he has any, and they are sitting there in our classes hating school like their daddy. No, Mr. Blogger, no friend of teachers, we are not luxuriating in restful recreational bliss during our time off. We are recuperating, reconnecting, and anticipating with dread, the day we return to the same old thankless drudgery.
In fairness to Mr. Blogger, I use to think like him B.T. Before Teaching. Now that I’m in the trenches and know first-hand what goes on in a typical day, I feel that teachers not only deserve the time off, they NEED it. It’s a thankless job that garners no respect from students, parents, and yes, sometimes admin. We need that time off just to convince ourselves to finish the school year because each day of work makes us want to turn in our keys and say adios.
Don’t hate. Appreciate. Someone’s got to try to educate your progeny. Or…maybe…you’d like to do it? Have at it! And if you can do it without the time off, and with the low pay, then just tell the admin that you want to work more days. I’m sure they’ll let you.
