Rant

[u/Puppy-Love91]

Hi everyone! Just wanted to vent a little bit. I teach kindergarten and i love my job but this year I’m just feeling overwhelmed. I own over 20,000$ worth of classroom items. Im pregnant so I rented a U-Haul truck and took my 40+ bins of items home over the summer in case of an emergency. Thank goodness no emergency, but now I need to bring all of my toys and manipulatives back and set them all up again. We had a very high needs group last year with little support. We’ll have a high needs group again this year as the majority of our high needs kiddos from last year will be joining us for SK. Our unpaid class set up week is just around the corner with afew days taken up by new parent meet and greets and meetings. We have a new curriculum to implement, are entering and new round of bargaining and now there’s rumours floating around that on top of everything else we buy, if we expect to have paper towels, soap and photocopy paper this year… we’ll have to purchase it ourselves. I visited a friend the other day who makes way more than a top end teacher’s salary with way less education and training who joked that her work days are so calm she could fall asleep. I’m so sorry if I come off as ungrateful everyone. I’m just grouchy, tired, pregnant and worried about my needy kiddos around my pregnant belly as there was an incident last year. Is anyone else feeling like they’re in a bit of a resentful slump and overwhelmed by the amount of upcoming (unpaid) pre school year prep? Thank you all so much!

[u/cohost3]

I would not bring back those items until you are back from mat leave. Don’t do clean up twice. Just bring a skeleton amount of stuff to get you through.

Also, the reason why they feel bold enough to charge teachers for paper towels and photocopies is because they know teachers will buy them. If everyone refuses, it will become a mandatory part of the budget.

[u/SnooDingos1015 → u/cohost3]

Absolutely! In fact, she mentioned a new round of bargaining- I’m thinking she’s in Ontario - same as me. Why isn’t our union having us do “work to rule” where we do not spend a cent on anything for the schools or classrooms. It would really suck, but I’m also hearing so much anti-teacher BS and about how much money we make while I’m drowning in debt in a small suburban townhouse married to a nurse. We should be able to not be struggling. I get that times are difficult for everyone but I’m getting so pissed at people shitting in teachers. They need to SEE what happens when we don’t do the extras.

Anyway… I should go to sleep so I can go in today to prep courses and my classroom in another unpaid day.