Posts by jadetinker85

If nobody’s actually planning on missing their quotas, then what’s the point of this petition?
https://www.peticijeonline.com/za_90_minuta_kulture

Jose Wells3 said:"Go Fuchs yourself" would actually make a great swear word 🤣

I haven't caught up on everything yet, but I did catch a glimpse of little Ivica.

Look, to make it easy for you to understand: in special education, we aren't dealing with some kind of elite, specialized faculty. We’re just regular teachers with incredibly poor training. We don't even have speech therapists, psychologists, or developmental specialists on staff; we're lucky if we even get a social worker. We handle this as an add-on to our regular curriculum and combined classes. For most of us, it's just pure survival mode. I was lucky enough to land a supervision program so I don't completely lose my mind, along with some psychiatric training and support.

Little Ivica doesn't scream anymore; now he just has these fits of laughter, delusions, tics... honestly, little Ivica doesn't even exist in a classroom alongside four other kids with their own intense struggles, especially when the parents REFUSE to acknowledge it. They reject having a one-on-one aide. Before they even realized how serious their child's condition actually was, they were busy blaming the school for everything. He once hit me in the head with his fist because I stopped him from jumping off a landing—using a grip I learned while working with kids with severe intellectual disabilities—and then he claimed I provoked him. That was it.

How am I supposed to teach them until they're fifteen? I can barely get them to follow a basic structure or respect boundaries. I struggle just to get some of them to speak at all due to specific types of autism. Now, we're expected to keep them in these programs until they're fifteen? Seventeen?

Just recently, one student tried to jump out of a second-story window. Ivica jumped right through a first-floor window and bolted into the woods.

For God's sake, the other students in the mainstream classes are watching all of this happen. And we work with regular classrooms too. Is anyone even asking how a pay increase for extra hours will help offset the toll this takes on me?

We’ve got little Isaac extorting little Peter for $100 that Peter stole from his parents. Then there's Isaac offering girls money for favors and sending explicit photos to the class group chat. There’s Isaac3, there's an unknown culprit who smashed a toilet in the West Wing, and Isaac4 who was setting things on fire in the bathroom. Then there are the older Isaacs from 7th grade who almost got into a brawl with the Isaacs from 8th grade—we only found out by pure luck. The worst part? One of the Isaacs had a switchblade ready for the fight. The police were called. It was a whole thing.👎
I think the stress level you deal with in afternoon shifts is well beyond the capacity of an average human being.

Paul Davis2 said:The sixth period—if you count both small and large breaks—not to mention pre-periods and post-periods. Then there's tutoring, extra credit, and electives. It’s morning, it’s afternoon, and usually without access to a gym or even a free hot meal.
Let's get real here: kids today are basically living at school. They deal with rotating shifts and the obligation to show up for the opposite session whenever the schedule flips.

What do your kids actually think about the idea of full-day schooling?

Carl Bishop2 said:I hear that. But my little one is just starting first grade—once he gets his homework finished, he’s pretty much free to do whatever he wants. There isn't really any heavy studying involved at this stage.

Look, after-school programs for elementary kids make sense. 🙂
Personally, I didn't start staying late at school until the end of first grade, usually right after lunch. 😳

Paul Davis2 said:IT staff getting fired? In which school? In my town, there are only five schools out of thirty that even offer an after-school program. We’re talking about maybe fifteen teachers total who all get assigned to schools within a ten-mile radius in the same year.
Go check how teaching hours are calculated in New York City versus the rest of Europe—is it really just 45 plus 15? And yeah, sure, everything is "great" out there. Those people make five times the salary, they don't deal with the endless paperwork, and they don't have kids jumping through the hallways without any supervision—unless, of course, we’ve hired little green aliens to watch them.

Look, the math is simple. As an accountant, you should see that. They only have mandatory classes in 5th and 6th grade; everything else is elective stuff filling the schedule from 1st through 8th grade. If you cut just one hour from those electives, their entire teaching load disappears.

Sarah Hall53 said:Seriously, jadetinker85, she wasn't even in your class—what are you even talking about?
If I had to take a wild guess, though... she’d probably be working in the front office, maybe in administration or accounting, or possibly some kind of specialized support staff.

I don't doubt that for a second. 😉 Probably the front office.

Paul Davis2 said:I actually worked at that school before, and now my kids go there. I’m working at a different one currently—so, naturally, there are differences from one school to the next.

So you’re fine with IT staff and after-school program workers getting laid off while elementary teachers are stuck on an 8 to 3:30 grind? You think it's okay that things like classroom management, extra stipends, and prep time are just lumped under "miscellaneous duties," or that monitoring duty during lunch breaks counts for absolutely nothing?
And don't even get me started on music academies, sports clubs, or the kids whose parents are working the afternoon shifts.

Sarah Hall53 said:I mean, does anyone else remember that other public debate in the States where we got flooded with like 3,000 comments, and maybe—if you’re being really generous—like 0.1% of them were actually positive?

Seriously, they already hit 3,000? Wow.

Paul Davis2 said:Exactly what this reform proposal is aiming for. Five times the salary? And no prep work at home? I have to wonder, though—what kind of school ignores all the paperwork? Who handles the grading and assessments? Is this woman working in New York City?

How can you be so well-versed in this reform and defend it so stubbornly?

shadowtiger0 said:Honestly, the humanities teachers will stick around simply because they have nowhere else to go.

