Schools' Unpaid Labor Pains

So this week, I was the asshat.

A local school district shared a digital poster advertising some job openings. I shared it with a glib comment on Facebook, and then other folks piled on. And then the person who made it joined in, and she was hurt. The poster was something she had put together over the weekend, on her own time. And she is someone who has been a professional colleague of my wife. So I know that she's a dedicated educator. So, yeah. I had forgotten Rule $1. 

I had also forgotten the rule about being clear, because I never meant to shame her. I meant to shame her district, because while I didn't know who exactly had created the poster, I was pretty sure I knew that it was a person who was not specifically hired to do that work, nor given the time, support or pay to do it. And I was correct. 

But isn't that the dynamic in education way too often. Some educator takes on a task they feel needs to be done. Administration provides no time to do the work, no serious compensation for the work, no support or resources for that work, and then somehow, when the results are less than perfect, everyone including the person who was trying to do the job, assumes that any critiques of the result should be and are directed at the person who did the work rather than the district that sent them out to try to get it done. The district tapes a pair of paper wings onto an educator's back, shoves her off the top of the building, and then folks gather around to critique her crumpled form. Or--almost worse--give her an award and a heartwarming news profile focusing on her heroic work flapping those paper wings. But nobody asks the district, "Why the hell were you making her try to fly off the building with paper wings??!!"

You can see it in every single discussion of every single school-related issue. 

We have umpty-zillion studies and anecdotes to tell us that time needed for administrative stuff is a big issue for teachers, a major stresser in the work. We dither and discuss as if the solution is some mystery. Restructure the profession? Or maybe magical AI assistants! But the obvious solution is to provide teachers with the amount of time required to do the amount of work they're given. 

EdWeek's 2022 survey found that the median number of hours per week worked by teachers was 54 ish. There isn't a school in the country that wouldn't grind to a halt if teachers worked to the contract-- in other words, only worked the hours for which they're actually paid.

And there's the other extra unofficial duties that teachers take on. Every building has lead teachers, whether they are titled and paid or not. There are the people in the building who coordinate things like cards for birthdays and getting well and condolences. There are the people who are the unofficial It helpers. For years I was The Guy Who Runs Graduation Rehearsal and Ceremony, and I had the job because I inherited it from the last person who had it. It wasn't official or compensated, but there I was because somebody had to do it, and I didn't mind because I loved my school and the traditions connected to it. 

And that's all on top of the extra classroom work itself. Special Ed teachers and their mountains of paperwork. English teachers up till late because they have a stack of papers to grade. The most fundamental hard part of teaching is that you do not have enough paid time to get the job done; to do the job even sort of the way you know it needs to be done, you will have to volunteer hours.

Schools function on all those volunteered hours. It keeps things cheap, and administrators like it because it takes one more flaming possum off their desk. But if you are one of the people providing this unpaid labor, you really need to be motivated by your love for the school because otherwise you'll start to wonder about how unimportant this job must be if nobody is providing resources or support to get it done.

The digital era has provided more new examples. Your district should have an active and professional online and social media presence-- and the district should be both paying someone and also proving that person with hours in which to do the job. Some staff member shouldn't be left to do it for free during lunchtime or on weekend afternoons. (Odds are that the charters, cyber charters, and voucher-accepting schools you're competing with have hired someone to do the job.)

What I should have posted was something like "Well, this is a good try, but why hasn't the district hired someone to handle this kind of work?" We should be yea-anding these discussions. "Yes, Mrs. McTeachlady did a fine job on that project, and what is the district going to do to provide her with resources, time, and support to do it next time?" God bless the people who try, and shame on the people who let them struggle on their own .

The answer to all of this will always be A) money and B) convenience. "We could do this the right way, but it would be hard, and cost money!" Meanwhile, in the background, we have the usual chorus of folks saying, "Well we spend more and more on education, and yet test scores don't go up, so we should spend no more." I have a response for all these people, but I have already broken Rule #1 once this week, so it will have to wait.