We recently received our contracts for next year in the APS. The contracts are given out in February for a school year that starts in August and you have 10 days to sign them or they become null & void. But that is not the main point. This upcoming year they have instituted a 191 day work year for teachers. This was instituted because there were complaints about not having enough planning. So instead of doing what’s right and actually using planning days for planning, the system has added another day which is just going to be taken away for something else anyway.
This year when we came back to school our 1st 2 and ½ days of planning were used for so called “professional development” leaving us with only a day and a ½ to actually get our classrooms together and get organized for the 1st day of school. Then every year the 1st teachers planning day of the school year is used for a convocation, where every teacher in the APS boards a bus and heads down to the Georgia Dome for the superintendent’s State of the Union address, yet we still have to have grades in on time. Why should we have extra days added on to our school year when the days we have now are not being used effectively and for their primary purpose? Unfortunately these are the cards that have been dealt us. I would like to know if this goes on in other systems, or do you actually get to use your planning days for planning?
I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised this year. Last year my situation was much like yours... no time to do the work that you needed to do. This year it's been different. At the beginning of the year we had the obligatory meetings during preplanning, but during the year our teacher workdays have mostly been ours, which has been great. We have another one on 3/12, so I hope I'm not jinxing myself.
ReplyDeleteWe received our contracts Wednesday and were told that the amount of our pay is wrong (low of course) on each and every contract. We were told that our pay will be right when we get our checks next year but that they will not retype the contracts. We must sign them as is and turn them in 2 weeks. I must say I have a problem with that and so did the teachers sitting around me.
ReplyDeleteAs you wrote, I too wonder why our teacher work days are not left alone for teachers to work on grades. Instead they are used for administration to meet or train or do whatever else they want done.
I have often wondered why they just don't go ahead and call them "professional development days" instead of "planning days". Every year i continue to be frustrated with those planning days when I walk in the first day to find my whole room is outside the door in the hallway. Why they wait to wax my floors until the day before we come back to school I will never understand. My daughter experiences your same frustrations with APS but an adition to every preplanning day being filled with meetings, she has meetings during her planning period throughout the schoolyear. They are also reqired to stay to tutor students with no monetary compensation therefore loosing that time right after school to plan. This woul be why she has decide to no longer teach.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the answer is but we will just have to make the most of the planning time we have.