School asking parents to only email teachers during working hours

[cautiouscovidity]

We've had a message from DCs' (primary) school respectfully asking parents to only email the head and class teachers between 8:30-5:30 on school days and not during the evenings / weekends / holidays, for staff well-being reasons (they deserve protected downtime etc.).
AIBU to think that this is ridiculous? I work in a job where I don't always have access to a phone / computer during the working day and so, on the rare occasion that I need to contact a teacher, I tend to email in the evening at home or first thing before I get ready to leave. Obviously I don't expect them to reply out of working hours, or even to read it there and then, but I had never considered that it would be intrusive. In my job I get loads of emails at all times of the day and night and they just sit in my inbox until I am working!
Surely if it's impacting on their downtime so much, then they should just not check their emails in the evening and turn off notifications etc.

You don't get my point, Indecent. Teachers do not say it is uniquely difficult or stressful. Other people claim we do, and say in fact it is piss easy. Teachers then come on and defend themselves. They are then told they think it's the hardest job in the world.
Rinse and repeat.

Absolutely ridiculous! This is the sort of thing that gives teachers a bad name. Makes me cross.

@IdkickJilliansass

You’ll have to save it all up for your next day off 😉😂

My team is based all over the world and I receive emails 24h per day. It’s not unusual to come in to 70 or more emails each morning. The idea that the world stops because you switch off your computer is ludicrous.

If you don’t want to see emails out of working hours, don’t open your inbox.

@MrsTerryPratchett, i too have worked in community nursing/housing.
like all clinics the out of hours e-mails auto response clearly says IF THIS IS AN EMERGENCY contact the police or an ambulance.
under no circumstance should anyone other than those two agencies be responding or dealing with out of hours emergencies of any type (might miss out on 1-2 different agencies i do know there are out of hours SW services but often in conjunction with police or hospitals).
it's really laughable to think a teacher genuinely would change up her day plan or care on a deeper level if any child was ill or lost his assignment.

@FrippEnos

I will always help the pupils to the best of my abilities, and that means that out of hours auto bounce emails do not work because we are not a business.

Seriously, I don’t see how an out of hours auto reply is incompatible with helping pupils to the best of your ability?

You can’t reasonably be expected to respond immediately to any email sent out of hours. You need to eat, sleep, have some down time and so on.

So what’s wrong with an auto reply saying something like “Emails sent after x pm may not be read until the next working day, I’ll try to respond to your email within x working days”?

That doesn’t stop you checking emails later on and responding to urgent ones if you feel it’s necessary. And hopefully you’re less likely to get parents getting all worked up because they sent an email about something trivial at midnight and their problem hasn’t been fixed by 6am!

The point is emailing teachers is not part of their job. Emailing management is. There are others ports of communication open for a reason, journals for notes, phone calls from pastoral teams etc.

I am a teacher. I schedule send emails to my children's schools, so they go at 8am. My own emails go to my phone. I prefer to deal with things when they get in as I have very full days so more time to deal with things in the;evening, but I would be happy for. SLT to request nothing after 5.30 pm.

responding out of hours might even be seen as overly involved and unprofessional. what is your professional body's or union's view on the matter?
it may as well cause liability issues if a parent e-mails a teacher rather than the police or ambulance or SW. it may also cause problems amongst colleagues who may not respond out of hours.

Can put a delayed response on the email. We can at work using outlook?

You can set your settings so the email dosent sent until a certain time but yes this is ridiculous

I think this is just unnecessary.

Of course parents should email when they are able.

Of course teachers should respond during working hours.

Teachers can set an out of office at e.g. 5:30 so parents know they will get a reply during working hours.

I work at a school. Parents used to have all teachers’ email addresses. This used to be a common scenario on a weekend: a parent who had drunk too much red wine on a Friday night emailing in about a whole host of gripes, moans and sometimes personal attacks to an individual teacher. Teachers plan together and will often swap emails on a weekend. Teacher accesses work email to find an email labelled urgent, quite rightly opens it and then reads a whole diatribe of complaints. Teacher’s weekend totally ruined.

We now have a whole staff email address managed by the school office. Teachers can work on a weekend and communicate with each other without having to be worried about unpleasant emails.

This email address is checked by the headteacher (me) during the weekend to make sure that nothing is missed. Parents know that I am checking and the interesting and unexpected benefit of this has been that most of the unpleasant and unnecessary personal attacks on teachers via email have stopped. Parents also know that they can email at anytime. It works very well.

