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“I Didn’t Sign Up For This”
Those are the words of a public school teacher, explaining why she didn’t want to do the work she was getting paid for.
Wait, there was a sign-up sheet? I must have missed it. Of course, since I’m not a coward, I would have signed up anyway. Most of the other essential workers: paramedics, cops, truck drivers, grocery store clerks, and stockers would have, too. I’ve got admit that it is easy to be courageous when you’re facing a disease that, even in the plague-ridden state of Texas, has only killed 13/1000 of 1% of the population.
I also know who wouldn’t have signed up for this if they had a choice. The waitresses, bartenders, barbers, cooks, and dental assistants who have been furloughed. The business owners who have had their lives and livelihoods destroyed probably wouldn’t have either. I’ll bet the parents who have no one to watch their children so they can work wouldn’t have been too happy about putting their John Hancock on the dotted line.
Most of the kids would have enthusiastically signed. No school, yay! I’m sure none of them would take the time to read the fine print.*
I know who else would have signed for the current situation: Public school teachers. Why not? You get paid for staying home and playing on your computer and don’t have to be in the same room with all those annoying children. Of course, they are protesting against having to actually do the work they are paid for. Hey, the risk of dying from the Wuhan Virus is slightly higher than the chance of being killed during your commute! We can’t have that.
So what if it means the kids who depend on public schools are getting a slightly worse education? Remember “It’s for the children. . .” does not apply to people with strong unions. We knew that long before all of this. How much are they going to learn, anyway, from people who can’t even spell? Here, for instance,
. . .an “educator” misspelled the word ‘essential.’
*Side effects of Noschool® include depression, suicide, weight gain, decreased activity (especially sports and clubs), loss of your future, not seeing your friends, and having to hang out with your obnoxious siblings and awful parents for months at a time.
Published in Humor
When I heard the LA teacher’s unions say that it’s not safe to reopen and they only will do it if all charter schools are closed and the police defunded, I wanted the solution imposed by that school district in Rhode Island a few years back.
Fire every last one of them.
Perfect, Jose. The teachers are wimps. As you say, they ought to be doing the jobs they were paid to do. I like to think that I would have said, “Hell yes, let’s get the schools going again. Our students need us.”
For the most part, they aren’t getting a slightly worse education. They’re getting no education.
Now that I think about it, it may be a slightly worse education.
I suggest they are not simply lazy wimps- they are paid agitators doing their bit for their cause. I think it’s obvious.
They don’t want to teach? I am good with that as long as they do not get paid and I do not have to pay taxes to pay for services not rendered.
Mind, my wife and I did not rely on public education anyway. We home schooled ours. We got three engineers, who are all employed. Many friends and relations who relied on public schools to educate their kids have unemployed, unemployable adult children living at home.
It’s frustrating for someone who works in an “essential” job when I hear about teachers reluctant to open schools. I worked in the thick of panic-buyers packing stores, back when we were told mask wearing was not helpful by the way, and went to work without hesitation – grateful I had a job. And that was just a *Pet Store* so people could buy their daggon fancy feast, they could probably order online anyway. This is for the future & well being of our actual human children! If you’re a teacher and aren’t doing it “for helping kids”, why are you doing it?? But now we know whose interest is being catered to. It’s not the kids. Great post.
Someone should tell them that, locked in their homes, they are at risk from being killed by crashing airplanes or meteorites, SIDS, or other random causes of death also.
Sudden Idiot Death Syndrome?
Interesting how Europe, that great model beloved by the cognoscenti, and which reopened schools and camps without difficulty, goes unremarked by them.
The teachers I’ve spoken with say they much prefer the classroom to online “teaching,” which they say is difficult to do well and very time consuming. I also heard about large percentages of students who never showed up on Zoom, and about formerly good students who were getting failing grades. The one positive story I heard was from a teacher who ran into a missing student who had gotten a full time job at Wegman’s, where he will probably learn much of value.
