Education / Teaching thread

Sun Wukong said

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My planning periods are frequently lost to meetings. Often my lunches are as well. That's when I'm not having to cover duty for someone else. There are days I do not have an opportunity to go to the bathroom between 7:10 am and 3:15 pm.
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I'm trying to teach above grade level texts to students with reading levels four and five years below grade level.

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Highlighting the points above as they stand out and sound exactly like my wife's situation.

As for the "wage" discussions, I don't know how much the school districts can do since funding is provided by the state. Maybe they have discretionary budget funds they can throw at teachers, but will that persist into the following school years to maintain the increased wages? Maybe they can give a retention bonus but would you rather have a non-guaranteed annual bonus, or an increase in annual pay?

I have thought a lot of our experience is because of Texas being Texas, but this certainly appears to be a nationwide problem. Texas just seems to want to increase the pressure with a "parents bill of rights" that will definitely increase the workload on teachers.