"I Voted To Strike... Here's Why!" / A Teachers perspective

I voted to strike.

It's not because I'm greedy, or even because I particularly think that pay is an issue for me (except for the fact that I work far longer hours than I'm officially paid for).

Pay IS an issue in the sense that we need an incentive to attract young graduates to the profession, however the main issue is workload.

As of Sunday afternoon, I've worked 54 hours this week.

As a fully registered teacher, I teach six classes, and every year except for this one I've had a form class. That's close to 200 students to get to know.

Over the course of a six day timetable, I'm paid for 24 contact hours with students and have six hours of paid non-contact time (which works out to one hour four days per cycle, one day with none, and one day with two hours).

We have compulsary staff briefings three mornings per week, at least one department meeting and one house meeting. We have department or staff meetings for an hour every Monday afternoon, plus regular marking meetings for junior and senior assessments during lunchtimes or after school. And we have duties during lunchtime or interval.

According to the current collective agreement, "Duty, form time, and meetings are not considered contact time unless actual teaching or supervision of students engaged in a learning programme takes place."

So it's not paid time. Sucks to be you if you have a form class because you also have an extra two hours of unpaid contact time per week and an extra set of twice yearly reports to write and proofread, plus the other admin involved. And then you also mark and moderate all of the work that our awesome students do.

The students aren't the reason for the strike - they're actually the best part of the job (well, most of the time).

Sorry for the novel, but please support teachers in this (and don't read the NZ Herald comments). 😀👌

- A Dedicated Teacher #SupportTheStrike