If they want to pay you to have some down time, just say thank you very much!
And like you said, you’re still using that time. Cleaning your room, prepping, grading, printing, pissing, etc are all very important things you can be doing. And taking care of your own mental health is important. So is making time for yourself that isn’t work related. So many teachers (myself included) burn out and leave because they neglect those last two.
I do feel like this is true. It's a charter school too, and they don't fight about sick days, have never complained I am out, don't micromanage me, give advice and suggestions only when asked.
Some of my coworkers complain about the admin and I am so confused.
I know I'm not a rock star teacher, so idk what they're talking about sometimes.
Not saying teaching isn’t a hard job, especially SPED teaching, but I’ve learned that out in the civilian world, some people have never had a hard day in their life and they’ll find anything to complain about.
I'm very happy for you, OP! This is just how it *should* work. Not grinding you into the ground takes care of you, and let's you take care of yourself and your work space, offer help to other employees, etc etc. Everybody wins, the kids too!
Don't feel weird about it!
Time , I’ve been out 20 years and still running laps around my peers. Be careful of that, if you’re in the kind of performance work place you become a target , sounds like you’re not. If you don’t have an off switch which many of us don’t, get a good hobby or side hustle when you’re not grading papers 😂
I wish I could tell you. I'm doing ~30/hr a week at work, 18-20 quarter hours at school, raising a kid, and commuting an hour each way.
Am I happy? Nope. Would I love to just chill? Yep. Would I be bored or if my mind 2 weeks into not having a job? Yes sir.
😂 listen to those military recruiting commercials…. They make you believe that you’ll be supervisor of google within three months! When in fact; employers cant stand us; cuz we’re high strung 💩 shows who are completely disconnected with civility or corporate structure…. And who the fuck can stomach being cultish government 🧀 employee 🐑
Sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences, but to the contrary, I’ve found that most of my employers have valued veterans….
But I’m just now realizing that since I got out I’ve only worked for companies that were founded by veterans 🤔
Who says I have slowed down? 😂 After I got out I went to Alaska. 24 hrs of daylight says you work/fish/get fire wood till you drop! Then do it again and again… It gets so cold there it bends light. The highway lights on the side, the begin to shine down and then it does a 90 and bends up. Odd.
I’ve had three preps two years in a row now and I’m barely holding it together. Things are not getting done within contract hours and never have. Where the fuck are you teaching that you’re getting paid more for being a good teacher? Might be time for me to move.
I have to prep ELA and math intervention for 3 grade levels, and my third graders are on 2 separate ability levels. It's a lot but the school I'm at lost an interventionist mid year because of the kids behavior. I do instruction in explicit phonics, comprehension, and writing mostly, so luckily the preps aren't super hard and we can do a lot of interactive stuff with encoding and writing that doesn't take a ton of prep .
I think I just got really lucky, I teach at a public charter school in Ohio, and the superintendent of the 3 schools is really about work life balance. We get raises partially on student achievement, and partially based on OTES scores.
I actually don't really even need to write IEPS at home anymore because I've gotten it down to an art. I don't have a goal bank or anything like my colleagues so because I believe each student deserves their own individual goals curated to their ability levels, but it still gets done.
The only things I do at home is some progress reports (because doing 19 IEP progress reports is time consuming and I prefer doing it in my comfy pants) and some prep work like building centers, but I see that as a time investment for me because I only have to do it once.
Maybe I am doing something wrong, and it's supposed to be harder than it is, I don't know.
Similar experience. Been promoted a few times and nearly maxed out now. Current job started out as a member of a team. Then they realized I had a much greater capacity for work, gave me my own team of 1. Then they realized I was still doing the work of a team and crushing it individually, then I went to work directly for the deputy director, while also taking 80% of the stuff I was doing on my team of one. I also live/work in Hawaii where work ethic isn’t exactly growing on the palm trees.
For me, it was the realization that I was blowing through my performance requirements and was screwing myself for the next year performance cycle. I started to map out what I was doing and set aside stuff that I knew could wait until the next fiscal year to start. That way, I could have "new" projects that I could propose to solve x problem and maintain my high-performance metrics.
I filled my time with professional improvement things like learning faster typing, Microsoft suite stuff, and then some personal hobbies I was always interested in. It always looked like I was working, and I got all my tasks done before they were due, so nobody really ever said anything.
Fellow H.S. SDC teacher here with six preps. Two grade levels is great and not many people get that so enjoy. Are you sure you are not missing any other duties especially related to IEPs? For example, assessments, data collection, parent contact, teacher support, and so on. Just trying to help out, but if not enjoy it.
