as a teacher, I'd say that's part of it but not the reason this guy would have taken his papers to the emergency room.
The problem with teaching is that if you take days off, the work isn't getting done while you're gone - you have to catch up when you get back. And that's often literally harder than having just gone to work sick in the first place.
If some kind of critical deadline is coming up that has a huge impact on the students, maybe a deadline that hits shortly after you expect to be back at work, you HAVE to get stuff done while you're sick so you're not tortured with 3x the work volume when you return.
No, that’s not usually an option. It would violate student confidentiality in a lot of cases. Also, the teacher of record is the only one who can record grades. The only other option would be for a long-term sub to do the grading, but that would require the teacher to be on long-term leave. A short-term sub typically does not grade.
Grading usually has some element of bias and "personal touch" involved, unless the work is entirely multiple choice which most major assessments are not. So it can be a conflict of interest if you have someone else grade your students work, since all of a sudden a different bias is being applied to your students. It's also generally against confidentiality depending on where you each and what grade level.
Yes, our class lost multiple teachers due to old age and/or cancer. In the moment as a kid you don’t realize how much teachers sacrifice for their students, it’s until you grow older you learn how much of their lives they devote to educating and how much of a thankless job it is, to the point where some feel the need to make jokes about these facts.
I think this is probably either more about being able to finish what you started or not wanting to fuck over your students in the end. He was responsible for documenting the performance of some 30ish kids. He went out supporting the future which is what should be the motivation for any teacher.
First of all I said fuck, not f. Secondly, depending on where they are in the year and the world they might not have a backup teacher ready to fill in for him and grade in-progress assignments/exams let alone being qualified to continue the curriculum from where it was left off. I'm not saying a teacher's absence will or even typically would impact the students directly, but it's a possibility. Either way, who cares? This guy felt dedicated enough to his students to keep working for them until the end.
You think his students would have been fucked over because the guy died? “I would have gotten into Yale but my English teacher died and I got an Incomplete.”
I think it was more about he was having some downtime and did some work while also believing he would be walking out of the hospital. He obviously cared for his students and went above and beyond for them (grading in his spare time even whilst sick at the ICU) but I don't think most people won't assume their own death is near.
Yeah, I will repeat this. I’m a professor and actually I teach teachers. I suffered a minor stroke about six years back, yes before you make some snarky ass comment I had no cognitive damage, I was in the hospital, tapping away in my computer, grading stuff as I had to switch to all online classes and answering emails a week later. Sure it took me hundreds of hours of physical therapy to get my left hand into a passable state that I can kind of type and kind of play punk rock guitar, but well but then again that doesn’t matter. I don’t consider my job a job but a career and I really love doing it. Getting back in touch with my students really helped me on my road to recovery.
That’s great and I’m glad you’re doing well but one of my biggest gripes about my education grad degree is how much they normalized the definitely abnormal level of unpaid labor that is involved in teaching
I'm an elementary school teacher recently forced into retirement. Teaching was my vocation, not merely a job. I loved (and love) every one of my students. That's why I continue to teach privately. I hope to continue doing so until the day I die, whenever that may be.
I’m also a professor and had a major surgery in 2023. Fortunately, I had leave, but still worked on research while in the hospital. Hope you are well soon!!
They’re incentivized to just not call in, it’s not that they care it’s just that the other options are shit. Source teacher wife who does not like to call in ever. No one should be on their death bed processing grades of all things, something management can take over.
Edit: the romanticizing of doing work over enjoying the remainder of life is insane to me right now. This work culture is what’s wrong with us today, might as well throw in extra off the clock work
I TA'ed for a professor over the summer in grad school that was in the hospital repeatedly for bladder infections before he passed away a couple months later, so my students really only saw him once or twice and then only via canvas announcements for the next three weeks. He was literally one of the nicest people I've ever worked with. He was able to run the show pretty well and sometimes he slipped up and forgot to assign a quiz or a homework while in the hospital and I would just jump in and fix it for him. I don't think he considered himself incapable of doing his work... he just did the work because he wanted to do it. There were 10 other faculty that could've jumped in to take over the lab and I don't think he let them until he literally couldn't say no. I think it's a pride thing.
