Am I being ungrateful?

My school is going to give me roughly half of my normal working hours for the summer.

From the looks of it, I would also have to do a ridiculous amount of unpaid lesson planning. (making materials to entertain kids online from scratch.)

Should I be grateful that I have an income during these times?

Edit:
I’m considering just taking the summer off. I don’t think it’s worth the stress.

I have savings and my girlfriend works from home, so money won’t be a problem…yet.

Thanks everyone for your input.

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if you don’t have alternatives, and you need the income, i’d say better to be grateful than be miserable

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As they say, better than nothing

Ask the school. See if they will pay you for lesson planning.

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Or at the very least, share some pre-made resources.

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the school that hired me didn’t say anything about writing monthly reports on each student. When it came time to write the reports I asked how they paid for the reports I produced. 50 plus kids. No pay. I left the job before writing a single report. I was an hourly worker.

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I mean technically if you worked in a USA public school you would normally prepare before every lesson in general no extra $. I don’t understand people that complain.

If you took a job on the basis that there was next to no prep - which is often the case at cram schools - and then suddenly there’s a lot of prep time, you have cause for complaint. Maybe you were teaching four hours per day, working four hours per day, and getting paid for four hours per day. But now you’re working eight hours per day and still getting paid for four hours.

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You would also be getting a full-time salary with a package of benefits.

Think about it

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I really don’t get it. Even with both explanations. That’s kind of part of being a teacher?? I noticed on review sites people complain too. Depending on which state you came from you technically could be making more than an American teacher too. If they cut it to something that isn’t livable here definitely leave but I wouldn’t use prep as an excuse.

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I’m not sure if “gratefulness” really comes into the equation at all.

You have bills to pay, and a means to pay them. So that’s good as far as it goes. If you think you can develop an alternative means to achieve that end, then it might be wise to investigate your options. But the economic situation is what it is; the government has mandated that people must stop working, and there is widespread compliance. Therefore, everyone else is in the same situation - you’re not being singled out - and there’s not much you personally can do about it, unless you have a heroic wispy beard and a boat called Granma.

Live your life as best you can, and try to line up some options for future resilience. It’s just my personal belief, but I think there’s something very odd going on here, and without any need to speculate on what it is, learning some new skills (marketable ones, or general-purpose life skills) will give you a definite advantage in the months and years to come.

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It’s not always part of being a teacher. If there’s a lot of prep that there wasn’t before, the job has changed.

You’re hired as a waiter for four hours a night. You’re getting paid for four hours a night. Suddenly your boss says “Hey, you’re the dishwasher now too, for four hours more.” “Oh, so I’m getting paid for eight hours now?” “Nope!”

“But why complain? Isn’t washing dishes part of restaurant work? If you were running your own family restaurant you’d probably be doing all these things and more.”

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  1. What else are you going to do? You don’t have to kiss the boss’s feet in gratitude, so nevermind how you feel about.
  2. Depending on what you need to do, there are a lot of resources available. You can find ready-made courses online, though you may need to adjust them for your class and many sites that distribute them charge a fee. It may be worth it to save time. Also, online teaching has been going on for over a year now, so there is probably more online-specific content out there.
    Twinkl is a resource I often used.
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Note: if YOU are developing these materials to entertain kids online, without getting paid extra, see if there’s a way to make sure YOU maintain access to them. You may one day find “Screw this, I’ve made all the material I need to run my own little operation online”, and more power to you.

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Absolutely. Hold onto your copyright. I know two people doing online language tuition with self-developed materials. They’re not getting rich, but they’re doing OK. As with anything else, your income depends on your skill set: there’s still a high demand for English language lessons internationally, and if you’re good at what you do then you will (a) attract a lot of clients and (b) be able to charge higher rates.

This does make me wonder if OP actually needs help with online teaching not necessarily extra work. If someone doesn’t know how to use a computer or doesn’t know how to online teach yet I can definitely see it taking longer. They don’t really state what’s “extra”??

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Could be. When the online teaching started about a month ago, for a week or two I had a massive amount of extra work while I figured out what the heck I was doing (and there’s still quite a bit extra now). However, I’m not paid by the hour.

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agreed, even if you know a lot about computers and a lot about online learning, creating new materials that meet your objectives can take a lot of time. not to mention the extra time spent with administrative tasks that become more complicated or computer problems that were previously non-existent.

the simple fact is the OP has to do more work than before (potentially a lot, possibly a little, depending on their situation), for the same pay (or less, considering the drop in hours), and that sucks

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Do you mind if I ask what you teach and how long you have been teaching it online?

If you wanna be grateful, just find someone doing worse than you. If you wanna feel jealous, find someone doing better than you.
Its as simple as that. You can feel grateful for many many things this way.

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