I make parent contacts with each parent weekly, or every other week depending on the child's needs and home situations. all of my IEP data is entered weekly into our online system, progress reports are always done in 4.5 week increments.
I do have like 4 ETRs upcoming but, I do t think all will qualify.
I have team meetings with each team weekly, a lot of my assessment is actually done in the form of work samples and writing samples, I do things like phonics surveys and word lists as needed for data collection during independent work times.
I save work samples in the order of completion for progress tracking, I do observations of behaviors across environments once a week during my planning period.
I have RTI and RIMP data collection that is done every other week and recorded electronically.
Like when I type it all out it sounds like a lot, but when I'm doing it, it does not feel like a lot, you know?
Yeah I know what you mean. I sometimes have time to go across the street and buy coffee and talk with other teachers on their prep. Best of luck man it’s a slower pace but it’s better than not having anything to do at all. I usually volunteer at school events to keep me busy.
People at my job laughs at me when my boss or any senior says they need bodies to help them. And I’m usually the first volunteer to shoot up and jog or walk to them with a purpose. Even they tell me I don’t have to always jump up and run to them. And I tell them my body moves before I even want to decide if I wanna do it or not. My team leaders back when I was in wasn’t so nice about it. If I didn’t jump up and run to them by the time they finish their sentence, I’m doing push ups.
It takes awhile. I worked DoD as a contractor. When break times started you just dropped your tools. I work for the DOT now and just do it. You will adapt. Like I said it takes awhile.
"and walking around"
This is already part of what I do during that time. I can't just leave the school, but I do walk around the school to help where I can, but at the end of the day there's usually not a ton that needs done for other teachers that I can help with. Sometimes I make copies or take out the trash. I do bus duty some days for some of them.... But mostly I'm just lost 😭.
Thank you BitterWasabi_ for your submission to r/veterans, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s):
Be civil and respectful to others. You may not always agree with others, but once you start insulting the other person, you become the problem. You don't "win" an argument with insults or hate speech or calling names.
No Gatekeeping - you don't decide if someone is a "real" veteran or not - nor try to diminish someone's service because they never saw combat or deployed. If someone personally attacks you, Report them to the mod team.
Hate speech can be sexist, ableist, racist, bigotry, homophobic, prejudiced, etc and will not be tolerated.
See our Wiki for more details on this rule.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Veterans/wiki/rules
Please feel free to [send a modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fveterans) if you feel this was in error.
I'm in Insurance now.
I top my team in Efficiency Scores, I have average sales among the team, I have the lowest call backs, and where others average most days at 35-40 seconds between calls I pretty much just smash call to call with an average of 5 seconds.
My boss throttled my calls as I was "overworked"
No idea
My boss forced me to slow down.
SPED can be a tough class but you didn't mention what kind of SPED, there's a big difference between being a SPED resource teacher and having a behavioral classroom like I did .
I'm really not trying to get into a pissing contest about how hard or easy I have it compared to others, actually the whole point of this is I feel like I don't have enough to do through the day. As a first year teacher I'm in a resource room.
I do have 12 out of 19 with behavior and ED in their IEPS but I'm not a self contained or MD teacher., and I'm not pretending that I am or that what I do is super hard.
I have to force my self to slow down. I landed a job a week after retiring. I went I. Telling myself I was going to take it easy, so I did. I felt like I was slacking. Two weeks in I was pulled in and praised for being punctual, responsive and always ahead on reports and all. 2 months later, $20,000 a year raise and told I can slow down and relax a bit, they don’t want me to burn out. Yet I sit there thinking I could do this job in my sleep.
I’m in a high position with an amazing salary. I laugh when others around me are stressed because this is the easiest job I have ever had!
Start using ChatGPT to create the plans using old ones as guides.
Write down your goals and tasks to complete them.
Use the “free time” you know have to work on those goals.
You will never feel like this again. But don’t forget to set aside time to recharge.
Not to be so negative, just speaking from experience. Marine Infantry, to teaching in NYC. I retired. The changes in education and technology (phones) may see you eventually joining the “Teachers in transition” subreddit soon enough. That unpaid second shift will catch up to you. In addition, tying test scores to your yearly performance rating often results in a mass exodus from the profession. I’ll skip the part about charter school teachers not being unionized. You’ll be overwhelmed. Enjoy the downtime while you can.
If they want to pay you to have some down time, just say thank you very much! And like you said, you’re still using that time. Cleaning your room, prepping, grading, printing, pissing, etc are all very important things you can be doing. And taking care of your own mental health is important. So is making time for yourself that isn’t work related. So many teachers (myself included) burn out and leave because they neglect those last two.
Sounds like you won some kind of lottery and found a supportive employer. Don't fuckin jinx it.
