Teaching is no seven-hour, punch in, punch out job

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the editor:

Several articles and newscasts have mentioned that all “volunteer” time for teachers will cease during this “work to rule” for Woonsocket teachers.

For those that are not teachers, here’s what that means: We will only perform teacher duties during the contracted work time. For my school, that means 7:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. Just like any other hourly job, we will arrive on time and leave when we clock out at 2:15. We usually get a prep time during our work day. That allows us to prepare our lessons for the next day. There is no way that we can just walk into work like a lot of other jobs and start working. Our job requires us to prepare ahead of time and none of that is provided by anyone but us. When we can’t get that accomplished during that time, we use our own time after school and on weekends.

What prevents us from getting that done during our prep? For me, that is writing IEPs, scheduling IEP meetings, writing Career Development Plans, writing progress reports, grading, helping students catch up, helping students calm down, calling parents to talk about their child’s progress, evaluating assessments to adjust teaching methods, meeting with support staff such as counselors and Speech/Language therapists and Occupational and Physical therapists, helping a student get to the nurse (or traveling with a student in an ambulance to the hospital), answering or generating emails to parents or local agencies or other teachers or administrators. I could go on and on. And I’m sure that other teachers have even more interruptions.

What we are trying to say is that teaching is far more than a 7:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. job.

We will see, every day, what we will not be able to accomplish during this “work to rule.” And it will drive us crazy. Because we care. We want our students to succeed. We are professionals.