A mini vent
I'm so tired today....all I want to do is lay on the couch and watch old Dawson's Creek reruns or something. Instead I have to read 140 soliloquies and make up a test for Friday. Sigh. All in all though, the third semester is off to a decent start. I dropped two kids from honors, so now I have 138 students (yippee!) and overall they're being very good. I had to cover for a class of terrors today though.
To save the district money our brain child of a union decided that teachers should act as unpaid subs and cover classes. Nice. So, for 45 minutes a day I get to police other classes where the kids have nothing to do and I have to decide whether to be good cop and let them do whatever the hell they want (easier for me unless or until things get ugly) or play bad cop and spend 45 minutes trying to get kids to sit in their seats and do work (when most of them have no work to do). It sucks. Today a group of kids was gambling (for money) in the back of the room. When I made them stop, two kids took off and the other students wouldn't give me their names.
Yesterday I had to call security because the kids wouldn't calm down (they were climbing on desks and throwing things). Friday a kid told me to f*ck off, two weeks ago a 20 year old sophomore just out of lockup threatened me, and the list goes on and on. And I don't even get paid for this. I hate our union. Hate them, hate them, hate them. And the worst part is, we're forced to join. If we don't pay union dues we have to pay the same amount into a "general fund" which does nothing (just like the union fund) but if you get sued or something, you're on your own. Lawsuits, as far as I can see, are about the only thing the unions do that's anything but destructive. Last month they managed to negotiate a "raise" that has me loosing $900 a year. Idiots.
To save the district money our brain child of a union decided that teachers should act as unpaid subs and cover classes. Nice. So, for 45 minutes a day I get to police other classes where the kids have nothing to do and I have to decide whether to be good cop and let them do whatever the hell they want (easier for me unless or until things get ugly) or play bad cop and spend 45 minutes trying to get kids to sit in their seats and do work (when most of them have no work to do). It sucks. Today a group of kids was gambling (for money) in the back of the room. When I made them stop, two kids took off and the other students wouldn't give me their names.
Yesterday I had to call security because the kids wouldn't calm down (they were climbing on desks and throwing things). Friday a kid told me to f*ck off, two weeks ago a 20 year old sophomore just out of lockup threatened me, and the list goes on and on. And I don't even get paid for this. I hate our union. Hate them, hate them, hate them. And the worst part is, we're forced to join. If we don't pay union dues we have to pay the same amount into a "general fund" which does nothing (just like the union fund) but if you get sued or something, you're on your own. Lawsuits, as far as I can see, are about the only thing the unions do that's anything but destructive. Last month they managed to negotiate a "raise" that has me loosing $900 a year. Idiots.