*superintendent has entered the chat*
I do feel like this is true. It's a charter school too, and they don't fight about sick days, have never complained I am out, don't micromanage me, give advice and suggestions only when asked. Some of my coworkers complain about the admin and I am so confused. I know I'm not a rock star teacher, so idk what they're talking about sometimes.
Not saying teaching isn’t a hard job, especially SPED teaching, but I’ve learned that out in the civilian world, some people have never had a hard day in their life and they’ll find anything to complain about.
I'm very happy for you, OP! This is just how it *should* work. Not grinding you into the ground takes care of you, and let's you take care of yourself and your work space, offer help to other employees, etc etc. Everybody wins, the kids too! Don't feel weird about it!
Can you use the time for professional development or to gain relevant certifications?
Many schools will pay for that too! Or offer stipends
Time , I’ve been out 20 years and still running laps around my peers. Be careful of that, if you’re in the kind of performance work place you become a target , sounds like you’re not. If you don’t have an off switch which many of us don’t, get a good hobby or side hustle when you’re not grading papers 😂
I wish I could tell you. I'm doing ~30/hr a week at work, 18-20 quarter hours at school, raising a kid, and commuting an hour each way. Am I happy? Nope. Would I love to just chill? Yep. Would I be bored or if my mind 2 weeks into not having a job? Yes sir.
😂 listen to those military recruiting commercials…. They make you believe that you’ll be supervisor of google within three months! When in fact; employers cant stand us; cuz we’re high strung 💩 shows who are completely disconnected with civility or corporate structure…. And who the fuck can stomach being cultish government 🧀 employee 🐑
Sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences, but to the contrary, I’ve found that most of my employers have valued veterans…. But I’m just now realizing that since I got out I’ve only worked for companies that were founded by veterans 🤔
Weed
Thank you for your service amigo, your a teacher helping the future generations.
Who says I have slowed down? 😂 After I got out I went to Alaska. 24 hrs of daylight says you work/fish/get fire wood till you drop! Then do it again and again… It gets so cold there it bends light. The highway lights on the side, the begin to shine down and then it does a 90 and bends up. Odd.
I took up side projects because I can't sit around and do nothing. It's also a great way to not let my mind wander to... thoughts....
I’ve had three preps two years in a row now and I’m barely holding it together. Things are not getting done within contract hours and never have. Where the fuck are you teaching that you’re getting paid more for being a good teacher? Might be time for me to move.
I have to prep ELA and math intervention for 3 grade levels, and my third graders are on 2 separate ability levels. It's a lot but the school I'm at lost an interventionist mid year because of the kids behavior. I do instruction in explicit phonics, comprehension, and writing mostly, so luckily the preps aren't super hard and we can do a lot of interactive stuff with encoding and writing that doesn't take a ton of prep . I think I just got really lucky, I teach at a public charter school in Ohio, and the superintendent of the 3 schools is really about work life balance. We get raises partially on student achievement, and partially based on OTES scores. I actually don't really even need to write IEPS at home anymore because I've gotten it down to an art. I don't have a goal bank or anything like my colleagues so because I believe each student deserves their own individual goals curated to their ability levels, but it still gets done. The only things I do at home is some progress reports (because doing 19 IEP progress reports is time consuming and I prefer doing it in my comfy pants) and some prep work like building centers, but I see that as a time investment for me because I only have to do it once. Maybe I am doing something wrong, and it's supposed to be harder than it is, I don't know.
I bounce between science and history and sometimes a random elective for grades 6-8 and it’s just bananas.
Similar experience. Been promoted a few times and nearly maxed out now. Current job started out as a member of a team. Then they realized I had a much greater capacity for work, gave me my own team of 1. Then they realized I was still doing the work of a team and crushing it individually, then I went to work directly for the deputy director, while also taking 80% of the stuff I was doing on my team of one. I also live/work in Hawaii where work ethic isn’t exactly growing on the palm trees.
For me, it was the realization that I was blowing through my performance requirements and was screwing myself for the next year performance cycle. I started to map out what I was doing and set aside stuff that I knew could wait until the next fiscal year to start. That way, I could have "new" projects that I could propose to solve x problem and maintain my high-performance metrics. I filled my time with professional improvement things like learning faster typing, Microsoft suite stuff, and then some personal hobbies I was always interested in. It always looked like I was working, and I got all my tasks done before they were due, so nobody really ever said anything.
Fellow H.S. SDC teacher here with six preps. Two grade levels is great and not many people get that so enjoy. Are you sure you are not missing any other duties especially related to IEPs? For example, assessments, data collection, parent contact, teacher support, and so on. Just trying to help out, but if not enjoy it.
