Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5073

This is actually something I've wondered about :

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._st/no_homework

Full text:

quote:

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BERKELEY, Calif. - Students in the Berkeley school district aren't getting written homework assignments because teachers are refusing to grade work on their own time after two years without a pay raise.

So far, a black history event had to be canceled and parents had to staff a middle-school science fair because teachers are sticking strictly to the hours they're contracted to work.

"Teachers do a lot with a little. All of a sudden, a lot of things that they do are just gone. It's demoralizing," said Rachel Baker, who has a son in kindergarten.

Teachers say they don't want to stop volunteering their time.

"It's hard," said Judith Bodenhauser, a high school math teacher. "I have stacks of papers I haven't graded. Parents want to talk to me; I don't call them back."

The action was organized by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, which wants a cost-of-living increase next year.

District Superintendent Michele Lawrence expressed sympathy for the teachers but said there isn't money for raises. She blamed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) not providing as much money to education as promised.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said the governor has promised that the bulk of new funding in next year's budget, $3 billion, will go to education.

Barry Fike, president of the teachers union, said the district will be getting more money next year and that teachers want a share.

But schools spokesman Mark Coplan said the district still faces a deficit for several reasons, including rising health care costs and the governor's plan to shift some big costs from the state to the district.

Fike said teachers are willing to start paying some health care costs, but without a raise that would amount to a pay cut.

The union declared an impasse in negotiations last June and has not had a contract for two years.

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Registered: Dec 2004
Location: Beringia
Posts: 5207

imo, The teachers are 100% in the right here. If your job is such that it cannot be performed within the contracted period, it is your employer's problem. I don't even think it's unfortunate that parents had to volunteer their time to pick up the slack. "Parents volunteer time for school function" should never, ever, regardless of the context, be newsworthy. It should be recognized as part of parental responsibility

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Registered: Dec 2002
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Seems a reasonable resonse to a near untenable situation to me. I'd suggest the district might want to consider an impartial external audit of administrative positions and costs, then eliminate the deadwood. The savings can then be used to improve teacher salaries.

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Registered: Dec 2004
Location: Beringia
Posts: 5207

Furthermore, I can't imagine trying to live in Berkeley, Ca on a teacher's salary. you can forget buying a house; unless, of course, it's a crack house in west Oakland.

Raymond Chandler once said something about police work that I think applies equally to teaching, to paraphrase: it calls for the best sort of person, and offers them nothing.

ed fer spelin'

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: ........
Posts: 14957

How many weeks vacation does a teacher in the US get? Me wonders.

It always seemed to me that the overtime worked weekly was compensated by the vacations earned yearly.

But that wasn't in the US.

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Registered: Dec 2004
Location: Beringia
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quote:

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Originally posted by skalie
How many weeks vacation does a teacher in the US get? Me wonders.

It always seemed to me that the overtime worked weekly was compensated by the vacations earned yearly.

But that wasn't in the US.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35568

In the UK, it works out that on average, the teacher's working week is within relatively normal bounds. For weeks when school is in, though, it averages 52 hours a week or so, I think.

When I used to take a cricket team, that probably added 8 hours to my week with training and game time and travel to and from the games. The school I was at did actually offer some subsistence money for that, but I didn't even know about it.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Insatiation
Posts: 8981

I'm with the teachers on this. But teachers aren't the only ones that do work at home during unpaid hours. There are thousands and thousands of people doing the same thing in other jobs.

Aside from more menial jobs when I was younger, I can't remember a job where I didn't do some work off the clock, even if it was spending time on the phone babysitting boneheads who couldn't scratch their asses without consulting someone.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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I guess that teachers are seen as important (fair enough, I guess) and underpaid, given their skills and education, and that is why there is a degree of sympathy for them.

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Registered: Dec 2002
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Teaching is, to the best of my knowledge, the only profession in which the lower one's rank, the greater the demands upon one's time for a given pay level. In every other profession, line level employees typically put in their shift and go home till the next working shift. It is as one's rank increases in most professions that the demands on one's time increases. Education is typically the opposite.

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Registered: Dec 2004
Location: Beringia
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Quote:

I guess that teachers are seen as important (fair enough, I guess) and underpaid, given their skills and education, and that is why there is a degree of sympathy for them.

end quote

That and they're working for the state, the very entity responsible for curtailing abuses such as unpaid overtime.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 4501

It happens at the college level as well. We're tapped to serve, unpaid, on committees, in exchange for good rec. letters and a line on our CVs. We're paid for 20 hours of work a week, but if that's all we do, then students don't get much one-on-one attention, teachers don't spend time developing their professional skills and researching new ways to demonstrate various skills, texts, strategies, etc., and work would not get graded with anything more than a simple grade slapped on. Comments and suggestions for improvement would be virtually nonexistant.