Brighbluebell that sounds like a fantastic system

I used to teach. One parent used to send me long emails around 12-1am then jump on me in the playground first thing for answers. I explained enough times that booting up a school computer for email wasn’t fast (and like hell I was linking that email to my phone...) And I’d get back later in the day. They often had jobs with PAs with nothing to do but meet their directions, and couldn’t get the idea of me having other plates spinning (like teaching).
Also parents can get very personal and attack you verbally. It really gets your mental health. It’s one thing to check emails for stuff like ‘please check this invoice’, it’s very different for hate-filled projectionS of Mis-reported events. It’s hard to explain until you’ve been in the position, but you end up hiding and fearing some people who are relentless. False accusations even, attacks on you. Threats to go to your boss or safeguarding over moving table seats around or something. Your rational self knows the facts will come out and there’s no threat, but it does raise anxiety. Maybe a teacher is going through this? I’ve seen a headteacher driven to stress leave by threats.

I live in Ireland and we don't have email address for teachers or principal (primary or secondary). All communication is via the school office who will pass messages to the teacher. You can email but it is one way communication from parent to teacher.

If you want a two way interaction, you have to request a meeting with teacher via secretary.

@Focalpoint

I live in Ireland and we don't have email address for teachers or principal (primary or secondary). All communication is via the school office who will pass messages to the teacher. You can email but it is one way communication from parent to teacher.

If you want a two way interaction, you have to request a meeting with teacher via secretary.

We do @Focalpoint in ds primary school

Last year we would email the secretary to pass on the message to the teacher eg DS wont be in today. This year the teachers have their own email addresses and we've been told to email the class teacher between 8.30 and 3.30, and if we want to send an email outside of that time, to schedule it to deliver to the teacher between 8.30 and 3.30. The teacher then replies as soon as they can.

@Readandwalk

The point is emailing teachers is not part of their job. Emailing management is. There are others ports of communication open for a reason, journals for notes, phone calls from pastoral teams etc.

having a chat with parents IS part of their job, and most teachers actually prefer being told of events or facts explaining such and such behaviour. Parents are also entitled to discuss and raise issues.

It's no longer possible to speak with teachers face to face, so email it is.

When I first read this, I thought it was ridiculous too.

But when I thought about it, I realised that asking parents to schedule their emails for working hours (or at least, say, 7-7) isn't so stupid. If I get an email from a client on a Sunday evening it takes up headspace. I know it's there and I just can't ignore it, I'll start thinking about how I need to answer it, and in the end I just give up and answer it there and then, even if I don't send it right away. And bang, an evening spoiled.

So if you've read this, and you do know how to schedule emails, please think twice about when you send them.

Dunno, when I was a kid there wasn't emails and parents got on just fine. Infact all of my primary school teachers were absolutely lovely and it was a simpler time. This request wont have been issued out of nowhere, there's probably a parent taking the piss somewhere. Spose they can turn their notifications off but why should they? They might need their emails for actual work and staff related discussion in the evening and it is bloody anxiety inducing seeing emails popping up at you. Btw I'm not a teacher just can imagine there's more to it

I don't agree puffin

Far more efficient all round to say expectations with both teachers/ parents and/ or set the mail server up so it doesn't deliver.

That's belt and braces and works even if parents forget/ don't know how to do it/ don't think the rules apply to them etc.

Neither primary nor secondary have given out contact means to parents apart from via the office which seems to work fine.

Apart from anything else it ensures that all info goes through a central place so is transparent etc

Email is electronic mail. You write when you write and they open it when they open it.

This.

*If I get an email from a client on a Sunday evening it takes up headspace. I know it's there and I just can't ignore it

That is your issue to manage though. Not parents to manage for you.

Don’t check your email outside of office hours. It’s very simple. If for some reason you have to check, don’t open a school related email.

My clients email me all hours of the day or night. It is my job to put boundaries on what I respond to. That’s true of all professions I know, I don’t understand why teachers are different.

I'm a teacher, so is DH. If our DCs' school decided to implement a similar policy, we would struggle to ever make contact with their teachers because we're either at school or travelling to/from our own schools between those times.

My school email isn't on my personal phone or laptop. I check it only when using a school-issued device which usually means only whilst I'm at school. Annoyingly, our school purchased rubbishy tablet/laptop things for us to use and they don't run the full version of things such as Outlook. It's not possible to schedule an email on the lite app it runs. I have set my auto reply to say something along the lines of 'Thank you for emailing me. Your email won't be read until I am in school again and it may take me a couple of days to get back to you. If you have an urgent message to pass on, please call the school office on 020 1234 5678.'

When I email my DCs' teachers in the evening/at the weekend I always start off by either saying there's no need to reply and/or that I'm sorry to email outside of school time and that I'm not expecting it to be read until they are back in school. Invariably some teachers choose to reply when they receive my email, that's their call.