The necessity of selective memory

As I attempt to recuperate from a three-day week that seems like a school year in itself, I am reminded of the challenges that teachers face every day. I survived this week on the smiles of my former students and the laughs and thank yous from my new ones; but the work takes its toll almost immediately.

Having taken on the challenge of teaching two new courses this year, I expected that I would have to work much more than the contracted workweek. Now, this, of course, is nothing new for teachers--and English teachers especially--but having taught the same courses for three years, I had reached a level of competence and confidence that allowed me to limit the work I took home. This past spring semester I also eliminated homework (more on that later).

We are not paid an extra day to close our classrooms at the end of the school year. The list of responsibilities is long: clean boards, clean desks, inventory, take down posters/student work, etc. Bear in mind, of course, we are grading final exams, collecting, storing, and inventorying textbooks, calculating and inputting grades. Oh, and lest I forget, completing and submitting IEP forms for the upcoming year.

When the school year begins again, we are contracted two days before the students return. Within this time, a teacher must attend district, school wide, and faculty meetings, set up the classroom, unpack and label new texts, prepare lessons for the upcoming week, and provision for the first days of classes (photocopying handouts, preparing for group activities, etc). In addition to these tasks that all teachers must perform, I had the added responsibility of planning an entire year’s curriculum for not one, but two new classes. Now I could have spent my summer vacation developing these units, unpaid of course, but I was reading or rereading the myriad texts for my junior American Literature course. So when does this planning take place? Clearly not in the two days before classes begin. And not on day 1 of the eight day cycle when I teach all five of my classes and have only one 59 minute period and one 22 minute lunch break free for provisioning, visiting the toilet, checking email, speaking with and assisting students, reading high school and department emails, speaking with new and old students, and if I have time, eating (lunch brought from home, of course, because the teacher’s cafeteria has been closed since last spring, though even if it were open, the predominantly beige food angers more than it nourishes--but more on that later). Keep in mind that I am performing all these tasks in the sweltering heat of my cramped and muggy classroom.

I might have an opportunity to work on the curricula the following day, when I have only three classes scheduled, but because of contractual obligations, I am assigned duties that pull me away from my classroom to monitor the cafeteria. Other periods I am luckier because I am assigned a study hall that allows me to remain inside my classroom. I can get quite a bit of work accomplished during this time because I have maintained a strict level of decorum in my study halls. For this reason, students who do not want to study, choose to go to another teacher’s class or the library where they can socialize, talk on cell phones, chew gum, etc. However, study halls can become labor intensive when students skip class. Then, I am required, despite the expensive new attendance/gradebook software, to check two email lists for students who have signed into the library or METCO office and the myriad passes I receive from students who have chosen to switch into another teacher’s study, before taking attendance and completing yellow forms documenting a student’s absence. Three days later a majority of these tedious slips are returned with the passes students failed to bring me on the day of the study or a note saying that the student is no longer assigned to my study but guidance had never removed the name from my roster. So I fume about the inefficiency of the system and the clear lack of respect for my time.