Why Teachers Are So Tired ~ Teacher Habits

Why Teachers Are So Tired ~ Teacher Habits:

Why Teachers Are So Tired

Big Education Ape: Why Teachers Are So Tired – Teacher Habits (Site Is Working Again) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-teachers-are-so-tired-teacher.html

Editor's Note: I heard from the author of this piece: Thanks. I wondered how so many people found it. I've rebuilt the site and upgraded my hosting. Barring further unforeseen problems, it should all be back up and running tonight or tomorrow. Go ahead and reblog it when you can. Thanks again.

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The Site Teacher Habits Seems to Have Crashed - Too Many Teachers Are Trying to Find Out Why Teachers Are So Damned Tired  Try Again Later If You Are Not Too Tired!

Better question: When was the last time you weren’t tired after teaching?

If you’re like most teachers I know, including me and my wife, being tired at the end of the day is a way of life. We’ve become so used to it that it’s hard to imagine how it could be any different.

Our non-teacher friends have a hard time understanding how we could be so exhausted. After all, we’re not building houses or working under tight deadlines or competing with co-workers to sell the most widgets or working in some ultra-competitive office with an unreasonable boss breathing down our necks. We work with kids! We work seven-hour days! We have a lot of control over our own schedules.We have summer vacation!  Some teachers have these thoughts themselves and wonder what’s wrong with them. How in the world can we be so tired?

There are three reasons.

Decision Fatigue and Willpower

Psychologist Roy Baumeister coined the term “ego depletion” after he found that humans have a limited supply of willpower.  He compares willpower to a muscle, which can strengthen but also wear out with use. Ego depletion has a general effect, meaning that using self-control in one area of your life erodes your ability to self-regulate in other parts of your life. Baumeister has found that exerting self-control results in a significant drop in blood-sugar levels.  Low blood-sugar leads to physical fatigue, which is why you’re so tired, even though the heaviest thing you lifted was a textbook.

As a teacher, think of how often you use willpower.  We censor ourselves all day.  We hold back a sarcastic remark, walk away from a lazy student when we what we really want to do is lecture her, keep our honest thoughts about the principal’s latest idea to ourselves, respond professionally to a disrespectful email from a parent, work with a Why Teachers Are So Tired ~ Teacher Habits:

Teachers union president backs Ellison for DNC chair | TheHill

Teachers union president backs Ellison for DNC chair | TheHill:

Teachers union president backs Ellison for DNC chair

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) on Friday picked up the backing of the head of the nation’s largest teachers union in his bid to lead the Democratic National Committee.

 

In a statement announcing her personal endorsement, National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García said she knows Ellison will be a unifying force for Democrats. 

 

“Keith’s emphasis and well-documented commitment to party building and grassroots organizing in every community is exactly what we need as the nation finds itself at a crossroad under the divisive Trump administration,” she said.

 

Eskelsen García’s endorsement comes just hours after the Service Employees International Union called on its members who can vote for DNC chair to cast their votes for Ellison.

 

Ellison has been jockeying for the support of leading labor organizations in the race against his chief rival for the post, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. So far his supporters include the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, United Steelworkers, American Federation of Government Employees, Communications Workers of America, UNITE HERE and National Nurses United.

 

But at least five AFL-CIO affiliated groups have broken with the labor giant to back Perez over Ellison, including the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers.

 

In a statement, Ellison said he is honored to receive Eskelsen García’s support and reiterated his plan to return Democrats to elected offices across the country at all levels of government.

 

“As Chair of the Democratic Party, I will make sure every Democrat and every educator has the tools and resources they need to fight attacks on public education, and to ensure every student has the opportunity to a quality education, regardless of their ZIP code,” he said.

 

“That means the DNC must institute more than a 50 state strategy. It needs a 3,143 county strategy, like the NEA.”Teachers union president backs Ellison for DNC chair | TheHill:

Local school district payments to charter schools shot up 70 percent in 6 years.

The Sunday Dispatch | Local school district payments to charter schools shot up 70 percent in 6 years.:

Local school district payments to charter schools shot up 70 percent in 6 years.

Charter schools, particularly online “cyber charters” have increasingly been blamed for school district financial woes, with administrators contending charters siphon much-needed money from district coffers.

An advocacy group recently compiled state data for all 500 districts in the state showing just how much money is involved, providing payments to charters during a six-year span.

