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.

@Mistressiggi - Many, many professionals can be emailed directly by clients.

I can email my physio directly. I don't have email addresses for my GP or dentist but if I need to talk to them, I generally need to make an appointment so phone is the best way to communicate. I've no experience with speech therapists.

Yet I could email my child's teacher or headteacher any time of the day or night.

That is how email works. It's an asynchronous method of communication. I send at a time convenient to me, you read and reply at a time that is convenient to you. There is no guarantee that even if I send an email during office hours that it will be delivered during office hours.

Why is that so difficult to understand? If a person doesn't want to deal with email out of hours, then they should set up their systems so they don't have to, rather than expecting the world to adapt for them.

Another thing to consider is that when you email the dentist, doctor, solicitor, Tesco customer service counter etc, you are emailing people who have to answer emails as part of their day to day job.

Answering emails is not and should not be part of a teachers day to day job.

A teacher arrives to school and has about 30 minutes to an hour depending on how early they are, to prepare for lessons; photocopy work sheets; mark books etc.
Then they teach. They might get a short loo break and then it’s straight back to teaching. At lunchtime (usually about 40 minutes) they have lunch and are not being paid. Then it’s more teaching and at around 3pm you once again stop being paid as your directed time is up.
So anytime you answer emails is going to be unpaid, unlike most other jobs, which is why I think that I agree that parents should not be emailing teachers at all.

What if a teacher reply back to you at 3am ?

If i am given an admin email I use that, if I am given an direct email I use that.

I have rarely had to contact the school but I use what email I am given

If we are not to email teachers direct dont give out their email

Why is it so complicated?

I genuinely have no idea why schools have started to give out teacher emails. Probably the same reason they make a lot of other stupid decisions.
There’s nothing as cheap and undervalued as a teacher’s time.

@OchonAgusOchonO why do I find it difficult to understand? I listed some professions you can't email directly. I can assure you I can't email my physio - is yours private possibly? So what point have you actually made? I can't contact these people directly, I could email their office but it would be picked up during working hours by reception/secretarial staff. They will also have individual work emails used by colleagues. I have an individual work email but parents can just as easily email the office address and it can be appropriately redirected by staff there.
So I would reiterate, if we can accept many professions not giving us direct email addresses why do many posters on here expect to have teachers' emails?

[quote Mistressiggi]@OchonAgusOchonO why do I find it difficult to understand? I listed some professions you can't email directly. I can assure you I can't email my physio - is yours private possibly? So what point have you actually made? I can't contact these people directly, I could email their office but it would be picked up during working hours by reception/secretarial staff. They will also have individual work emails used by colleagues. I have an individual work email but parents can just as easily email the office address and it can be appropriately redirected by staff there.
So I would reiterate, if we can accept many professions not giving us direct email addresses why do many posters on here expect to have teachers' emails?[/quote]
You listed some professionals you can't email directly. I can email one of those and would do so with queries about exercises if I don't need a synchronous discussion. For the others, email would not be the most effective or efficient method of communication as most people would generally want to communicate synchronously rather than asynchronously with them.

I have an individual work email but parents can just as easily email the office address and it can be appropriately redirected by staff there.

If you don't want to communicate with parents via email, then don't. Tell them to contact the office. Don't give them your email address. If your school gives out the email address, don't engage with parents' emails unless it suits.

So I would reiterate, if we can accept many professions not giving us direct email addresses why do many posters on here expect to have teachers' emails?

The focus of this thread is not whether teachers are directly contactable via email but whether schools are reasonable to dictate when people use the email address provided, regardless of whether the email goes directly to the teacher or to the office.

And so I would reiterate, it is up to each individual to manage their own email. It is not reasonable to dictate when others send an email, any more than it is reasonable to dictate when others reply to an email.

@blueberrypie0112

What if a teacher reply back to you at 3am ?

I wouldn't read it until the following day as I manage my emails to suit my life.

It is ridiculous. Many parents work those hours and you don't have to reply to an email immediately.

It's also a bit of a conceit to suggest that teachers don't irk outside of those hours.

I'd struggle with those times, working 7.00 to 6.30 in a rural location with no WiFi available to staff and very, very patchy mobile reception. Surely the benefit of emailing is that you can send it at any time, but the person receiving it can open it at their leisure or during certain hours. That being said, teacher's personal email addresses should not be used, a central admin address would be better.

She can abuse you via email just as easily within working hours as outside of them

Yeah but within working hours the teacher has colleagues around them for support and the appropriate work environment.

I’ve had shitty emails at home and it has felt really intrusive and more distressing than at school. As for turning off emails at 5, I, like most teachers, do a lot of work after 5.

I get what the school is saying and why they are saying it. I also get parents saying that they need to write emails in the evenings. It’s a shame that scheduling emails isn’t an automatic evening feature like it is in Outlook.

If parents are abusive then that issue should be dealt with.

We shouldn't have blanket rules that inhibit appropriate communication simply to prevent the smaller volume of inappropriate communication.

This rule won't encourage respect for teachers as everyone else also receives emails out of hours.

The school could send out a message stating emails will only be read between 8:30 and 5:30 to allow teachers down time

But instead they try to control several hundred parents with different working patterns and access to email. Then they’ll wonder why it doesn’t work

All those posters saying things like “it’s because teachers have received angry emails from parents (possibly drunk) in the middle of the night that are aggressive and threatening...” probably don’t realise that people in other professions get the same level of abuse and aggression from customers too - possibly even the same people as the parents sending aggressive emails to teachers. I’ve known people to receive death threats by email from unhappy customers.