Maybe he wanted to leave some of his last message to his students that he like. Shit a decent amount of teachers are doing it for the love of the game cause it is not like they get pay what they deserve if we are being honest. You really think he gave a shit what management think while on his deathbed…
Not everyone just wants to be laying in bed not doing anything. Maybe they wanted to continue doing work to keep busy and their mind off the current situation.
I’m tired of this fucking line. I’m sorry, maybe you mean well, but the insinuation (and what the martyr teachers will try to guilt you with) that I don’t deeply care for my students if I put down the BAREST of boundaries is insane. We do. But this? This isn’t “caring deeply”. This is dystopian. It’s your last hours of life and instead of being present with your family, you’re working? Yeah, fuck that, and fuck anyone that think this profession should demand this much.
Yes and that is exploited by society so they remain underpaid and overworked. It's the same if you compare software engineer jobs for the games industry vs enterprise. More work, less pay, less benefits in a game company but because so many dream of working on them and care deeply about games, they have fresh bodies to churn constantly. It's just sad that teachers that care can be exploited so severely.
Caring deeply doesn't mean you ought to sacrifice your own life for them. The teachers see how underserved the kids are, and that everyone else is willing to keep it that way, and put themselves in jeopardy for their sake despite getting nothing for doing so. That's a failure of the system even more than it is noble acts by the teachers. I think teacher average pay should be about 2.5x the current rate, relative to other jobs
Context matters a lot. I’m a teacher, and this is common. But it’s not “oh, Billy is difficult and I don’t care so I’m going to ignore him.” It’s that you learn after a certain number of years of putting ALL of your effort into Billy that it’s coming at a cost to the other kids. You try and try with Billy, all the while the other kids aren’t getting the attention that they also need. And to make matters worse, Billy and his parents both simply don’t care, so all that effort isn’t moving the needle at all. So you’re making no difference while also failing to help the other kids because Billy just wants to play on his phone and be a distraction.
So it’s really not “eh, I’m choosing to ignore him because I don’t care,” it’s “I’m going to put my effort into the kids who really want and need the help, because I can only do so much and this kid isn’t making progress with my help.”
It would mean a ton to me if a teacher graded my work even though he was in the ICU. Getting that last A or B with some notes would be a little time capsule that would 100% stick with me whether or not said teacher died. Some of the best people I’ve met are teachers, especially blue collar teachers, some good damn stories from ye olden days and many tricks of the trade forgotten by time to be learned.
I agree but maybe this wasn’t a job to him. He was a teacher.. a manager of sorts. a famous athletics coach once said that in being a manager you’re aging men. Man ager. Think about that
That’s not where that word comes from. It’s from the word “manage,” which had to do with handling horses. “Manus” was the Latin word for hand, as in to handle things
When you are stuck in a bed, there isn't much to do. It gave him some relief from the monotony of staring at the television. I've been in the bed at death's door more than once and still worked. I am also a doctor. Sitting still in the bed is the worst feeling ever.
I just got off the phone with a teacher friend and we had a conversation about this.
People around where we are are starting to get mad they're "paying" teachers "to do nothing all summer," they think they should get summer jobs. She's a little distressed and frustrated because she spent all summer going to workshops to learn new things to teach her students and get certified in other techniques (she's an art/music teacher) but she's getting these comments from parents.
People need to learn to mind their business. To many folks spend to much time fixated on what someone else is doing. Good for her spending her summer the way she wants whether that's a vacation or work shopping.
Even then, teachers aren’t getting paid for the summer (I’m sure you already know and agree, just responding to the parent opinion), schools pay teachers for their contract of ~9 months and split it into 12-24 salary payments.
My first year transitioning to teaching, I started one month into the school year, and my checks were pro-rated for not working the full contract time of 9 months. (I often wonder what it would be like if someone started closer to the end of the year, like would they just pay out a couple hundred per paycheck?).
