To think that teachers...

[mychildrenarebarmy]

shouldn’t be replying to work emails over the weekend? Seriously teachers, it is the weekend. If a parent has emailed you at 8.30pm on Friday night don’t feel the need to reply during your weekend. You have more than enough time of our children taking your time and attention during the week. You then spend hours planning and marking work. You need to take time out where you can because teaching is a bloody demanding profession with too many demands on your time.

My reason for posting - I emailed my son’s Maths teacher at 8.30pm on Friday evening. I got a reply Sunday afternoon apologising profusely for the “late reply”. I did, of course, thank them for the reply but also said that the apology was completely unnecessary.

So, if you are a teacher. Stop it. Seriously. If a parent emails you in the evening or at the weekend they can wait for a reply. They will either understand, or they are a wally.

And if you are that parent who does expect a reply in the evening/weekend. Well, remember everyone needs their downtime.

Hellohah depends on what your email was about. Incredibly urgent safeguarding issue? A day or two. Something that you could ask your kid to ask the teacher (e.g. when is the assessment?) never. Something between the two, probably at least a week.

@noble it's something inbetween.

It will have been 2 weeks on Wednesday, so I'll send a polite reminder then.

Thank you

Please do not send it when you write it unless it's an emergency.
But if everyone sends them at, say, 8.30am on a Monday morning then the teacher has loads to do all at once and no time to plan. If they're in the inbox he/she can do some on Sunday morning while waiting to pick DC up from sports practice, or on Sat night waiting for the takeaway to arrive etc. Delay the reply until Monday if you want, that's fine, but if they're received (available to read) then each individual has the option.
Presumably teachers don't use their private email addresses and so can only check their private email during a weekend & not have to check work?

As Noble said if I dave them then it adds to work. It's easier to reply as I get them.

OP you would be surprised at the complaints teachers receive about answering emails. My favourite was a complaint to the headteacher at 2:30
as a parent emailed me at 9.05 and when I hadn't responded a formal complaint was made - despite the fact I had been teaching all day and had a lunchtime club. As the parent used the formal complaint procedure it had to be investigated. Luckily the head sent a letter to all parents saying that staff had 24 hours to acknowledge an email but it may take longer to deal with.

Save, not Dave

I am now part time and answer emails and mark on my day off. Means I have weekends to spend with DS

Villanellenovella Because I needed to check information about something and it hadn’t even occurred to me that the teacher would even check emails before Monday, or frankly that they would even consider dealing with them from home. When I’m not at work I don’t have access to emails.

In my head I sent it then because I had just become aware of something that I needed more information about. My thinking being send it now, it will be there to deal with on Monday. As it happens the teacher had made a mistake with something and was glad I’d brought it to their attention.

The point of my post got lost somewhere - I feel bad for teachers that their job has become so time-consuming that they feel the need and pressure to deal with work emails at weekends.

Not teachers but we turn our work phones off out of work hours.

You haven't done anything wrong. The teacher may have a school with unrealistic expectations of staff. Parents can have jobs too; they don't necessarily have leisure to send personal emails during business hours. x

I have two different email systems/apps. One for work, one for personal. My personal one checks automatically for new emails all day, every day. My work one doesn't - I've set it up so that I don't receive new emails until I click the "check for new emails" button, so I can carry on with my life, even read/reply to old work emails, but no new emails come through until I click to receive them. Very easy to maintain a separate work/life balance even with modern tech.