Do other professionals get treated like this?

[Mickey'snewestfan]

My school and 2 other schools got together and got a giant grant for professional development. As part of this grant they are holding a series of "long term planning days" where they pay teachers and other staff members to come in on the weekend and spend the day planning. The pay is way less than our usual hourly (well not hourly since we're salary, but what you'd get if you divided our paycheck by the hours a teacher actually works, or even by a 40 hour work week) , and it's for work that most of us do anyway, so essentially they're paying us a bonus for planning at a specific time and place so they can coach us.

OK, so far so good. But they scheduled this planning day to be held in the cafeteria of one of the schools. This means that we spent an 8 hour day sitting in those seats that are attached to the table -- which of course are designed for children, so the seats are way too close, especially when you're working on a laptop for most of the time. Now you have to understand that I work with Pre-K -- I'm used to doing my planning and other work sitting at a TINY chair at a TINY table, but at least I can push the chair back and use my arms in a comfortable position. I say this to point out that I'm not particularly picky about seating, but this was ridiculously uncomfortable.

In addition, they made us all stay in one room, and elementary schools cafeterias have notoriously bad acoustics, so with all the groups planning and the people walking around coaching the noise was incredible. This was in a building full of classrooms which presumably had regular kid sized tables and chairs where we could have spread out our papers and talked at a regular volume.

My group moved to sitting against the wall on the hard cafeteria floor, which was somewhat more comfortable and quiet, but we could only stay there until someone's battery ran out and then it was back to the tables for us, because all the outlets were used to run extension cords to the tables.

Do other professions treat people this way? I felt like the message was -- we can only trust you to plan if you're right here where we can watch you, and you should be so grateful for your $8 an hour that you have no right to demand any kind of comfort too.

 

[Liberty Belle]

My school and 2 other schools got together and got a giant grant for professional development. As part of this grant they are holding a series of "long term planning days" where they pay teachers and other staff members to come in on the weekend and spend the day planning. The pay is way less than our usual hourly (well not hourly since we're salary, but what you'd get if you divided our paycheck by the hours a teacher actually works, or even by a 40 hour work week) , and it's for work that most of us do anyway, so essentially they're paying us a bonus for planning at a specific time and place so they can coach us.

OK, so far so good. But they scheduled this planning day to be held in the cafeteria of one of the schools. This means that we spent an 8 hour day sitting in those seats that are attached to the table -- which of course are designed for children, so the seats are way too close, especially when you're working on a laptop for most of the time. Now you have to understand that I work with Pre-K -- I'm used to doing my planning and other work sitting at a TINY chair at a TINY table, but at least I can push the chair back and use my arms in a comfortable position. I say this to point out that I'm not particularly picky about seating, but this was ridiculously uncomfortable.

In addition, they made us all stay in one room, and elementary schools cafeterias have notoriously bad acoustics, so with all the groups planning and the people walking around coaching the noise was incredible. This was in a building full of classrooms which presumably had regular kid sized tables and chairs where we could have spread out our papers and talked at a regular volume.

My group moved to sitting against the wall on the hard cafeteria floor, which was somewhat more comfortable and quiet, but we could only stay there until someone's battery ran out and then it was back to the tables for us, because all the outlets were used to run extension cords to the tables.

Do other professions treat people this way? I felt like the message was -- we can only trust you to plan if you're right here where we can watch you, and you should be so grateful for your $8 an hour that you have no right to demand any kind of comfort too.

I don't know about other professions, but we, too, have our trainings in the school cafeteria. Not the most comfortable.

 

[Mickey'snewestfan]

I don't know about other professions, but we, too, have our trainings in the school cafeteria. Not the most comfortable.

I should add that I get that budgets are tight and that they can't afford a banquet room at a hotel or something. If it had been a presentation, I would have said "OK, maybe this is the best place they can come up with to seat us all", but we were working in small groups on personal computers, there was no need for us to all be in one room, plus it was on a Saturday so the classrooms were empty and available.

For that matter, one of the schools in the consortium is a middle/high school combo. If we had to meet in a cafeteria couldn't we at least use theirs which presumably has bigger seats?

 

[bicker]

At times, I've been a major contributor treated like dirt, and a minor contribute treated like a king. There seems to be no logic except what pieces happen to fit into the puzzle at the time given the current circumstances and contexts.

I do know, though, that when something bothers me, like that, I use it as inspiration to seek out and find a better reality for myself, even if that means (as it has at least once) taking a major step back in terms of my life's expectations.

 

[JerseyJanice]

If you happen to be talking to somebody who has something to do with the grant's administration, you could mention that you didn't think the cafeteria wasn't the best place to do the planning.

I would hate to think that the people who are running this grant put you in one room because they believed they had to keep an eye on you. One would hope that they put everyone together because they expected people to interact with each other.

You weren't paid at what your regular salary would be because they have $X to spend from the grant and need X amount of people to work on it. They could have chosen to spend $X from the grant on renting banquet space to work in, but that wouldn't be the best use of grant funds.

 

[Mickey'snewestfan]

If you happen to be talking to somebody who has something to do with the grant's administration, you could mention that you didn't think the cafeteria wasn't the best place to do the planning.

I would hate to think that the people who are running this grant put you in one room because they believed they had to keep an eye on you. One would hope that they put everyone together because they expected people to interact with each other.

You weren't paid at what your regular salary would be because they have $X to spend from the grant and need X amount of people to work on it. They could have chosen to spend $X from the grant on renting banquet space to work in, but that wouldn't be the best use of grant funds.

Like I said, I'm not asking for banquet space, I'm asking for permission to go use one of the upper grade classrooms that were sitting there empty. Trust me when I say that for those of us used to 12inch chairs, chairs made for 4th graders that weren't attached to desks would have felt like heaven. Or that they hold the event in the high school and not the elementary school. Both those option would have been about the same cost, unless there's a huge difference in the seniority/pay grade of the elementary school and high school janitors who would be needed to keep the buildings open.

Yes, I did complain, or rather I wrote my complaints in the feedback form they asked us to fill out.

I do think they have some expectation that we'll interact, but frankly we didn't, and I'm not sure that had we done so it would have helped. If they wanted us to interact, they could have divided us into groups according to how they wanted us to interact (e.g. I ended up at a table with people analyzing standardized test questions from middle school math and applying that knowledge to planning their own end up unit assessments from which they'd work backwards and build a unit -- we were working on changing the structure and choices available during centers time in PK to increase the proportion of kids spontaneously incorporating writing attempts into their play, if they'd put all the people working on early childhood or all the people working on increasing the effectiveness of academic choice time together I might have gotten something out of interacting, but the difference between designing a scantron assessment and changing your block corner set up are just too big.

 

[JerseyJanice]

I hope you wrote all that on the feedback form and that the people who are running the grant read it and keep it in mind the next time they plan a work session.

I help run some grants, and I don't want the people working on them to be uncomfortable during work sessions. No one could do their best work in the conditions you described and it certainly wouldn't be the most productive work session possible.

In my office, running grants is all about getting the most results out of the money you're given.