Out of 20 hours allotted for my work:
6 are spent just in class alone
4 are spent in office hours
4 - 6 are spent commenting on or grading informal assignments, quizzes, and in-class assignments
3 - 6 are spent scheduling appointment times for those who cannot make my regular office hours

And during a week when rough drafts are due, an extra 16 hours are spent in private conferences with the students ...

And during a week in which I am grading formal writing assignments (graded essays), add an additional 10 hours.

I have yet to calculate what it takes to create handouts, activities, lesson plans, readings for the courses, processing mandatory university paperwork (many units require special reports at various intervals), writing midterm reports with comments for each student, reading all of their emails asking for special exceptions and such, etc.

I've lost count of the hours.

Did I mention I'm actually a graduate student, and am currently taking two theory courses and one translation course, none of which offers the benefit of clear expectations or due dates for various assignments, which are also left totally undefined?

Oh, yeah ... I chair one organization, sit on the board for one other, and am on a committee to revise textbook selections and curricula for our core curriculum courses.

I am paid $4000 below the poverty level because I am considered to be an apprentice. I have few health benefits, no dental nor vision plans, no unemployment insurance, no social security additions, no pension, no paid leave for extensive emergencies or illness. And if my GPA drops below a 3.5, or I take an incomplete in more than one course, I can lose my job, which means no tuition, no stipend.

Yay!

But I stick with it in the hopes that I'm able to throw a wrench into things in the future.

Oh, yes, skalie ... I do have summers "off," but no pay. We're often offered "service opportunities" which go unpaid during July and August, and most have to take out loans to afford to live over the summers.

Sometimes, I have a social life. Mostly, I just wonder when I'll have the time to publish an article so that I can be considered "competitive" upon graduation. I'd also like some time to write my dissertation. :- )

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: At Home
Posts: 4068

I would not teach until corporal punishment returns to the schooling system, teachers are bound and gagged by laws and such that allow kids to treat them like shit.
I have immense respect for teachers, it is a tough job and I know some strong people who have left teaching because it was too tough.

I could not let a kid call me a "seeping cunt", my neighbour in London was a female teacher and was called that, all she could do is ask the kid to leave the class. She could not grab him and walk him out of the class because when he refused to leave she approached him, to which he threatened "if you touch me, i'll have you in court".

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: NYC
Posts: 11770

Teaching is like sumo.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: atlanta
Posts: 6347

Teachers refuse to do unpaid work? how dare they!

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Smith County
Posts: 1366

Good for the teachers.

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Registered: May 2002
Location:
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quote:

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Originally posted by Rokkr
teachers aren't the only ones that do work at home during unpaid hours. There are thousands and thousands of people doing the same thing in other jobs.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5073

I'm not sure how salaried works in that area. I don't think that one can be required to consistently work 80 hours a week for one's salary, but I could well be wrong.

The article suggests that the teachers are contracted for a specific number of hours per week, though.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35568

That all depends on your contract, I guess, travis. If their contract doesn't require them to do these things, then if they do them they aren't being paid for it because it isn't part of their contract, which stipulates their responsibilities and the financial rewards for carrying them out. I am surprised that there isn't a general clause in there that would cover it (pretty sure that when I had a teaching contract, ther was something like that in there)

Last edited by Smug Git on 03-02-2005 at 07:51 PM

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

quote:

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Originally posted by SimpleSimon
Seems a reasonable resonse to a near untenable situation to me. I'd suggest the district might want to consider an impartial external audit of administrative positions and costs, then eliminate the deadwood...

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Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 15990

I hope you choke. I suggested it as reasonable, realizing full well it will never happen.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Yeah, I agree completely on both counts, actually.

New York school districts have gone without desks and books rather than cut a single administrator. There is nothing...NOTHING...that districts would ever protect ahead of administrative jobs.

Take a look at administrative salaries someday compared to teacher salaries someday. In any district. Take a good long look. And don't give me any crap about scarcity as a rationale, either; ninety percent of districts receive FAR fewer applicants for science instructor openings than for administrative openings at any level.

Your proposal simply makes far, far too much sense to ever in hell be implemented.

Last edited by CHiPsJr on 03-02-2005 at 11:28 PM

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35568

It is fantastical that they should think that such a bad system "needs" so many administrators. At least it isn't this bad in the UK, although (thanks mostly to Blair, but Thatcher must bear her share of the blame) the red tape is still there. That Blair killed off the Grant-Mainained schools (any school could apply to be Grant-Maintained, which meant that their funding was by direct grant from the government, rather than from the government via their Local Education Authority) was a real shame, though, particularly as he had taken advantage of the system by sending his own kids to one, right across London from where he lived and thus clearly subscribed to the benefits of that system.

However you cut it up, the most important employees of the school system are teachers (parents are, I think, more important, but they're not employees). It is, perhaps, time that governments realised that and just bite the bullet with regards to teachers also being irritating bastards who often don't agree with them. Going to war with them, or administrating them into the ground, just doesn't work. At least, not if providing a good education through the schools system is the actual aim.

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