So my school has added two one week long summer camps to my summer holiday (one at the start and one at the end) - so the actual time I can take a holiday has dropped to a very short 3 weeks… How does this compare to other FETs in the public sector?
I’m looking on the bright side, they’re only half days…
Are they paying you extra?
Are you an FET in the public sector? All of the FET contracts I’ve seen so far have summer / winter camps as standard…
No, I was just nosey.
lol I just wanted to see how other folks were getting on as I know some folks get hit harder with camps and some have the summer to just chill…
I have to do a summer camp at a uni. I get paid 675 an hour. I’d rather not do it, but it’s extra cash and an unsaid rule that it must be done.
Yup, sounds the same for me. You can either complain or just go along and smile knowing you can buy slightly better beer this summer. My uni at least seems to take good mental notes…so an extra favor you do now will be returned later.
One guy I worked with refused to do it. Didn’t give a bs excuse, just refused. Contract wasn’t renewed.
Yah, gotta play the long game instead of managing too many short term results. I have run into my fair share who didn’t use this approach…Plus, your kids make you realise you can’t be tossing work to the wind.
Yah, it’s not the end of the world, my situation is infinitely better than my Taiwanese colleagues but I’m just not seeing myself staying in the FET system more than another year. The camps are just like another added insult to injury. The bottom line is that they just want you in work ALL THE TIME Whether or not you’re actually doing anything is another matter…
You will envy me for this, but my school’s summer camp has been cancelled, thank God.
Keep in mind a lot of schools will let you negotiate those camps (dates, times, etc.), so if you haven’t done that this year there’s always next year. I’m not sure how they can add one at the start and one at the end of your summer holiday, since there’s usually a month gap between the end of one contract and the beginning of another.
We have a three-day camp at the end of this semester. Three long days with two nights of “fun.”
It really depends on the school. I only have 4 days total
This year, I wasn’t given any winter camps but in previous years I had several winter camps in different schools. Each school approaches it differently and I just go along.
Nothing really to complain about, especially what the rest of the teachers in the world are dealing with.
an old thread, but possibly relevant again given the time of year. Let me share my experiences. as has been stated, it really depends on the school.
I did the summer camp from hell my first summer in 2013. They actually packed in more classes than a normal school day, did stuff like shortening passing periods from 10 to 5 minutes and one class started right after the other without a break at all! Plus July 1st was on a Monday that year, and we could have started right away, but they insisted we wait a week… something to do with another camp happening at the school and they didnt’ want enrollment to be affected. Then they actually insisted that we had to stay and work that entire week to prepare for the camp, when we had pretty much been working at the lesson plans and everything in our ample free time in the weeks approaching the camp. Myself and the other FET put our foot down and said that we had the right to use vacation/personal time during that week… after plenty of useless bickering and back and forth, I got off that Thursday and Friday only. If not, I would have had some unused vacation and personal days. They seemed hell bent on getting us to use as little as possible, even though it really makes no difference and they cannot be used in later school years… use 'em or lose 'em.
The next two weeks were an absolute clusterfuck… we worked considerably more than we did during the course of a normal semester. Every lesson plan was pretty much unique and we had to write them all out in like 5-10 minute blocks of what we would do. I think we might have even went over, or been very close to exceeding the maximum teaching hours per week… I think we actually got them to reduce our hours or compensate us with additional time off, as per the contract. Don’t remember since it’s been nearly a decade. Probably the former.
The next year, we negotiated better terms, got them to abide by the normal school day schedule without cramming in an extra period. We had more of an idea of what we were doing and didn’t get so much resistance toward us using up all of our leave. However, at that school, we never did winter camps.
The next year I switched to a different public school and they had me do a winter camp, no big deal. They were a lot more flexible about the camps in general. Also, I had to do a summer camp, just one week, but I had to come up with 30 unique hours of lesson plans… 6 classes per day, 5 days. But I was allowed quite a lot of freedom, and we did some crafts, sports and watched at least one movie. No minute by minute lesson plans required.
So yea, your mileage WILL vary.
What about 2016 to 2022?
I didn’t work at public schools after that.
I wonder how this guy’s year on the res in northern Quebec has been?
now that I look back at my passport, I can see that all the summer camps I did were likely Monday to Thursday. That’s probably why we didn’t exceed the number of hours in a week.
Also now that I think back, that last summer camp, we also got to go on a field trip, I took the kids to see some fumoroles in YMS, because I think the theme was like “Our Earth” or something like that.