Teachers Should Be Paid Extra for Extra Work

Should teachers get paid extra for extra work and extra time?

This came up the other day when we were talking about covering classes.

And I think there are two conditions that should be in place if a teacher is going to cover someone else's class or take on extra work of some sort.

A, it should be optional, right?

You should maybe be expected to pitch in a little bit, but it should still be your choice whether to cover that class or take on that activity or whatever.

So it should be the teacher's choice.

They should be able to decide for themselves whether that is the right thing for them to do at that time.

And second, it should be paid.

It should be paid extra time.

And a lot of people said, oh, we heard we weren't allowed to be paid, or I've been told we're not allowed to use this type of money to pay for covering classes.

And I think we've got to not allow excuses to overcome a fundamental truth about fairness in work.

And that is that people deserve to be paid for their work.

If you are doing extra work, you deserve extra pay for it, even if you're on salary, because your salary is is for doing a particular job, right?

You're not getting extra pay for doing your job.

You're getting extra pay for going above and beyond your salaried job.

So this idea that we just can't do that is false because lots and lots of people do that.

And it's completely normal to pay people for extra time and extra work that they do beyond their job description.

And I think we have to be very careful about what we say is included in the job description.

For example, I think curriculum night is one of those things that's in the job description.

If you have like a back to school, a meet the teacher kind of event, nobody should be expecting to get paid extra for coming to like the one thing every year where you have to be there to meet parents.

Like that is just part of the salary job.

But if we're going to add extra stuff or if we're going to have a STEM night and a math night and a science night and a reading night and a family involvement night and a whatever, we could make up 30 nights a year that would be good for families, that would be good for the school, that it would engage parents, that would be fun for students, that would showcase their work.

Like we can always come up with a good reason to do more and more and more stuff, but we have to recognize that that is extra stuff.

And the corporate world is very good at recognizing when you add extra stuff, typically you add extra people and pay them so that that stuff can get done.

You don't just try to make the same people do it as part of their job that is already too demanding a job.

So when it comes to things like afterschool programs, like if you want to start an afterschool program, probably don't expect teachers to volunteer to run that free of charge.

Probably don't expect teachers to run it at all because they really are as busy as they could possibly be and don't have the bandwidth to take that on.

But if somebody does want to do an after-school club, that should be paid.

That is not a normal part of the workday.

That is not a part of the contract.

It is above and beyond.

So I think we've got to pay people if we want them to do extra work.

In general, we should be finding different people to do that extra work.

You should have...

actual subs to cover your classes not have teachers cover each other's classes and if they do have to cover now and then it should at least be paid let me know what you think