Teachers’ summer break secret

Forget the rhetoric about teachers’ cushy schedules. For many, the new school year starts in early August.

Alas, the summer is fast drawing to a close. The days are getting shorter. There’s a nip in the air come evening and (I’ve noticed) the less hearty trees are already throwing in the towel and dropping leaves in anticipation of winter. But if you’ve been driving around town anytime in the past month and happened to pass one of Belmont’s public schools, you may have noticed something strange: cars in the parking lots –quite a few of them.

If you’re like me, you may have wondered what those cars were all about. Well, I’m here to tell you: those cars belong – almost without exception – to our teachers and administrators. For them, thinking about the new school year doesn’t start in mid August, but sometime in early July. By early August, many of them are making regular trips to work to start preparing their classroom and their lessons for the new school year.
How much does this cost Belmont? Nothing, actually. The work that teachers do over the summer is almost all unpaid – a product of their initiative and professionalism, rather than the bargaining power of their union.
Why am I making a point of noting all the free work our teachers and administrators do over the summer? Because sometime in the next school year, Belmont will find itself in negotiations with its teachers’ union over a new contract, and an important part of that negotiation will hinge on salary – how much we pay teachers for the work they do. If this year is like other years, we’re likely to see the same old saws trotted out by those in town that think being a public school teacher (as opposed to, say, a hedge fund manager) is the biggest scam going. They’ll argue that public school teachers make middle class salaries (horror!) but only work until 3 p.m. each day –and that for only nine months a year.
Not by a long shot. The day-to-day reality of public school teachers includes extra (and unpaid) hours before and after school and over the summer break. Just one personal anecdote (and the inspiration for this column): one of my daughter’s teachers will be teaching a new grade this fall. Despite being a seasoned educator with more than seven years’ experience, she’s been driving in to school for weeks now to prepare her new classroom, lay out lesson plans and talk with other teachers at her new grade level about what works and doesn’t work for them. When the school bell rings on September 4, she’ll be ready to go. (This fun infographic sums up some of the data on teachers’ work hours: http://visual.ly/teachers-dont-work-hard-enough-think-again)

Mind you: none of this extra work is written in to the school calendar or the teacher’s union contract. In fact, as a former Belmont School Committee member I can tell you that one of the most potent negotiating tools the union has is to hold out the prospect of “work to rule:” teachers doing only what is explicitly spelled out in their contract. No before or after hours work, no student recommendations or consultations, no volunteering for work supervising and directing extra curricular activities, and so on.
Of course, we know this intuitively. Don’t we hear our kids talk about meeting teachers before class starts in the morning or after hours in the late afternoon?
What we often don’t consider is that those hours are, technically, unpaid. Teachers aren’t required to be there. But they’re there because they’re professionals and being available to students during off hours (including at home in the evening) is part of what it takes to achieve success in the classroom.
Sure: teachers take vacations during the summer, too. And not all public school teachers stick around until 5:00pm or devote a month of their summer break to preparing for the start of classes. It’s also true that many of us work for salaries that don’t stipulate a “start” and “finish” to the workday – and we don’t complain. Many of us work much longer than eight-hour days and even come in to the office on a weekend now and again when a big deadline looms.
And, actually, that’s my point: the work that teachers do isn’t all that different than the work any of us do. Like us: they work hard. Like us: they’re professionals who take personal pride in the work they do. Like us, most of them aren’t heading for the exit door when the workday (or week) is done. And, like us, our teachers like to have their hard work recognized and rewarded come payday. Let’s try to keep that in mind as the year progresses!

Paul is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 8 and edits the blog Bloggingbelmont.com.