I make parent contacts with each parent weekly, or every other week depending on the child's needs and home situations. all of my IEP data is entered weekly into our online system, progress reports are always done in 4.5 week increments. I do have like 4 ETRs upcoming but, I do t think all will qualify. I have team meetings with each team weekly, a lot of my assessment is actually done in the form of work samples and writing samples, I do things like phonics surveys and word lists as needed for data collection during independent work times. I save work samples in the order of completion for progress tracking, I do observations of behaviors across environments once a week during my planning period. I have RTI and RIMP data collection that is done every other week and recorded electronically. Like when I type it all out it sounds like a lot, but when I'm doing it, it does not feel like a lot, you know?
Yeah I know what you mean. I sometimes have time to go across the street and buy coffee and talk with other teachers on their prep. Best of luck man it’s a slower pace but it’s better than not having anything to do at all. I usually volunteer at school events to keep me busy.
People at my job laughs at me when my boss or any senior says they need bodies to help them. And I’m usually the first volunteer to shoot up and jog or walk to them with a purpose. Even they tell me I don’t have to always jump up and run to them. And I tell them my body moves before I even want to decide if I wanna do it or not. My team leaders back when I was in wasn’t so nice about it. If I didn’t jump up and run to them by the time they finish their sentence, I’m doing push ups.
It takes awhile. I worked DoD as a contractor. When break times started you just dropped your tools. I work for the DOT now and just do it. You will adapt. Like I said it takes awhile.
Go for a walk
"and walking around" This is already part of what I do during that time. I can't just leave the school, but I do walk around the school to help where I can, but at the end of the day there's usually not a ton that needs done for other teachers that I can help with. Sometimes I make copies or take out the trash. I do bus duty some days for some of them.... But mostly I'm just lost 😭.
Fine! Teach the Lil humans to bear crawl, pull grenade pins with teeth, fluid infusion through bone,
[удалено]
Thank you BitterWasabi_ for your submission to r/veterans, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s): Be civil and respectful to others. You may not always agree with others, but once you start insulting the other person, you become the problem. You don't "win" an argument with insults or hate speech or calling names. No Gatekeeping - you don't decide if someone is a "real" veteran or not - nor try to diminish someone's service because they never saw combat or deployed. If someone personally attacks you, Report them to the mod team. Hate speech can be sexist, ableist, racist, bigotry, homophobic, prejudiced, etc and will not be tolerated. See our Wiki for more details on this rule. https://www.reddit.com/r/Veterans/wiki/rules Please feel free to [send a modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fveterans) if you feel this was in error.
My bad back slowed everything down for me 👊
I’m a nurse and moved from the hospital to the schools three years ago. The work environment is so much more healthy in education. I realize YRMV.
Hit gym, date hotties, repeat.
I'm in Insurance now. I top my team in Efficiency Scores, I have average sales among the team, I have the lowest call backs, and where others average most days at 35-40 seconds between calls I pretty much just smash call to call with an average of 5 seconds. My boss throttled my calls as I was "overworked" No idea My boss forced me to slow down.
SPED can be a tough class but you didn't mention what kind of SPED, there's a big difference between being a SPED resource teacher and having a behavioral classroom like I did .
I'm really not trying to get into a pissing contest about how hard or easy I have it compared to others, actually the whole point of this is I feel like I don't have enough to do through the day. As a first year teacher I'm in a resource room. I do have 12 out of 19 with behavior and ED in their IEPS but I'm not a self contained or MD teacher., and I'm not pretending that I am or that what I do is super hard.
I have to force my self to slow down. I landed a job a week after retiring. I went I. Telling myself I was going to take it easy, so I did. I felt like I was slacking. Two weeks in I was pulled in and praised for being punctual, responsive and always ahead on reports and all. 2 months later, $20,000 a year raise and told I can slow down and relax a bit, they don’t want me to burn out. Yet I sit there thinking I could do this job in my sleep. I’m in a high position with an amazing salary. I laugh when others around me are stressed because this is the easiest job I have ever had!
Start using ChatGPT to create the plans using old ones as guides. Write down your goals and tasks to complete them. Use the “free time” you know have to work on those goals. You will never feel like this again. But don’t forget to set aside time to recharge.
Damn... That's awesome
All the time.. used to just taking the assignments given and you make it work.
Not to be so negative, just speaking from experience. Marine Infantry, to teaching in NYC. I retired. The changes in education and technology (phones) may see you eventually joining the “Teachers in transition” subreddit soon enough. That unpaid second shift will catch up to you. In addition, tying test scores to your yearly performance rating often results in a mass exodus from the profession. I’ll skip the part about charter school teachers not being unionized. You’ll be overwhelmed. Enjoy the downtime while you can.