While there are clearly many teachers, perhaps even a majority, who have simply succumbed to fear, this has all the marks of a union leadership milking an opportunity.
So, they’re afraid to risk their lives to do their job, but, oh wait – I’ll risk my life with no problem if you’ll give in on a few of my unrelated political issues?
Why would anyone want such people even talking to, let alone teaching, their children anything?
Fire them all, kick out the union, rehire anyone who wants a cushy job with summers off who will work in a non-union situation.
I guess they don’t want to be “pandemic heroes,” do they?
Give these teachers a break. They only get 4 months off a year.
This I have to disagree with. It’s not a cushy job with summers off. For the majority, quite a bit of the summer is spent preparing for the upcoming school year and taking professional development courses and workshops. There’s a lot more to the job than just being in the classroom.
Exactly so.
Sorry, I was married to a teacher for 12 years, dated another one for 8 more, and was a teacher myself for 4.
I did not say it was an easy job – it’s an impossible job. It is too ill-defined, and teachers are expected to perform the duties of a parent and counselor and social worker too often, while dealing with mind-numbingly stupid state and local requirements which are a dog’s-breakfast of self-contradictory nonsense.
But it is a ridiculously cushy job. Not only summers off, but also every federal holiday, and whole weeks off for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring break, and on and on. We used to lament March, because it was the only month without a holiday.
Yes you have to work to prepare your lessons during the summer. But guess what? The rest of us have to work to prepare our jobs too, but while still working all summer. And you only have to work as hard as you want to, because:
Oh, and it’s practically impossible to get fired, so there’s that.
I always tell teachers who complain about how hard teaching is to get a job in the private sector, instead, but that they are unlikely to find one that pays as well with as much time off.
And I had a full-time private sector job the whole time my wife and I were homeschooling our kids,
We have a new neighbor – a middle school science teacher, late 30s, divorcee’. She popped over Saturday to say “Hello” while we were outside, took a seat on the patio within 3 feet of us and when I inquired about the upcoming school year, she went on and on about how she isn’t risking her life and she will only go back into the classroom under threat of losing her job and she is looking for *anything* else. After that conversation played out, she told us that her Saturday night plans involved a send-off for a friend that was moving away and she was expecting it to be a rowdy time at the restaurant/bar. So….she invades space of people she barely knows and is perfectly ok with partying with a group of friends in a public place, but going to work in a classroom will kill her. Gotcha! Many teachers are being opportunists on this deal. Glad my kids are out of K-12.
This is a pretty good response:
Not surprising in the least. Teaching has become professional work-avoidance (summers off!). Look at the average public school teacher today. Goes to college for four years to learn how to teach fourth graders. Not a hint of private sector experience (most never held a high school job). Completely detached from reality and no market-based method of measuring their performance.
Yes, there are still some good teachers out there. But most of them just care about preserving their positions and avoiding private sector work at all costs. It’s no surprise that adult children say they “didn’t sign up for this.”
Will Rogers famously said “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” Teaching what ain’t so is now one of the main functions of the public schools.
“We’ll go back to work only if you close the charter schools and defund the police” would be a dead giveaway.
Sudden?(asking for a friend)
Basically, teachers, or the teachers unions, are saying “We don’t want to work, and we don’t want any charter school competition, and defund the police, but we still want to get paid”
Reduce their salary for online school only, and many teachers might decide that actually, teaching kids at an actual school is not life threatening after all.
Given that half of my punitive Property Tax goes to schools (which we don’t even use because we homeschool), I think I should just withhold that portion until schools reopen.
And I look forward to teachers unironically wondering how they became the bad guys again.*
*When teachers protested Scott Walker’s Act 10, leaving their schools to go protest at the state capitol, or in some cases even dragging their students along to protest with them, they just couldn’t figure out why so many parents turned on them. ‘How did we become the bad guys?!’
Some teachers aren’t very bright, are they?
That is why those teachers became teachers. It is a useful career for credentialed incompetents.
LAUSD is looking very non essential