The local hit is steep: Luzerne County’s 11 school districts paid $16.1 million for charter school tuition in 2014-15. It’s also escalating rapidly. The data shows the payments by all 11 districts increased 70 percent since 2009-10.

Charter schools are public schools free of many state regulations. The initial idea was to let a school board grant a charter to a new school that could try different ideas in the classroom, with districts and charters collaborating to improve education for all students.

Charters are financed by a per-student tuition paid from the district where the student ordinarily would attend school. The theory is simple: The money the district would have spent on a student goes with the student to the charter school.

But the relationship became adversarial quickly. Districts often rejected requests for charters, forcing those who hoped to establish one to appeal to the state. That is how Luzerne County’s lone brick-and-mortar charter school — Bear Creek Community Charter — came to be after repeated rejections by the Wilkes-Barre Area School Board.

But charters expanded without physical buildings, thanks to cyber charters, where students do the bulk of school work online. As cyber charter enrollment increased, so did complaints from local school boards. It has become an almost annual lament: budgets are tight because the district loses money by forking it over to charters.

Northwest Area School District officials cited money lost to charters as a major drain when the school board started working in January on the 2017-18 budget. School districts point out that losing students to charter schools rarely translates into savings equal to the per-pupil payment to those charters.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has repeatedly questioned charter payments, contending charter schools get far more than they spend per student. Charter proponents deny accusations by critics.

So how much have local districts been paying to charter schools? A group called Education Voters of PA compiled state data into an online spreadsheet, letting anyone with Internet access look up the district of their choice.

The data shows that, in 2009-10, Luzerne County districts collectively shelled out $9.5 million in charter tuition, $7.63 million for regular education students and $1.85 million for special education students. The amount rose The Sunday Dispatch | Local school district payments to charter schools shot up 70 percent in 6 years.: 

DeVos’ marketplace turns kids into commodities

DeVos’ marketplace turns kids into commodities:

DeVos’ marketplace turns kids into commodities

The secretary of education has vowed in speeches, in writings and in millions of dollars of campaign contributions to destroy America’s public schools.

This is not an accusation; it is her source of pride. Betsy DeVos wants to create a “market” of “choice” in which schools are no longer public goods, democratically governed of, by and for the people and their children, but instead, private organizations funded by our tax dollars but not governed by us, the public. Her stated “long game” is to use tax dollars to fund religious schools, specifically Christian schools. As a stepping stone to that goal, she advocates that tax dollars in the form of “vouchers” be shifted from the public’s schools to private schools and charter companies.

She calls this “choice,” putting children and their education out for bid.

Her years of pushing privatization in Ohio and in her home state of Michigan are fraught with harsh language about the public’s schools (“dead ends”), and at the same time a record of low achievement, questionable finances and instability in the charter schools she claims to be their superior.

Many people have commented on DeVos’ ignorance of federal policies that her agency is charged to enforce, notably, the IDEA law guaranteeing appropriate educational services to children with disabilities, a law re-authorized under President George W. Bush and bipartisan votes in Congress. DeVos had no answers for questions about how to best assess children’s learning, and her position on guns in schools brought tears to the eyes of anyone who understood the source of the question: a Connecticut senator, the Sandy Hook parents’ senator.

What struck me was less her lack of preparedness, but that broad, fixed smile as she stumbled through or avoided responding. I came to think of it as a power smile: A smile that said “I don’t need to know these things because I made large contributions to many of you on this committee, and besides, I have a completely different agenda for this department and America’s schools. I will create a marketplace of private DeVos’ marketplace turns kids into commodities:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: PA Senate Ed Chair Wants To Trash Education

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

PA Senate Ed Chair Wants To Trash Education

49by Peter Greene / 14h

John Eichelberger has been a Pennsylvania state senator for over a decade, and during those years, he has been no friend to public schools or the teachers who work in them. Seriously-- this is District 30. Eichelberger is a Republican upstart who was swept into office on the wave of voter anger over the infamous late-night pay raise of 2005 . He was supported by an assortment of conservatives incl

PA: How Much Does Your District Pay in Charter Costs

28by Peter Greene / 20h

An extremely handy spread sheet has been circulating lately, and if nothing else, I want to put a link here so that I can more easily find it. If you're in Pennsylvania, you'll want to look at this, too. Yes, 502 districts is a lot. The document covers every school year from 2009-2010 through 2014-2015 for every single one of our 502 pubic school districts (yes, that is a high number, but that's a

