Enough is ENOUGH! As a teacher, I cannot add one more requirement to my plate! Apparently, the people who have not taught in a classroom, and are creating the expectations for classroom teachers, think we do nothing but sit at our desks and twiddle our thumbs. What does your day look like? How busy are you as a teacher?

Busy. And now admin wants to see us use our plan time to go to more trainings and visit the classrooms of “master” teachers to learn from them. They also pop in for “quick 5 minute meetings” that end up taking 45 minutes. No way to get everything done unless you stay late, arrive early, and take work home.

While I’ve been retired for two years, the stress of being overworked was real. It was one of the many reasons I retired. As a Master teacher, I found my “sweet spot” in terms of budgeting my time to be most efficient during the workday. After Covid hit, it was all I could do to keep up with the increasing demands the state, districts, and parents put on my plate. Learnings endless computer programs to make “my life easier,” increased parent calls/emails, endless meetings about Covid protocols, (both district wide and my building) looking at new curriculum, piloting new programs, gathering work for the many kids that were absent, parent meetings for IEP,s, GIEP’s, 504,s, and ILP’s on top of teaching and grading for a team of students of 115 put me on the edge more days than I could count. I can’t even imagine what new teachers were thinking. I do know several of them were working until 5:30 everyday; this was not something I was willing to do at that point in my career. My lunch was 25 minutes and I had one prep that was 42 minutes.

I mention all of this because I know what the answer is, but the district doesn’t want to help teachers out for some reason. I believe it’s the appearance, to the community, that we aren’t earning our salary. What they don’t understand is that most teachers give their heart and soul everyday in the classroom. We ask for nothing in return except for a reasonable work load. I’m afraid those days were gone, and so was I. This is causing a major shift away from attracting highly qualified teachers. Until this problem is addressed, the coming teacher shortage will force district administrators to deal with the complaints of their overworked, fed up teachers.

I totallyyyyy feel you there! I cannot believe how overworked I feel these days. It feels like March is always the time of the school year where I am the most overwhelmed too. I'm definitely always operating at capacity with just lesson planning, teaching, and grading alone. But they always want to add one more thing, don't they????

Yes. It seems like there is no end to what they want from us.

I'm busy all day every day- my plan is used to grade essays, my day is used teaching, progress monitoring, data tracking, and now for co-teaching. I'm busy- too busy to add much else to the docket!

I'm a school social worker but feel the same. 3 social workers quit this year and 3 quit at the end of last year. I have lupus and I have never been sicker. I'm ready to take a medical until I retire. I did not plan to retire early but the name of the game for me is survival at this point.

In 37 years of teaching this has been my toughest year.

Busy for sure, all day: 9 am to 3:39 pm. I only get a lunch break for 45 minutes and a prep for 45 minutes. The teaching is all subjects, as I teach 2nd grade.

I haven't heard back anything, but the new addition of forms resulted in an email from our union rep. We were to discuss the new expectations in our team plan and then send comments, complaints, etc. to the union rep. He said that they would be discussing everything in a meeting next Tuesday (later, I found out there was a union meeting that same day).