The perception that teachers have summers off is troubling. First of all, I have added up the extra hours I work each week to complete my tasks of lesson planning, homework correcting, report cards, parent communications etc. This extra unpaid time adds up to roughly 8 to 10 full weeks of work during any given year. On average I go into work an hour early and stay anywhere from half an hour to an hour after my contracted time to be there ends. That is 1.5 to 2 hours each day I am in my classroom forget the time I spend at home correcting and on the computer searching lesson plan ideas. That means I am working for free an additional 270-360 hours per year in my classroom. School has been open since September 2nd and so far this year I have logged in 22.5 hours of unpaid in the classroom time. Secondly, teachers do not have the Summer off, they are unpaid. The teacher summer is the equivalent of a long weekend when it comes right down to it. You are not paid for your Saturday or Sunday and you dont go into your job, well teachers are not paid for July and August and they dont go in to their jobs and yet they do a tremendous amount of professional development during their non-paid summer leave. If you want teachers to work during the summers you will have to pay them. If you want teachers to work during the summer then the students will have to attend school year round. Operating school buildings year round will cost millions more and that will cause taxes to rise. The additional salary monies will cause taxes to rise. Tourism in NJ is the 5th largest generator of income at over 40 BILLION DOLLARS, it creates over 500,000 jobs. Go ahead, open schools year round, pay the teachers, pay the costs of running schools 12 months, shut down a significant portion of the family generated travel tourism dollars and close the restaurants, businesses and amusement parks/boardwalks that rely on the business created by families able to travel during July and August. Or stop complaining about teachers having the summers off when all we really have off from is receiving a paycheck.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 20:10:39 +0000
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