Jan 23 2009
Hug a Teacher
If you have read my “About Me” page, you know that I am a former special education teacher. I would like to give a sort of behind the scenes look of what my typical day in teaching looked like.
7:15 a.m. Arrive at school and start preparations for the day, making copies and gathering materials needed, checking emails, working on IEPs or data collection percentages for IEP goals
7:30 a.m. Once a week attended an Early Childhood Special Education team meeting in which we discussed any issues, child referrals to special education, and testing results
8:00 a.m. Morning session begins
11:00 a.m. Morning session ends and I get about 15 minutes to have a quick lunch. I return phone calls and check emails again, I usually have to track down the principal to discuss some sort of problem with a child or parent only to be given the cold shoulder because most building administrators really want nothing to do with special education and think that it is someone else’s problem, and then I begin preparations for the next session.
12:00 p.m. Afternoon session begins - that’s right I got an hour for lunch and my plan time and sometimes not even an hour because at least once a week there would be a late pickup of a child
3:00 p.m. Afternoon session ends, but once again there are usually late parents, I return phone calls, check emails, and finish up any other business
3:30 p.m. This is the time that most IEP meetings are held, they last at least an hour but often longer
Now when you look at this schedule it may not look just too bad, but think about this, a teacher’s salary is contracted based on an 8 hour day. I did not get any extra pay the time spent at school before or after. What other job or company would expect it’s workers to dedicate so much of their personal time and not receive any compensation for it?
So, the next time you ask to meet with your child’s teacher please remember this and make it worth her time. I don’t think I could even tell you about all of the ridiculous things parents have “needed” to meet with me about, but just for fun here are a few. One parent requested a meeting to talk about the stale pretzels we had for snack one day. Well, when snacks are bought with my own money I plan to get every last usage out of them - they donated some snacks after that meeting! Another parent wanted to meet with me about why I wasn’t teaching some foreign language words in my class - seriously, I’m supposed to teach children with English speaking speech delays another language. This parent wouldn’t let up with this either, her child had one of the most serious speech delays I’ve ever encountered and yet she wanted him to speak another language, let’s just concentrate on being able to understand him in English please. Finally, one of my favorites, a parent actually wasted my time by leaving me an urgent message to call her back. You will never believe what she said about her 4 year old daughter. She asked if she was crabby at school and to quote, “because she was a real B_T_H (you can fill in the blanks) to me this morning.” What do you say to that? Unbelievable, and what did I get out of having to put up with this - nothing!
