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Things I do not miss!
- Thread starter Munchkins
- Start date
jks
Senior Member
Don't miss report cards and writing all those comments every few weeks. Really liked it when we went to computers, but still had to include personal comments. And then you had to print them all out!
I agree with all of the above... especially not waking up in the middle of the night worrying!
I agree with all of the above... especially not waking up in the middle of the night worrying!
I’d also say all of the above. A couple more:
Constantly-changing pet projects. One that comes to mind was from the late 1980s. The district spent a fortune on a project that involved every teacher receiving a thick binder. Our principal talked about this project endlessly, and we had to attend workshops. About a year later, it was abandoned and the thick binders were forgotten.
The next one I’m going to call the two-headed monster. It might not be common in small school districts, but we saw it all the time in my large district. In this scenario, there’s an administrator, usually someone above a building principal, who issues a directive. There will then be another administrator who issues a directive that contradicts the first one. The nonsense from competing directives once wasted several hours of my time, but that’s a long story for another time. Just before retiring, our superintendent and his top assistant superintendent were frequently not on the same page. Not surprising that both were looking for new jobs a couple years later.
Constantly-changing pet projects. One that comes to mind was from the late 1980s. The district spent a fortune on a project that involved every teacher receiving a thick binder. Our principal talked about this project endlessly, and we had to attend workshops. About a year later, it was abandoned and the thick binders were forgotten.
The next one I’m going to call the two-headed monster. It might not be common in small school districts, but we saw it all the time in my large district. In this scenario, there’s an administrator, usually someone above a building principal, who issues a directive. There will then be another administrator who issues a directive that contradicts the first one. The nonsense from competing directives once wasted several hours of my time, but that’s a long story for another time. Just before retiring, our superintendent and his top assistant superintendent were frequently not on the same page. Not surprising that both were looking for new jobs a couple years later.
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This is a pretty comprehensive list. I would put staff meetings at the very top. On my last day of work, I remember thinking I never have to go to another staff meeting ever. What a great feeling. A close second is not having to attending baby showers and buy gifts for folks I hardly know, and "special" events such as the superintendent making breakfast for the staff. A nice gesture, but it meant we all had to get to school extra early and eat burned waffles instead of the lesson prep we needed to do.
annie_g
Senior Member
Another thing is having to attend some kind of kick off event before school starts for the year when everyone just wants to be getting their classroom ready. Which also means teachers have to come in on their own unpaid time to get it ready. I never really understood why they couldn't see no one wanted to be there!
