The longest short week ever

[velvetpage]

This is, for the kids, a short week. For me, it's a week where one day is a P.A. Day, and therefore an emotional, if not actual, day off. Even with the in-service I'm giving on research models, Friday will be much easier than a normal teaching day. (In terms of PR, that's not normally something I mention to non-teachers. It doesn't look good on the profession to call a non-teaching day a day off. The truth is that a normally-stressful day at the office for most people is still fairly straightforward compared with the emotional overload of preparing, teaching, and dealing with all the issues of all the kids of a day of teaching. But I digress.)

Today I had an in-service. By that, I mean I had to go to the Memorial building a half-hour's drive across town, through some nasty traffic, by 4:00 in the afternoon, in order to spend an hour and a half learning to do something essential to my job. I'll have to go to part two tomorrow.

Ten years ago, stuff like this was usually done on a P.A. day, of which there were nine or ten each year - basically once a month. I remember those days from the student perspective - good times, for sure. Since 1995, though, the number of P.A. Days has been cut to a total of four, one of which is always the last weekday in June. The others are spaced throughout the year. They are used for things like in-services, teacher prep time for specific tasks like report cards, parent-teacher interviews, and in the case of the one in June, shutting down the school for the summer.

Most of the in-services which used to happen on these days have been condensed from three hours to one or two, and placed after school or during school hours. That means a teacher either gives up their after-school activities (such as planning and marking) or spends hours planning for a supply teacher for half a day, in order to attend. In both cases, teachers end up using "free" time on work activities. I worked an eleven-hour day today, and will do so again tomorrow. Wednesday I will be catching up on the marking and planning I did not have time for before. I doubt I will be caught up by Friday.

I'm of the school of teachers who believes things like this should be done during the summer, and expenses incurred (such as extra babysitting) should be tax-deductible or perhaps even reimbursed by the Board of Ed. I do not have time to spend eleven hours a day on my job! I have a toddler, and a life outside of work. This is not a reasonable demand. Eight, even nine hours a day, is not unreasonable. But eleven???

Please, if this would be considered reasonable in your office job, let me know. I want to know if I'm expecting too much from my employer here.

Comments

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Depends what they do, what they're hired to do, their education level and experience, and who hires them (non-profits have less money to throw around, of course). Folks in the industry can earn anywhere from $30,000 a year to six figures. Canadian, that is.

I'm actually glad I didn't go that route, in the end, despite the money -- I couldn't hack the hours, the pressure, the atmosphere, keeping up with the tech... Not to mention the toll on every aspect of one's health.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The next question is predictable. :) Do the hours worked go up as the salary improves? I mean, if someone's being paid 90 grand to work 11-hour days, and they knew that when they went in, that's different from someone making 40 grand, suddenly realizing that 11-hour days are the norm. Also, if the salary will go up faster if they put in those hours, that makes some sense. (Not enough, in my opinion. I would never do that job.)