Hi teachers,
Do you work full /8am-4pm/ hours during winter break when there are no students at schools and there is hardly anything to do? What are the decisions of your schools in regard to this policy which is in the contract?
I have heard that some schools are flexible about this policy and they don’t require teachers to be 8 hours in the office doing basically nothing.
I wonder if your school applies this rule.
Thanks a lot for your info.
I quit last year but yes I had to work the full day during both summer and winter. Often there were no other teachers around either. Sometimes the other teachers came for half days. The non teaching staff is there the same as you though
At my school foreign teachers are counted with the admin staff during summer and winter break, so we need to come in for half days (8am through 12pm). However, our vacation days are actually counted by the hour, so those 10 vacation days per year suddenly become 20 if we use them during break.
As you are on salary are those times when not teaching used to prepare for the next semesters curriculum?
In theory yeah. In practice we still don’t know what our classes are for the next semester (at my school anyway) so it’s impossible for us to do any prep, so we end up watching a lot of YouTube.
Lots of schools, public and private, go on this weird power trip by making teachers come to school when there are no students or training/PD happening. I refuse.
I never came to school during breaks when I was an FET and I will not work at schools that have such a requirement. Especially in the summer.
I spend my summers going to conferences and taking classes in various random things. Me sitting in the office twiddling my thumbs does not make me a better teacher than going out into the world and meeting other people (including all types of teachers) and attending in-person talks and having conversations with people from all over the world. If a school can’t recognize the value in that or offers me unpaid leave in exchange for me going to my own professional development that I’m paying for with my money, they’re not a school I’m interested in having anything to do with.
Of all the dumb as heck rules that I’m so glad the public schools I worked for didn’t enforce, it’s the desk warming. Just why?!
Very few people work in education for the money. Long holidays in the summer!