Seems like only 8 years ago Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was bemoaning the loss of the old red gradebook. Now the time has come to officially sound the death knell for the teachers' lounge.
Uh huh. I did it. I called it a teachers' LOUNGE! We are not allowed to use that nomenclature at Newmentia, you know. Just like we were not allowed to call ourselves the unemployment office when I worked for the Missouri Division of Employment Security. No, we must refer to that place as the teacher workroom. Let the record show that no lounging has taken place in that place since we moved into the building in 2000.
In fact, there was not much lounging going on anywhere much after 1989. That I know of. Sure, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has a sketchy employment past. Going from the original Oldmentia to another school district, then to the unemployment office (for WORK, people, for WORK!), then back to Oldmentia.
The last lounging I remember was back in the day, when smoking was allowed in the teachers' lounge, and I probably picked up a festering case of future lung cancer by sitting in there during lunch. It was so bad that my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel would open the door to that den of hypoactivity, take a huge sucking breath, hold it, run down the steps and over to the Coke machine, buy a soda for herself and her then FBF, and run out before succumbing to lack of oxygen. I'm surprised she didn't have to feel her way through the cloud of ash and smoke that rivaled the Mount St. Helens eruption.
No, these days there is no time for lounging. No permission for smoking. Complaining has to be done on one's lunch shift. That teacher workroom is only good for dalliances with the Kyoceras. It would not surprise me to see a tumbleweed roll out of there. In fact, I daresay students spend more time in that place (against the rules) than faculty.
The old red gradebook is dead, and the teachers' lounge is on its last varicose-veined legs.
What is next? The meager planning time we get?
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteI will be getting plenty of planning time this time next year. Oh. Wait. You're talking about WORK planning time...
Of course it is fraught with those last-minute have-to time-suckers. But at least I know I have 50 minutes every day to work with. Not sure about your situation, but our Elementia folks may get 10 minutes here and 6 minutes there and maybe a slice of 30 minutes if they're lucky. Just so it adds up to the required plan minutes per week. I understand their bitterness, and why they keep track of each other's plan time to the minute, and are not shy to inform the planning planner of discrepancies.