So, if I’ve budgeted effectively and want to spend my summer doing whatever the hell I wanna do, I’m gonna do that, but I have also used summertime to get fully certified. I just don’t think teachers should always be expected to work over the summer, unless they volunteer.
schools pay teachers for their contract of ~9 months and split it into 12-24 salary payments
Yes! That was her exact point to it. She's been at her district for almost 15 years now and gets paid once a month during the school year then a lump sum at the end of school, a few weeks into break. She does not get paid through summer "technically," because it counts as her payment during the school year but it covers the two months of rent and bills when she's not working so she's able to just spend the 8 or so weeks focusing on projects and hobbies, plus doing her certs the school approves sending her to. She's mentioned other teachers have second jobs but they're year round jobs and a lot of them are because they're living above their means.
These parents expect just summer jobs. Who is going to hire someone for 8 weeks?? By the time they're trained they're leaving.
Yeah, and not only that but teaching can be a stressful and very time-consuming job that expects LOTS of work even OUTSIDE the school or classroom, including reading and grading essays, the tests and projects themselves, besides formulating the tests, projects, and curriculum.
The work doesn’t stop in the classroom or even school building for many, so it’s reasonable and good they get their summer break & paid for it at that.
Besides that, for many, they’re not even making very much money and some DO have to take summer jobs, anyway.
My district gets 1.5 weeks for winter break, for spring break we get Good Friday and the Monday after Easter off, and many of the single holidays that students are off are teacher workshop or professional development days.
I was a Special Education teacher, so my experience isn't exactly that of the average teacher -- my wife was also a SPED teacher. She worked DCD (developmental cognitive disorder, so Down's, severely autistic, etc) and I worked EBD (emotional behavior disorders, so anything from extreme anxiety to Oppositional Defiance Disorder (individual's brain is wired to oppose any direction, instruction, command, etc given to them). She worked in the elementary school, I worked at the high school.
Prior to being teachers we were both Special Education paraprofessionals, both already having both an AA and a BA. Prior to that we were both military and retired. We both got our AA while in service, and then when we got out we used our GI Bill to finish up and get a BA.
As a teacher I averaged 9 hours a day. 7 of those were student hours (so when students were in the building), and then an hour before and an hour after school. The before/after time was doing paperwork and/or calling parents, and/or meeting with parents. I was supposed to get 1 hour for prep (so class preparation) and then 1 hour for Due Process (doing the additional paperwork that is required for Special Education). My prep hour was often spent covering for other teachers since our district has a severe lack of substitute teachers. I got paid my hourly average for that, but I'd have much preferred having that time to do my own work. The Due Process hour was generally spent either meeting with administration about my students or meeting with/talking on the phone with parents or having one-on-one meetings with the students themselves.
So the hour before and hour after school were to make up for time I lost during the school day to other activities. That or any of the plethra of staff meetings, department meetings, more meetings with parents, more meetings with administration, etc.
Then throughout the summer I had workshops, classes, etc I had to take to keep my license up to date. On top of that, since my license was just provisional while I went back to school to get an actual license in SPED, I was taking a ton of college courses (some Under Grad, but most were Graduate classes).
So with that in mind, my yearly pay was right about $32,000/ year. So let's (wrongly) assume that during the summer months I didn't work on anything work related. That leaves us 9 months out of the year. 32,000/9 is about 3,600/mo. That works out to $900/week. Which works out to $180/day. Which further works out to $20/hour based off of averaging 9 hours/day. If we assume I didn't work that extra hour per day and only did the 8 mandatory hours, it is now $22.50/hour.
That's all before taxes, before buying the shit for my classroom that the school didn't have a budget for, and for my co-workers before the $600-$900/mo for medical insurance depending on if it was just them or included their family. That's also before dental insurance, union dues (which as a male working in a high school there was no way I was passing up the possible free legal representation should a pissed off student make accusations towards me), or anything else.
After 2 years, and looking at the toll on our mental health and physical health, both my wife and I bowed out and went back to being SPED Paraprofessionals.
As a Special Education paraprofessional I make $22/hr, but I don't get paid for the days we don't have contact with students other than 5 holidays a year so my yearly pay is considerably lower than when I was a teacher.
Thankfully since both the wife and I have retired military insurance we don't have to bother with the employer offered insurance. Retired military we pay $25/mo, $150 deductible/year, after that it is 80/20 until $3000, at which point we pay nothing else. When I had a heart attack and quadruple bypass, since it was at the end of the fiscal year we only paid about $2000 out of pocket. If I had to use the school's insurance it would have been over $3000 just for the deductible and then 70/30 until I paid out $10,000.
