SF teachers can work four-hour days, receive full-time pay during coronavirus closures

SF Chronicle ^ | 4/16/20 | Jill Tucker

[Libloather]

San Francisco teachers will be paid for full-time work but only be required to work four hours a day during the coronavirus closures, according to a labor agreement approved this week.

The part-time work schedule was also adopted by other districts across the state, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland, although many others continue to require teachers to work a full day, which is typically up to 7.5 hours.

[nevermorelenore]

What, no teacher strikes at State Capitols this year ???!!!!

Mr. President, it’s time to abolish the Department of Indoctrination !!!!

[colorado tanker]

Remember the Union party line, they do all this “for the children.” Right.

[samadams2000]

In the end there will be cockroaches, politicians, teachers and civil “servants”.

[SkyDancer]

Oh yeah? Well if money doesn’t grow on trees how come banks have branches? Answer that.

[Baldwin]

Yeah. We are all in this together.

[A_perfect_lady]

Well, I'm a high school teacher in Los Angeles and I can tell you exactly what it's like for me.

I have six classes, all 9th and 10th grade English. I have to make sure they have at least one graded assignment a week (but 2 is better.) For the Honors classes, we are working on a novel (one for the 9th graders, one for the 10th.) They are classic novels, British, one from the 18th C and one from the 19th C. They are online, but they are too dense for the kids to read straight, and require a lot of knowledge of the culture that they don't naturally have. I had been teaching them about it as we went, but now that we are all at home, it's much more difficult.

So I am copying portions of the text from online (Gutenberg.org) and creating questions to go with them. I upload them on our school's website and the kids upload their responses in due time.

Most mornings I get up and open my email to find 30-50 emails from students with their assignments. I spend about 3 hours checking them, and entering the grades. Today I spent 4 hours just making the next assignment. So much of what I used to be able to explain, or show in a portion of the movie, I know have to find other ways to get across.

My non-Honors kids are not participating very much, so I upload articles (often conservative ones) with questions to answer. I also have an online reading program that they are supposed to log into and take quizzes on. It's just for practice reading, as most of them hover around the 5th grade level.

So I'd say I spend about 15 hours a week creating assignments for Honors, 5 for non-Honors, and 12-15 grading papers. Once a week we have a faculty meeting on Zoom. I put wine in a coffee cup to get through it.

It's definitely easier than teaching in person. No commute, no power struggles over their smart phones, no "Miss can I go to the bathroom?" It's definitely easier.

More of them are failing, but the district has told us we can't fail them, so really, it all feels like a big fat joke. I'm glad to still be getting my paycheck, but I am 95% determined to retire in June. Frankly, being away from the kids has really made me realize what I already knew but had kind of forgotten: I don't like being around large groups of kids for hours every day. I like 17th-18th century British novels.

[Greenpees]

Thank you for sharing that. Our teachers were planning another Red for Ed strike before all this came down. That was just after enjoying a 20% raise over the past three years. I was beginning to hate them.

If they’re doing what you’re doing, I’ll give them a pass. I just wish they’d stop being commies.

[A_perfect_lady]

Some of them wise up over the years. They come in all churned up from their university brainwashing about how poor and downtrodden are the brown and black babies of evil America. After dealing with the little darlings for a few years, a lot of them notice that they don't seem downtrodden at all. They seem spoiled, lazy, and rude. (Not all of them, of course, but enough to leave a mark.)

Amusingly, some are slow to catch on to the results of their own brainwashing. I've seen new teachers eagerly convince their English classes that working hard for a reward is all a capitalist lie. By the third marking period, class average has dipped two grade levels. Why? Because working hard for a reward is all a capitalist lie. LOL... That used to drive me wild with frustration. Now I just see it as part of the learning process for young teachers.

[dangus]

I wonder how they count hours working; teaching isn’t a punch-in, punch-out job. My wife has a reduced courseload, but between her status reports, adapting to new technology, chasing down the parents of all the students who don’t appear online, etc., she’s been putting in massively long days.