Back to School Blues
It's that time of the year: the end of the summer, and thus time to start getting back to school. This year, more than any other year in recent memory, I hate that this time of the year has arrived. I've had a pleasant, restful summer. I did not hold a full-time or part-time job, but I most certainly did not sit around doing nothing, either. I had a number of household tasks that I tackled and completed, most notably creating a family recipe book complete with pictures for ease in storing our favorite recipes, reorganizing the items in the kitchen to better utilize space, and going through all of my old teaching supplies that were sitting around in boxes in the garage and getting rid of what I would no longer use. I also experimented a bit with my breadmaker, making various delicious types of bread, and I took care of all the laundry and cleaning during the week so that my husband and I could spend more time with each other over the weekend when he was off from work. I am sad that since school is starting soon, my schedule will once again be very busy and I will have little free time.
This Monday I went to school to start setting up and getting things ready for the upcoming school year. I expected to go to school three to four days this week to get the computer lab completely set up and at least begin a bit of my planning for the first week of school. In May, I was informed that our building PTO had voted to install counters along the walls to streamline the lab a bit by allowing the removal of the old, rickety tables that the computers currently rest on, and to ease in summer storage, and I was told that this would probably take place over the summer to be ready for the fall. However, at this point, the counters have still not been installed, and there is no definite date that this will be done. It may be done as early as this Thursday and Friday, or as late as during the first week of school. The workers talked with me and informed me that they had to order steel brackets to hold up the counters and that they were waiting on this shipment, which is supposed to take seven to ten days. Perhaps they could have taken care of this earlier during the three months that we had off from school instead of cutting it so close to the first day of school. Because of this mess with the counters, I was only able to set up four computers on the side of the room that will not have any counters installed, and still have 17 more to set up whenever this task is completed, since I will not waste my time setting them up on the tables only to have to take them down once the counters are completed. So the three to four days I had hoped to spend at school were cut down to two, in which I took care of whatever setup I could in the lab.
My salary has been my main complaint about my job since I started in 2004. In a nutshell, the problem is this: I am doing full-time teacher work while receiving aide pay, and in reality am not aiding anyone as I am the sole computer teacher. There have been movements every spring by the district technology director to push this position to a full-time teaching position with the appropriate pay, but there is always an excuse as to why this cannot be done. Last year instead of sitting quietly and letting the director do all the work, I actively participated in this movement by allying myself with a teacher on the salary committee, and speaking with my principal and other teachers in the district that hold this position. I landed in a bit of hot water with the district superintendent, who seemed to think that I was rallying the other computer aides together for nefarious purposes (I wasn't; I was merely contacting them to see where they stood on the issue and to discover whether or not I was the only one who wanted this change). His position on the issue is that if I wanted full-time pay, I should have accepted the fourth grade position that was offered to me last August instead of keeping a job that I truly love that should have full-time pay based on the work and hours I am putting in. So, naturally, he did not bump up my position to receive full-time pay for this school year, citing that there wasn't enough money in the budget, and what started as a small problem has expanded into a bitterness about my job that infects every day that I go to work, and a tremendous dislike of my superintendent.
On Monday, I discovered brand new flatscreen monitors in the lab for all of the student computers. It was very nice of the district to do this, I have no doubt that the students will love them, and they will allow the computers to take up much less space on the tables and counters. However, the standard monitors that they are replacing are two years old, and there have been absolutely no problems with these monitors. It's like the district is trying to keep up the appearance of being on the cutting edge of technology by purchasing these flatscreen monitors, yet behind the scenes these nagging problems with the elementary computer teacher/aide salary are still there and unresolved. Also: not enough money in the budget, MY ASS. The new monitors are a cheapie brand, but twenty-one of them cost the district roughly $3000, which is no chump change.
These incidents do not give me much confidence about the upcoming school year.
This Monday I went to school to start setting up and getting things ready for the upcoming school year. I expected to go to school three to four days this week to get the computer lab completely set up and at least begin a bit of my planning for the first week of school. In May, I was informed that our building PTO had voted to install counters along the walls to streamline the lab a bit by allowing the removal of the old, rickety tables that the computers currently rest on, and to ease in summer storage, and I was told that this would probably take place over the summer to be ready for the fall. However, at this point, the counters have still not been installed, and there is no definite date that this will be done. It may be done as early as this Thursday and Friday, or as late as during the first week of school. The workers talked with me and informed me that they had to order steel brackets to hold up the counters and that they were waiting on this shipment, which is supposed to take seven to ten days. Perhaps they could have taken care of this earlier during the three months that we had off from school instead of cutting it so close to the first day of school. Because of this mess with the counters, I was only able to set up four computers on the side of the room that will not have any counters installed, and still have 17 more to set up whenever this task is completed, since I will not waste my time setting them up on the tables only to have to take them down once the counters are completed. So the three to four days I had hoped to spend at school were cut down to two, in which I took care of whatever setup I could in the lab.
My salary has been my main complaint about my job since I started in 2004. In a nutshell, the problem is this: I am doing full-time teacher work while receiving aide pay, and in reality am not aiding anyone as I am the sole computer teacher. There have been movements every spring by the district technology director to push this position to a full-time teaching position with the appropriate pay, but there is always an excuse as to why this cannot be done. Last year instead of sitting quietly and letting the director do all the work, I actively participated in this movement by allying myself with a teacher on the salary committee, and speaking with my principal and other teachers in the district that hold this position. I landed in a bit of hot water with the district superintendent, who seemed to think that I was rallying the other computer aides together for nefarious purposes (I wasn't; I was merely contacting them to see where they stood on the issue and to discover whether or not I was the only one who wanted this change). His position on the issue is that if I wanted full-time pay, I should have accepted the fourth grade position that was offered to me last August instead of keeping a job that I truly love that should have full-time pay based on the work and hours I am putting in. So, naturally, he did not bump up my position to receive full-time pay for this school year, citing that there wasn't enough money in the budget, and what started as a small problem has expanded into a bitterness about my job that infects every day that I go to work, and a tremendous dislike of my superintendent.
On Monday, I discovered brand new flatscreen monitors in the lab for all of the student computers. It was very nice of the district to do this, I have no doubt that the students will love them, and they will allow the computers to take up much less space on the tables and counters. However, the standard monitors that they are replacing are two years old, and there have been absolutely no problems with these monitors. It's like the district is trying to keep up the appearance of being on the cutting edge of technology by purchasing these flatscreen monitors, yet behind the scenes these nagging problems with the elementary computer teacher/aide salary are still there and unresolved. Also: not enough money in the budget, MY ASS. The new monitors are a cheapie brand, but twenty-one of them cost the district roughly $3000, which is no chump change.
These incidents do not give me much confidence about the upcoming school year.
posted by jcpdiesel21 @ 3:59 PM
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