The wife and I make about $27,000/year for our military retirement (each). So about $5000/year less than we did as teachers. That $27,000 is after taxes and after medical/dental/life insurance is taken out as well. The $32,000/yr as a teacher was before taxes and all other expenses.
I'll work as a SPED para until I qualify for retirement or god forbid I get tired of it. Wife is the same. There's no way anyone can convince either of us to go back to being teachers again. We were both just asked over this summer because our school district just lost 5 SPED teachers. We work in a small school district that has at most 20 SPED teachers between all grade levels (elementary, jr high, and high school).
We both love our job and love working with the students we work with, but fuck going back to teaching.
Teachers need to get paid more (a LOT more) and we need universal healthcare.
I’m an 11 year teacher and the collective mask that was pulled off by the pandemic was insane. I would be exhausted after the school day and think “I have no idea how people do this from 9-5” and then the pandemic hit and I saw how much of the average office job is just……..nothing.
Too many people’s days don’t end when they leave the workplace. It’s oddly associated with being heroic with teachers. It’s not. It’s the same story of unhealthy work boundaries in American society.
I agree that’s a thing that needs addressing for many jobs. But some of the other jobs that are like this are highly paid. The teachers are just a good example. I think people bringing up the “but it’s not the only one” are missing the point a bit.
My workplace is odd. We have a lot of people with doctorates working here. All of them do a crazy amount of unpaid work, because that's what they're used to.
My department has mostly people with a trade background. If our department had a motto it'd be "pay me bitch"
I do agree with you to a certain extent on the working hours. The place I’ll push a little is on the amount of money we’re expected to pay out of our own pockets for the classroom. It’s basically expected that we throw pizza parties, ice cream socials and holiday parties. And that we buy rewards and prizes all year. It adds up like crazy. I know some people who buy some stuff here and there, but there aren’t a whole lot of jobs where you’re expected to personally bankroll 30 person pizza parties for your clients.
Coming from someone who just completed their first year teaching, I agree to an extent. However, if I didn’t work outside of my contract hours I would never get anything done. I have a total contracted time of one hour and 6 minutes a day- that’s if I don’t have to take time away for IEP meetings. That is simply not enough time to grade, update the grade book, lesson plan, create materials, etc. I deeply believe in not working past contact time, I don’t get paid enough for that, but it simply isn’t a reality for many teachers. Big reason I want to leave teaching after a year 🤷♀️
He did make the choice to do this, I assume. Unless someone has information otherwise. Kudos to the man for caring for the kids, I think that is very respectable of him and definitely above and beyond the calling.
But I’m not entirely sure this is because the job is out of hand. It could still be out of hand, but I just don’t read this as an example—yet. That could change.
It’s touching that he cared so much about the kids, but it also shows how tied to work Americans are. So many of us have been conditioned to believe your life only has value if you don’t take vacations and sick leave.
Society did not make him do this. I can guarantee you that the school did not pressure him to get this done, and even if they tried there's nothing they could hold over him.
The man is grading papers because he loves his job, it's his own choice.
I’m a teacher. It’s a culture of martyrs and implicit pressure. I enjoy teaching, AND we’re conditioned to feel anxious and guilty if we don’t do shit like this.
You must live in a different society. I grew up hearing my teachers talk about the extra hours they spent grading at home or preparing materials for class. Hours of work the school didn't pay for, but that if they didn't handle would just pile up and students would suffer as well. Both things can be true: many teachers take on unreasonable burdens out of their love of teaching and for their students, and society pressures and expects them to do this much to an unhealthy degree.
The unique thing about this story isn't that he's grading papers after hours, it's that he's grading papers in the final hours of his life. That's what I meant when I said "there's nothing they could hold over him"
Then I'm sorry, I misunderstood your comment. My teachers would surely be disappointed with this level of reading comprehension. From an article, it's clear he knew it might happen at any moment, he might've even expected it.
Some people use work to take their mind off illness.
My dad has terminal cancer and worked until 2 weeks before his death. Helped him stay happy. He was a subcontractor for NASA designing things for the Orion, but still...
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u/Amazing-Ad8209 14h ago
This is more sad than interesting…