Some people are just aggressive. It’s not acceptable and needs to be dealt with individually. You don’t tell everyone else to not email in the evening or over the weekend because a minority of people don’t know how to control themselves.

It would have been better for the school to say “email is not appropriate for out-of-hours emergencies as messages will only be responded to during business hours. For urgent matters, please call...” and have an emergency number set up for COVID results, etc. That is a far more grown-up way of telling people “I don’t need to hear from you at 11 pm that little Johnny can’t find his reading book”.

The rest of us manage to switch notifications off if we don’t want to be disturbed when we are not officially working. Or we skim through and skip past “tomorrow’s meeting has been changed from 10 am to 11 am” and pick out the most urgent ones if we feel so inclined to check emails when we are not in the office. It’s really not that difficult. You’re not the only ones who have this “problem”.

BritWife
I imagine the difference is that the people in business won’t be receiving the emails in such large volumes. Secondary teachers taking classes every day must see hundreds and hundreds of children every week. Also the business has clients. The correspondence they receive in the main needs dealing with unlike much of the crap and rants sent by some parents.... but teachers still need to deal with it. Parents are not clients. I do see why your way think your way of addressing this issue would be better. But doesn’t solve the drunk mails from parents. I imagine teachers get a lot of abuse.

I imagine teachers get a lot of abuse.

I imagine all sorts of things but it doesn't make them true.

I've worked with very violet offenders. Worst threats I received were working in a call centre. Proper scary weirdos.

I think people who are saying it's ridiculous is missing a point. They don't normally say that parents can't email at the convenient time. We all know how email work. But if the school made that kind of rule, there must be some reason behind it. So it's silly to compare to other profession and say it's BU. Because this particular case may not be the normal case, the HT is doing something to protect teachers. There must be parents harassing or abusing teacher through email. Otherwise why would they even need to make this rule?

Emails are not like phone calls. They are asynchronous.... A bit like posting a letter.

When someone sends an email the timing is not of importance. It is of the understanding of both parties that it is simply a message, with a subject giving a clue as to the nature and importance of the message. The recipient chooses to respond when they see fit. When they open it, read it, respond to it, is their choice. In other words, the impetus is on the recipient to handle and respond appropriately. Which might even mean a bit of organisation and prioritising.

There's no worldwide gang of email gremlins waiting to tell somebody off for not responding to an email within an hour.

Changing the rules on sending emails is like saying "don't post any letters to us between 2pm and 8pm each day". It doesn't make sense. It's immaterial to the way the system works.

Also it makes it a very one sided way of communication. Parents cannot then say "please don't email me after 6pm", right? That is not civilised.... The school is not teaching the parents. They are teaching the children.

Seriously how do some people think? I wonder if they use email at all?

There are things like 'out of office'.... personal reminders... Folders... Colour coding..... "unread email".... "don't send read receipt" etc.....

Emergencies should be handled in a separate procedure. You wouldn't send an email to 999 if it was an emergency ffs.... For that, there is an emergency procedure/ phone number.

Asking someone not to send an email outside of working hours is very strange and gives the impression that this person doesn't understand how emails work. Or worse, that the teacher is incapable of good judgement.

How do you think people email eachother across time zones in normal business?

To whoever says you can't tell when an email is urgent so it should be sent at a certain time .... Seriously I'm going to use an MN phrase now as for the first time it feels appropriate. Are you on glue?! Anything which has to be immediately seen and acted upon isn't suitable for an email if it's out of hours... That's basic common sense.

What is more probable is that one or two parents have not quite grasped the correct use of email. And therefore the school, rather than remind them about the etiquette and give separate emergency procedure so as to prevent further confusion, is unable to resolve it because themselves have no understanding of proper email use.

@MrsTerryPratchett

I imagine teachers get a lot of abuse.

I imagine all sorts of things but it doesn't make them true.

I've worked with very violet offenders. Worst threats I received were working in a call centre. Proper scary weirdos.

Yes but these people couldn’t email you directly. More than one person has pointed this out....

I get a lot of drunk emails. But I just don’t read email when I’m not working. Simple.

I imagine teachers get a lot of abuse.

Try working in housing benefit and council tax and see how it compares

Can only comment on my DC school (primary) but I would directly email the teacher about a Covid case.

That's for the office.

Thankfully we don't have an email time restriction for sending but certainly (surely like most reasonable people) I wouldn't expect them to email me outside of work hours. Although often they do, and I always make sure to acknowledge abs thank them for it.

What if a teacher reply back to you at 3am

3am is fine, I am in bed hopefully asleep, I won't see it.

6pm on a Sunday evening isn't ok.

Otherwise it's when I turn the laptop on in the morning - why would it make any difference what time the parents chose to email? It doesn't disturb me till I check my inbox

It disturbs if it pops up on your phone. Admittedly it is easier to switch off a work email address. The problems I had arose because people were sending work emails to my personal email address, so I couldn't avoid seeing them.

CatMagic, why can't you not see there may be the reason for this particular, kind of weird request from school?
Some teachers said on this thread that parents get abusive if they don't reply to email straight away. I have certainly seen people posting angry thread because teacher hasn't responded to their email on MN with something that aren't urgent.
In normal circumstances, this won't happen, if parents sends an email, and expect teachers to respond at reasonable time.