Shawshank Redemption is such a great movie. Andy Dufresne has mad business skills. He convinces Captain Hadley that he can save him and his wife money. Word gets to the warden, and suddenly, Andy Dufresne has access to the financial records of the prison and the warden. Andy uses that “in” to help him escape, and to also build a better life for him and Red on the outside. Andy knew his market value within those prison walls.
Teachers are, for the most part, great people. If you tell them to do something for their students, they will often do it for free or even pay for it themselves. And I have personally witnessed administrators taking advantage of that giving spirit. I have seen teachers asked to tutor (after school) for up to an hour per day during bus duty. That equates to 20 hours of unpaid overtime per month, and up to 200 hours of unpaid overtime per year. That is a whopping 25 days of unpaid work, and five extra weeks in which they are asked to work for free. Even a quarter of that is still unacceptable. Ya’ll, as believers we are held to a higher standard. God asks us to be good stewards. He asks us to be fair and just. Asking people to work for free is a form of modern day slavery. It sounds a bit dramatic, but what would you call it if you are asking adults to work for no money?
I would encourage teachers to know their market value. If you are a good teacher, and are working for a system which has a lot of after school meetings, excessive morning or after school bus duties, countless email duties outside of work hours, or last minute trainings…I would encourage you to go find a better place to work. I promise there a great administrators out there, and they are looking for great teachers. I made the mistake of getting caught in the rat race of working 55-60 hours per week. I lost so much time with my own kids. I missed a lot of the years when they were young, and I deeply regret that. I didn’t know my market value. But those years with your children when they are young, you cannot put a price tag on those years. You won’t get them back. And when you load them up to head off to college, I guarantee you that you will remember every last hour that you didn’t spend with them – every…last…hour. So, hear me on this. Do your best to be there for them now. Don’t be a five start teacher, and a three star parent. And if you work for people who don’t care about your own family, it might be time to rethink your loyalties to that organization.
Administrators and elected officials, it is your job to make sure that your employees are being paid a fair wage. If you are asking them to stay after work (and not paying them for it), that is not a strong witness as a Christian believer.
Proverbs 16: 11 A just balance and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.
I would encourage administrators to make sure their employees lead a balanced life. If you are keeping them at work too long, word is going to get around, and good luck attracting great teachers. On the other hand, if you make sure your teachers have good balance in their lives….great teachers are gonna be lined-up to work in those buildings.
I don’t believe it is a Godly thing to pay an unfair (too low) wage. I strongly encourage anyone who signs a business contract to have a lawyer who specializes in contract law to read it. When I first started working, the exact hours were written into the contract. Later in my career, those exact hours were no longer in the contract, replaced by some vague language which left the door open for a longer workday at the same pay as the previous contract. The superintendent at that time took immediate advantage of that nuance. After school, when we normally would have gone home or gotten grading completed, we had had more meetings, more trainings , and more student tutoring. We also lost our planning time which resulted in having to do more work on our own time in the evenings. This superintendent was known to drive through parking lots of his schools at 6:00PM and see who was still at work! Keep in mind, that is a full 2.5 hours after teachers are free to go home. We lost a great administrator who rightly would not tolerate that type of behavior. If we had been smarter, we would have had a contract lawyer read our contracts, and then we should have pushed back. If I had been smarter, I would have been bold enough to go work somewhere else.
Maybe the most heartbreaking thing I have ever witnessed was this. A mom had a senior daughter who was playing in a playoff game. It may well have been the last game that her daughter was to ever play in high school. The principal at the time denied the request to leave early as we had a staff meeting. Ya’ll, life is too short. There was nothing in that staff meeting that should have supplanted seeing your daughter’s last HS game. You are going to be changing diapers, and in what seems like minutes, they will be grown. Don’t miss those moments – just don’t. I can’t remember if that teacher went to her daughter’s game. I hope she did, but far too many teachers miss their kids’ growing up. Too many needless meetings, too many repetitive trainings, too many work emails “which can’t wait”….that time lost adds up.
I ended up leaving the classroom after 21 years – more fed up than burned out. I am one of those people who does things at 110% buy-in, or I won’t do it all. The price just got too high for my family. In hindsight, I wish that I had found better balance. But God had other plans for me. I am now a stay-at-home dad, and I got back some of that time I lost. I don’t regret a minute that I spent in the classroom, but I am glad that my best hours of the day are now being given to my own kids.
Maybe the main crux of this message is to find and keep balance in your lives. Go to your children’s plays. Go to their ballgames. Go to their band concerts. Go to their birthday parties. Go ride bikes on the greenbelt. Go to wonderful places, and turn off your work email. Live life abundantly. Work for people who respect that balance, and flee those who don’t. You will be healthier physically. Your families will be healthier. Even better, that balance will make you a better teacher.