I mean, what is someone who teaches Politics and the Economy—or an RN teacher—supposed to do in the private sector?

The STEM crowd is already gone (a former colleague of mine jumped ship to work as a math analyst at a major bank—don't even get me started on the salary and the benefits...) so they'll be replaced by language specialists (English, Spanish, French) and kinesiology majors (since, you know, they actually have marketable skills in the real world).

Everyone else will end up exactly how you described, unfortunately.

It only takes the people with actual options leaving for the whole system to collapse.

mellowskipper said:Full-day schooling? No way. But if you're an athlete, a single-shift schedule is probably the better bet, I guess.

Sure, but this way the facilities—the fields, the pools—stay busy all day. Kids with afternoon classes train in the morning, and vice versa. If you switched to one shift, everyone would just be fighting for space at once.

Any reform worth its salt should aim to satisfy everyone involved. To me, that’s the baseline you have to start from before you even begin drafting new policies.

Sarah Hall53 said:I mean, we basically keep them trapped in school for at least several hours more than kids in World Bank countries—which isn't even a group we belong to, by the way.
You know what they say about not looking a gift horse in the mouth...

Fair point, but our athletic reputation is better than most World Bank countries, and that won't happen if kids are stuck in class all day—let alone with a single-shift schedule.

Sarah Hall53 said:Honestly, they’re lying through their teeth here. Just take a look at the actual documentation—it says everything loud and clear. For elementary school kids, staying until 2:00 PM is mandatory, and once you hit middle school, it’s at least 3:30 PM. It’s right there in black and white.

It doesn't make sense. Why would middle schoolers be stuck at school? They're older kids now; they don't need someone babysitting them.

Susan James said:It seems like the Secretary and those pushing for full-day schooling think the negative feedback—over a thousand comments on the public consultation—is just because they cut back on computer science hours. 🤦

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly bumped it back up to two hours just to claim parents and teachers were the ones asking for it, all while making the school day even longer.
The way the Secretary is spinning this to mislead the public is just terrible.

Unlikely. If he actually bothered to read the feedback, especially the statement from the Psychological Association of America—where they backed up every single point with actual psychological research—he’d see it isn't just about computer science.
Our union rep thinks the whole curriculum was basically built "by order from above."

Thomas Sanchez30 said:What’s the deal with music and dance schools when you're stuck in a full-day school schedule? Did anyone actually give that any thought? Does anyone here know how they manage to make that work in Canada?

These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked in the right circles.

Sarah Hall53 said:here’s a little from my teacher’s lounge corner about all the messups in the Bureau of Statistics plan—where things don't quite add up and how we might actually fix them.

Solid read. Personally, I’m against one-shift schooling. Think about it: plenty of people in tourism, retail, or hospitality work afternoon shifts, and music schools or local sports leagues run on two-shift schedules too.

Patrick Taylor9 said:Great read!
It’s such a shame they didn't reiterate in those final points that being a homeroom teacher should be worth way more than the 10% direct base pay rate we're seeing now. I'm out here looking for anyone willing to take on the extra responsibility, and there isn't a single candidate in sight. Meanwhile, these geniuses are thinking about slashing it down to a measly 2.5% supplemental bonus.
The online public comment period is just a formality. I'm convinced nothing is actually going to change.
By autumn, they realized they could sell us out for $83. They’ll just keep walking all over us. The union leadership mostly stays silent or puts out these forced, hollow statements while the grassroots level goes absolutely nuts. It's a very telling pattern.

Homeroom duties are double the work. Also, we're known globally for our athletic achievements. But when they try to cram all extracurricular activities into the window after 5 PM, and local sports clubs don't have the capacity to take everyone in that timeframe because, well, you can't just conjure up more pools, soccer fields, or tennis courts with a magic formula, this reform is going to hurt our international sporting reputation in the long run.

shadowtiger0 said:Because that’s exactly what it is. Every single one of my colleagues who came from competitive prep schools tells me that high school was actually tougher than college. And we’re talking specifically about the education major here, just so there’s no confusion.

I see people here using "veterinarian" as some sort of insult toward the Secretary (even though the man is a PhD, but let's just gloss over that for a second). Honestly, I wouldn’t want MY KIDS being taught by teachers who think being a veterinarian is somehow derogatory.

It’s an incredibly demanding program—certainly way harder than what some of my colleagues currently working in schools went through—so when they try to degrade him by calling him a "vet," they’re really just exposing themselves. It says more about them than anything else. But then again, I’ve seen plenty of that in faculty lounges: massive egos with absolutely zero substance to back them up.

If they wanted to call him a Republican Party hack, a bad politician, or whatever other labels they want to throw around—fine, no problem there.

But the guy is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and people with four years of experience from the College of Arts and Sciences are out here trying to use his profession as a slur...

I have to admit, I half-expected it. Like every new Secretary has to push some new curriculum, I thought they’d introduce something animal-related—maybe even encourage schools to set up their own aquariums or terrariums with turtles, lizards, snakes, or spiders...

John Palmer9 said:Citing:

"Salaries for all full-time teachers will exceed $3.25"

It looks like maybe it actually pays better

cnn.com/education-dept-announces-teacher-salaries-will-top-12000-dollars

They should just hire enough people to cover all those extra programs they dreamed up and pay them a decent wage. 👍