Teachers get so much slack for getting the summers off. Everyone always says how easy we have it... getting off work at 3:15, working 180 days out of the year, and getting paid during the summer. But that's total bullsh*t. We don't get paid during the summer. They just stretch our nine-month pay into twelve months. What's more, most teachers attend workshops during the summer on their own time, sometimes even forking over their own dough to be there.I just got back from my summer workshop. It started last Thursday night with a 3-hour, torturous viewing of one of my least favorite operas, the Magic Flute. It was done as a modern adaptation by the NY Metropolitan Opera. They probably spent millions, but it was crap. It felt like the medieval coffin torture and it didn't help that we had to watch it on one of those ancient, large screen TV (the size of a refrigerator) some douchebag invented (the quality also sucked making the viewing even more painful)... you know the one - the ones most meatheads used to salivate over so they could watch football with their buddies screaming bloody murder. (I wonder how the landfills are doing with those suckers now that we can't watch TV on them starting February of next year.)
This week, it was a painful 8 hour day deal (which I must admit I was a few hours late to on one or more occasions, but that's only because I've been to them before & they're very similar except for the Operas we study), just so my students can have a fabulous learning experience. If you were lucky enough to have teachers who did cool stuff with you, you have to realize, they spent many unpaid hours, days, and summers preparing for that sh*t. So don't give me this crap about teachers getting paid plenty for having the summers off!
My friend just emailed me who's spending her summer with her two boys at home for the first time because they are no longer on a year-around school schedule. She writes: I'm going nutso with my kids home 24/7 for the whole summer...I'm not sure I am going to survive!!! And these are her own children she's talking about. We have to deal with 25-34 kids, 7 hours a day for 180 days. What do you think will happen to us if we didn't get the summers off!?
So those of you always giving me crap about how little I work & how much I get paid...shut it. Plus, I'm tutoring a kid who struggled all year with her math without pay, just because... I would like to know how many of you work overtime without pay unless you have to, just because...
And so you know, I stayed up many nights without sleep and without pay so my kids could have this experience at the Rose Wagner Theater. (It's a small clip, but enjoy. Watch the parrot on the right.)
