Happy Labor Day! If you’ve had a three day weekend, thank union members!!
And, yes, regardless of what some other articles and memes state, unions did lay the groundwork for the 8-hour a day, five day per week work week.
But now it’s 8:00 on Monday, and I do need to do some lesson planning. Because I was unable to fit it into my normal work day last week, if that was unclear.
Certainly I procrastinated, knowing that I needed to do this work. I could have done it Saturday or Sunday.
The reality is I shouldn’t have to. Nor should the other teachers putting all of those extra hours in.
I’m getting better at working more efficiently at work. And we are getting larger chunks of uninterrupted planning time, so I hope I’ll be able to get ahead soon so I’m not planning nearly day-to-day.
I feel guilty working from home. I feel like I’m not fully supporting my union, which ultimately undermines efforts to make sure we get enough planning time. If all teachers worked the contract, it would become very obvious how much time we gift to our various districts. Technically we are salaried employees, but our contracts state that salary is for working a certain number of hours a week for a certain number of days.
The job should be doable within that timeframe.
Considering I know very, very few teachers that solely work within their contracted hours, that doesn’t seem to be true.
I hope unions and the workers’ movement in general continue to gain momentum to make up for the loss of workers’ rights for the past decades. We deserve living wages. We deserve good health insurance. We deserve time off to sustain and maintain our mental health.
Everyone does.
Everyone in this country.
I hope more will join the fight to pull those on the bottom up and force the people on the top to properly pay those who have put them there.
Until then, I guess I’ll get back to lesson planning.