I work with kids in Northern Europe and I don’t even know how to relate to this.
My pay is shitty (I’m not an actual teacher) and I never made it a secret that I’m not paying for anything myself. I buy, collect receipts, and get the money back from my employer with my paycheck. And I collect all the receipts. This has never been a problem, but some coworkers seem to feel morally superior because they buy it from their own money and just wave it off, kinda. I find that baffling. It has nothing to do with having actual dedication to your job.
The situation is very different from yours I guess.
They will guilt you if you don’t spend your own money. Teaching in the US is a huge guilt trip.
My district had a huge chronic absenteeism problem - children just vanished. My class sizes were bigger than I had room to fit (like 33 enrolled in a chemistry lab room with 6 of those tall lab tables that are meant for 4). The only way they all fit was that I’d be guaranteed to be missing about a fifth of my students on any given day.
The districts solution to the absenteeism problem was to guilt trip teachers - that if only you smiled at the kids more, if only you would greet them at the door, then the fact that the buses aren’t running and their dad went to jail last night wouldn’t keep them from attending school!
Well at least they didn’t send you out to look for the kids!
While materially things are better at my school, the emotional aspect of it sounds familiar. Nevertheless, your bosses do the guilt tripping? I would think it’s typically the parents, sometimes better-than-thou coworkers.
I’m beginning to think that working at a school, the days you go home with a knot in your stomach and a lump in your throat will always outweigh those when you feel things went well and you’re appreciated.
I used to work in a kindergarten before that and never realized how much I appreciated the smaller and tighter, more exclusive environment. I know how to deal with kids that age. We spend the whole day together. They might be mean, too, but never as mean as a school kid can be, and I just know my way around their emotions, usually.
In school, they are under so many people’s responsibility during one day, no wonder they start rebelling.
No wonder schools are such a horror trip to go through. This whole zhread adds some context to what the headmaster of the school I attended was raging about back then. He was probably the nicest guy you can think of and desperately tried to procure more funding. In the end it was at least enough for one full-time job for some kind of social worker/children’s psychologist (assumably badly paid), but once you could hear him scream probably all throughout the school, assumably during some talk with state officials. He really tried.
Didn’t change shit though. During my time a seventh grader was expelled after selling cocaine (confirmed by police) and all teachers were too overworked to care about the daily violence. One kid apparently tried to off himself. It was a bigger school sharing facilities with a primary school as well, so obviously the youngest regular smoker was in second grade. It was a complete nightmare. The only reason there wasn’t at least one shooting was because this took place in Germany, not the US. Of course teachers weren’t exactly supported either; it increasingly became more common to just fire them just before summer holidays, to then get them back 6 weeks later.
Stopped being angry at (most of) the teachers from back then years ago. Though it took me well over a decade of therapy to finally be able to sleep without nightmares of having to go to school again. I pity everyone who has to suffer in these torture facilities.
I have to admit I agree with everything you wrote. This was my school time as well.
The one I work at now is much smaller (120 kids max) and has a relatively high educator-to-kid ratio (more than 1 to 10, but not all work full time), but there’s something inherently counterproductive in the system itself: the division into classes by age, the idea that older is better, but then mixing all these kids up again. Not all kids are bound to do stupid shit, but most kids are bound to look up to those slightly older ones, and most of those take advantage of that… and that’s all before puberty hits. Take that into the mix - 💣
I work with kids in Northern Europe and I don’t even know how to relate to this.
My pay is shitty (I’m not an actual teacher) and I never made it a secret that I’m not paying for anything myself. I buy, collect receipts, and get the money back from my employer with my paycheck. And I collect all the receipts. This has never been a problem, but some coworkers seem to feel morally superior because they buy it from their own money and just wave it off, kinda. I find that baffling. It has nothing to do with having actual dedication to your job.
The situation is very different from yours I guess.
They will guilt you if you don’t spend your own money. Teaching in the US is a huge guilt trip.
My district had a huge chronic absenteeism problem - children just vanished. My class sizes were bigger than I had room to fit (like 33 enrolled in a chemistry lab room with 6 of those tall lab tables that are meant for 4). The only way they all fit was that I’d be guaranteed to be missing about a fifth of my students on any given day.
The districts solution to the absenteeism problem was to guilt trip teachers - that if only you smiled at the kids more, if only you would greet them at the door, then the fact that the buses aren’t running and their dad went to jail last night wouldn’t keep them from attending school!
Well at least they didn’t send you out to look for the kids!
While materially things are better at my school, the emotional aspect of it sounds familiar. Nevertheless, your bosses do the guilt tripping? I would think it’s typically the parents, sometimes better-than-thou coworkers.
I’m beginning to think that working at a school, the days you go home with a knot in your stomach and a lump in your throat will always outweigh those when you feel things went well and you’re appreciated.
I used to work in a kindergarten before that and never realized how much I appreciated the smaller and tighter, more exclusive environment. I know how to deal with kids that age. We spend the whole day together. They might be mean, too, but never as mean as a school kid can be, and I just know my way around their emotions, usually.
In school, they are under so many people’s responsibility during one day, no wonder they start rebelling.
No wonder schools are such a horror trip to go through. This whole zhread adds some context to what the headmaster of the school I attended was raging about back then. He was probably the nicest guy you can think of and desperately tried to procure more funding. In the end it was at least enough for one full-time job for some kind of social worker/children’s psychologist (assumably badly paid), but once you could hear him scream probably all throughout the school, assumably during some talk with state officials. He really tried.
Didn’t change shit though. During my time a seventh grader was expelled after selling cocaine (confirmed by police) and all teachers were too overworked to care about the daily violence. One kid apparently tried to off himself. It was a bigger school sharing facilities with a primary school as well, so obviously the youngest regular smoker was in second grade. It was a complete nightmare. The only reason there wasn’t at least one shooting was because this took place in Germany, not the US. Of course teachers weren’t exactly supported either; it increasingly became more common to just fire them just before summer holidays, to then get them back 6 weeks later.
Stopped being angry at (most of) the teachers from back then years ago. Though it took me well over a decade of therapy to finally be able to sleep without nightmares of having to go to school again. I pity everyone who has to suffer in these torture facilities.
I have to admit I agree with everything you wrote. This was my school time as well.
The one I work at now is much smaller (120 kids max) and has a relatively high educator-to-kid ratio (more than 1 to 10, but not all work full time), but there’s something inherently counterproductive in the system itself: the division into classes by age, the idea that older is better, but then mixing all these kids up again. Not all kids are bound to do stupid shit, but most kids are bound to look up to those slightly older ones, and most of those take advantage of that… and that’s all before puberty hits. Take that into the mix - 💣