One of my favorite things about teaching is that I get to think like a perpetual twelve-year-old; I get to look forward to summer vacation and pray for snow days. Also, I love having weekends and holidays off.
Before anyone chokes on jealousy, I should remind you that I work 60 hours a week through the school year. Teaching in the classroom takes 7 hours a day, 187 days in the contract year. That's 1309 hours. All of us at Henry Clay sponsor a club; I sponsor two. we meet one hour after school a week. That's an extra 2 hours per week, across 36 weeks. That's 72 hours. I spend at least 15 hours per week grading and planning during the 36 week school year. That's another 540 hours. On top of that, I, like every other teacher at my school, sit on a School Improvement Committee. I also chair a second SIP committee. SIPs meet an hour a month 10 times over the school year. The one I chair meets 30 minutes per week; that's 18 hours in addition to the 10 hours. Every teacher is also required to work in common planning committees or PLCs. They meet for an hour every other week. That's another 18 hours meeting time with approximately an hour prep time before we meet. That's an additional 36 hours total. Every teacher is also required to complete 24 hours of professional development each year. Let's run a tab so far:
1309 hours - Working days
72 hours - Club sponsorship
540 hours - Planning & grading
28 hours - School Improvement Committees
36 hours - Common Planning Meetings & Prep Time
24 hours - Professional Development
That gives us 2009 Hours in a working year, or a little over 50 weeks at 40 hours per week. That's pretty much an average work year. The only flex-point in my calculation is the amount of grading planning. The rest is mandatory. It also doesn't take into account the other professional development I do, or writing for publication, or large-scale projects. This year, for instance, I'm developing the school-wide writing program. I've already poured more than 60 hours into that, probably closer to 80. I also attended two conferences this summer, beyond my required PD hours. I was working an additional two work weeks.
Please don't mistake this for a hymn sung to the tune of "Poor Me." I love what I do. But the next time someone gripes about how teachers get so much time off, print and give them this list. It might open some eyes.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The Inclusion of Criminals
Problem 2: Inclusion - the criminals
At the beginning of the year, I had to sign paperwork saying that I was aware of the felon-offender status of one of my students.
S/he was recently arrested for possession of a controlled substance on school grounds.
Why is this child still in school?
Why should the taxpayers of Fayette County, of Kentucky, have to foot the bill for a student who clearly wants no part of an education?
Worse still, why do the parents of the other students at my school have to send their sons and daughters to school with a student who should be in jail?
The answer is horrifying. A Fayette County judge decided that this student needed to be in school more than S/he needed to be in jail. This judge sacrificed the quality of education for the many for what S/he saw as the needs of one student.
In what looking-glass universe does this thinking make sense?
There comes a point when we must separate the wheat from the chaff. Forcing convicted felons to return to public school is an atrocity. It is a slap in the face to the students who come to school and try to learn. It is a slap in the face to the parents of hard-working students when judges put convicted felons in the same classrooms with their sons and daughters.
Students who don't want to be educated should not be in the public school system. They tax the system's resources, exhaust teachers and administrators, and cripple the education of every other student in the building - not to mention creating an unsafe environment for teachers and other students.
A free public education should be the right of every American, BUT, that right should be forfeit when students commit felonies.
That right should be forfeit when the student doesn't want it.
That right should be forfeit when a student disrupts the entire educational process out of spite.
Still, the idea of inclusion persists as some noble dream. Our refusal to exclude anyone from public education, no matter how awful or destructive, no matter how spiteful or abusive, no matter how many criminal convictions will be our undoing.
We can't save everyone, because everyone doesn't want to be saved.
Some of our students don't want to go to college or learn a trade or become productive members of our society. Some of them want to do drugs, sell drugs, and sleep the rest of the time.
These students want to exist outside the boundaries of decent human behavior, and we should let them - BUT NOT IN OUR SCHOOLS.
At the beginning of the year, I had to sign paperwork saying that I was aware of the felon-offender status of one of my students.
S/he was recently arrested for possession of a controlled substance on school grounds.
Why is this child still in school?
Why should the taxpayers of Fayette County, of Kentucky, have to foot the bill for a student who clearly wants no part of an education?
Worse still, why do the parents of the other students at my school have to send their sons and daughters to school with a student who should be in jail?
The answer is horrifying. A Fayette County judge decided that this student needed to be in school more than S/he needed to be in jail. This judge sacrificed the quality of education for the many for what S/he saw as the needs of one student.
In what looking-glass universe does this thinking make sense?
There comes a point when we must separate the wheat from the chaff. Forcing convicted felons to return to public school is an atrocity. It is a slap in the face to the students who come to school and try to learn. It is a slap in the face to the parents of hard-working students when judges put convicted felons in the same classrooms with their sons and daughters.
Students who don't want to be educated should not be in the public school system. They tax the system's resources, exhaust teachers and administrators, and cripple the education of every other student in the building - not to mention creating an unsafe environment for teachers and other students.
A free public education should be the right of every American, BUT, that right should be forfeit when students commit felonies.
That right should be forfeit when the student doesn't want it.
That right should be forfeit when a student disrupts the entire educational process out of spite.
Still, the idea of inclusion persists as some noble dream. Our refusal to exclude anyone from public education, no matter how awful or destructive, no matter how spiteful or abusive, no matter how many criminal convictions will be our undoing.
We can't save everyone, because everyone doesn't want to be saved.
Some of our students don't want to go to college or learn a trade or become productive members of our society. Some of them want to do drugs, sell drugs, and sleep the rest of the time.
These students want to exist outside the boundaries of decent human behavior, and we should let them - BUT NOT IN OUR SCHOOLS.
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