Antiwork

I have seen posts about teaching more frequently on here. I am finishing my 14th year and I wanted to share what I did that allowed me to not hate teaching. Hopefully, it helps a couple of teachers out there. Accept what you can’t control. People are going to hate you, accept that. Either from past experiences and unreasonable expectations to insecurities, some people will just hate you. You can’t change the pay on your contract. Every district has a pay scale or formula that they use to calculate teacher pay. You won’t win teacher of the year. Teacher of the Year is about making sacrifices for the school. It’s draining and will burn you out. You can’t change a student’s life unless they let you. You are not responsible for your student’s mental health. It’s not in your contract and you most likely are not qualified to address the…

I have ADA-reported disabilities and a letter from my doctor recommending I work from home until released. HR does not care. They are apparently sick of accomodating me. Worked there for 14 years this year. My doctor initially read the bullet point “accommodations” below and laughed out loud and stated, “they have no idea how aerosolized transmission works, do they?” I received the below email today from HR, suddenly the downgrade of the mandate means I will be safe at work! No regard to my health conditions or doctors' advice at all. Mind you IL is still rated “Very High Risk”…. Email from HR: Your response was due to Covid, you were unable to safely return to work.  Today the State of Illinois has reduced Covid mask mandates.  This is due to Covid positivity numbers being reduced, vaccine booster/vaccinations increased and hospitalizations reduced, so we expect your full return to…

So I will preface this with I love my job. But, so many people have left (better opportunities/maternity leave/ etc) recently, that now I have to take on their work. I'm not the only one. We are all doing the work of 3 people. All my new work is work not in my department (I just know my way around the system, so they can rely on me). I am in my second year at this place. My own work load tripled after I showed I could handle it my first year, then all the people leaving, they asked if I could temporarily take on more work- this was 6 months ago. Someone else just left and I was asked to take on even more. Some of her accounts were huge (I think bigger than they realized-she was def undervalued and I support her decision to leave). It's so much…

A business owner's perspective I don't buy, I don't believe, and I never will, that increasing minimum wage is the solution to the problem, and believe me, I am with you guys, there is a problem that needs an immediate solution. Consider that wage is an arbitrary number, no different than price, it's malleable and it often inappropriately assigns the incorrect value to a commodity. Cost and Margins are real variables that define value, and I don't mean cost as a price, I mean cost as a real cost, expenditure of energy and the tradeoff of value. There isn't a subcontractor, or contractor, or supplier that hasn't sent me a letter saying that the cost of business is going up, and therefore, the prices are going up. It simply gets “passed on”, the numbers, digits, and accounting all changes, but the value equation (The cost and margins) never do. That's…