DeVos: No Real Role for Feds

7by Peter Greene / 1d

At Axios (the new "media company" from two former Politico honchos ), Johnathan Swan ( formerly of The Hill ) has a quick moment with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos . She uses the opportunity for a bit of a do-over on her confirmation hearing, but it's her thoughts on the federal role in education that are most striking. Among the things that " Betsy DeVos wishes she had said at her confirmation

IOWA: Gutting Unions

21by Peter Greene / 1d

The Iowa House and Senate have voted to gut the public service unions of their state . Under the new bill, Iowa's public service unions (that, of course, includes teachers) may not negotiate anything but wages. Health care, evaluation procedures, and other language items may not be part of contract negotiations. And should those wage negotiations stall, the arbitrator must consider management's ab

FEB 16

Performance Pay Bombs Across the Pond

10by Peter Greene / 1d

I don't know if this will make you feel better or make you feel worse, but our nation is not the only one caught in the throes of bad education reform. The UK has a performance pay system in which teachers get an increase of pay based on their job performance. Well, if there's money to pay for a raise. Well, if the raise is within the cap of 1% (aka "not enough to keep up with inflation"). The UK

FEB 15

I Am Not Hostile To Change

200+by Peter Greene / 2d

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke today to a gathering of Magnet School folks, and opened up by suggesting that "some people" are "hostile" to change. I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some changes that I would love to see. I would love to see a change in the rhetoric about failing schools. Instead of declaring that we will "rescue" students from failin

The Proper Use of Mockery

31by Peter Greene / 2d

Jimmie Fallon has done it again , and not, I'm afraid, in a good way. Fallon has now twice included a Betsy DeVos sketch. His show's version of DeVos is bumbling and clueless, the kind of hapless twit who says, in response to questions about her fitness for the job, replies "I am totally got this." As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I am not above or beyond mockery of certain subjects

FL: Merit Pay (Still) Doesn't Work

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

Yes, and in other news, the sun is expected to rise in the East tomorrow. So, Florida has a merit pay system. In fact, Florida has tried to implement merit pay for quite a while. Of course, there are issues: The design and implementation of merit pay faces several key challenges. First, student outcomes are difficult to define and measure. Second, the contributions of individual teachers to studen

FEB 14

Guest Post: Open Letter To Pat Toomey

19by Peter Greene / 3d

Barbara Ferman is a professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Temple University. She's also the Director of the University Community Collaborative. She passed along this letter to share. If you want to make sure Senator Toomey sees it, feel free to help direct it to him. February 13, 2017 An Open Letter to Senator Toomey, Pennsylvania Dear Senator Toomey: I grew up in a working class family and n

FEB 13

New Congressional Attack on Education

63by Peter Greene / 4d

You probably already heard about H.R. 899 , a bill elegant in its simplicity. Here's the whole text of the bill: The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018. Thanks to Rep. Thomas Massie (R) of Kentucky for this little zen koan of legislation. It raises many questions. Will the department evaporate? Will it be terminated with extreme prejudice? When the ball drops on New Years

FEB 12

Charter Schism Explainer

23by Peter Greene / 6d

The charter world (which is mostly all that's to what we mean by "education reform") has been wrestling and fracturing and considering serious marital counseling over the past year or so. This bit of a crisis has been exacerbated since, oh, November. I've been drawn into conversations about this schism several times in the last week, which means it's time to write a simple explainer. Feel free to

ICYMI: This Week's Reading (2/12)

5by Peter Greene / 6d

The list is long this week, but at least it's not all politics. At least, I'm pretty sure it's not all politics. I Never Cared Much About Politics; The Trump Nominated Betsy DeVos A guest at the Washington Post. The title is self-explanatory Holy Warrior Against the Welfare State Jennifer Berkshire's trip to Michigan yielded a lot of good writing. This piece appeared in the Baffler and explains a

Reformsters Contemplate Race (Part 2)

5by Peter Greene / 6d

I've worked my way slowly through two panel discussions held at the American Enterprise Institute a couple of weeks ago. They're interesting and mostly thoughtful discussions among reformsters about how reformsterism (by which, mostly, they mean the charter movement) can navigate this new era and the 

CURMUDGUCATION: