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Thing Number 75 I Don't Miss About Teaching

The guilt.

It's astounding to me, actually, that we haven't progressed beyond using guilt as motivation in the field of education, but we haven't.

Besides using guilt whenever teachers take a sick day (because they're SICK), administrators often use guilt as a way to make teachers work longer hours. Now, let's make something very clear. Teachers work long hours. Teachers work VERY long hours. There's no one here who's trying to get out of working long hours.

But when (last year), teachers point out that the administration has us working over our contracted hours and are answered with "Aren't you doing this for the kids?" Well, there's just no answer for that. Besides a good kick in the pants, that is.

And now I hear (and oh, how I hope this rumor is wrong but I doubt that it is) that the principal from last year is using the payout for overage hours (each of us was paid $1000 for working 40 hours over - that is, 40 hours with kids over our contracted time; we each put in many hundreds of hours we don't get paid for) as an excuse for not letting kids go on field trips this year. Apparently he's presenting it in sort of a "Those greedy teachers from last year wanted to be paid and the money had to come from somewhere, so there won't be many field trips..."

I'm going to check on this but it sounds like something that the might do and it is low. Weasely. Snake-like. Except that's not fair to the weasels and the snakes in this world. I have ZERO patience from people who 1. Take opportunities away from inner-city kids and 2. Don't take responsibility for their own actions. We warned him that he would have to pay for the extra hours!

Wow. I'm glad I'm out. No guilt.

Comments

justplainuts said…
I'm so glad!!

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