Category Archives: Teaching

If You Don’t Have Anything Good To Say… Find Something To Complain About

08.08.06

It’s early August, and with early August come the supposed dog days of summer, whatever that means. (I could tell you that the dog days of summer refer to the period of time around which Sirius, the dog star and the brightest star of the Canis Major (big dog) constellation, rises and falls with the sun. The dog days are 20 days before this lasting until 20 days after. This varies from place to place and over time, but it currently is accepted to be July 3rd to August 11th. I could tell you this, but I won’t. Because that would make me a nerd. Which unfortunately I am. Back to your regularly scheduled topic.) I like to think of it as a little bit of a lazy time of the year. I’ve been a student the majority of my life and being about 14 months into the full-time employment phase of my evolution, I’m starting to realize that those summer breaks and the return to school time weren’t such a bad thing.

One thing I might have subconsciously looked forward to about being married to a teacher was getting to experience summer break every year vicariously through her. I’d get to grumble about how people who have the summer off are lazy. I wouldn’t have to cook supper as often and we’d go do stuff outside and not have any chores because Rhiannon could keep the house a little cleaner during the day along with whatever else she wanted to do. These are the terms of getting to sleep in and go along with being a teacher.

I think Rhiannon teaching in a year-round school is affecting me more than her. She gets up about the same time I do and leaves the house shortly after me. I often beat her home at night and I’m still doing cooking and cleaning and occasionally helping with a little schoolwork now and then (or at least offering my opinion). (Or at least saying whatever it is she thinks is fantastic to avoid having to have an actual opinion.)

It’s early August. I’m okay with working year round. (Ask me again in 40 years.) The paychecks are nice and slightly required with the purchase of our house. I have had many years of knowing I would be working during the summer to mentally prepare for it. I had around 2 months to come to terms with Rhiannon teaching during the summer. I’m getting a little older and I don’t deal with change all that well.

I looked back at my recent writings and realized that they have been a little few and far between. I always expected that over summer, I could complain about how life isn’t fair that I have to work and Rhiannon doesn’t. And then I could wax poetic on how I should be used to it since my mom was a teacher and I chose the field I work in, etc. And now since that planned source of downtime has been taken away, it has taken me a little while to adjust. Maybe you noticed.

Luckily, I have figured out how to complain about the source of my complaints being taken away. I’m back.

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We All Slept A Little Better Last Night

06.09.06

As you may have gathered from my early morning post – Rhiannon is indeed employable once again for the foreseeable future.

We’ve heard all along that the first job or two can be tough to find for a new teacher – especially in the area that we moved to. It’s a growing school district, but that growth and the upper-middle class type suburbs also attract a lot of applicants.

Last summer passed without nary an interview until right before school started – Rhiannon was actually hired after the first day of school. When she started interviewing for jobs over a month ago, we felt pretty confident she would find something without two much trouble. After all, (and this is my own biased opinion – but supported by others) she is pretty good at what she does.

She sent off a huge pack of applications off to start and then a steady 2 to 4 more per week as new jobs came up. Slowly, calls came in to interview, so she started driving around after school, going from interview to interview. We even went to one on a Saturday morning.

Everyone she interview with said about the same thing. “You had a wonderful interview, you seem like a great teacher that we’d love to have on staff here, we’re going with someone with more experience.” Like an additional 5 to 15 years of experience.

I understand teaching is a little different than other jobs – you don’t necessarily start at the bottom and work your way up the corporate ladder of responsibility. In engineering, as an entry-level worker, I was not asked to interview against someone with 15 years of experience. If I could do their job, there is a problem with the system. In teaching, however, this is exactly what happens.

One principal told Rhiannon that out of over 150 applicants, they interviewed 8 people and she was the only one with less than 7 years of teaching.

Moral victories get old after a while.

And the job postings where starting to become less frequent each week. We hadn’t entered panic mode yet, but it was getting there. We have some plans for the rest of the summer that keep getting pushed back until we know for sure what our schedule was going to be. We have things we want to do in the house that we said, “We’ll wait and see about a job and then think about it.” We would have managed with Rhiannon subbing. There are certainly people in a worse situation than us.

Still, a little tension lifted from the atmosphere last night. When went out for a celebratory dinner and I think that was the most I have seen Rhiannon smile for about a month. She was relieved/happy/thinking about how she could enjoy the house and stop worrying about interviewing everywhere, and I was happy for her for all of those reasons.

Congrats Rhiannon. I knew you could do it. Finally someone else saw that too.

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Celebration #2

06.09.06

From the “I wanted to post this last night but the computer was being stupid” file:

2 bottles of Champagne down in three nights – all weeknights. We are, once again, officially party animals.

Congrats to Rhiannon and her new teaching position in Douglas County.

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Can you say unpaid overtime?

10.06.05

That’s in reference to teachers and the sometimes obscene amounts of time they put in outside of the normal workday. Granted, my sample group is only two people. I put more work into Rhiannon’s teaching job than I do my own sometimes. At least that’s what it feels like.

I will admit, she’s the over-acheiver everything-has-to-be-perfect personality and this is her first job, so she doesn’t have files and resources and lesson plans socked away for when things get busy.

I realize that teachers grade assignments outside of school. I’ve also heard people say that if teachers expect kids to do work outside of school as homework, then they should be willing to do the same. I’m also pretty confident some of these people site at their jobs and count the minutes until they can go home and not think about work until the next day. But there are some teachers who put in way more work than any student would dream about.

So why do teachers do it? The standard is answer is that you don’t go into teaching for the money. Honestly, that’s probably better in the long run. There are some jobs you can half-ass and get through just to make a buck. Teaching isn’t one of them. I don’t have kids, but if I did, you can be sure I wouldn’t want them to be with someone who doesn’t care every day of the week. Growing up I had teachers who were getting close to retirement and you could tell they were to the point of just putting in the time. They didn’t do anything new, didn’t learn anything themselves, and generally didn’t care; the sad part is that is was painfully obvious. On the other hand, I had some older teachers who were wonderful and used their years of experience and knowledge to reach as many students as they could. Those are the people who put in too much time in school and take too much home with them.

And those are the people who the U.S. needs in charge of our youth. Thank you to all the teachers who do the things I know I never could.

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