Part-time teachers

[popsycal]

Bringing this over from another thread as I am hijacking too much and taking the thread off on an unintended tangent.

Part time teachers don't get paid to go into school on INSET days when they don't work. MOst do though, at their own expense, and are silently expected to by their bosses.

Most attend all parents' evening yet are only required to do so pro rata.

Part time teachers on the whole do AS MUCH AS as much work (pro rata) as their full time counterparts. In many cases, more for the hours that they do.

I have worked full time, 0.8 times and 0.4 time. I am by far a better teaching working reduced hours. And at the end of the day, it is your children who get the benefit.

Yes, there are issues of continuity. Part time staff spend their OWN TIME communicating, sharing information and planning together (just as full time staff do). Management should allow time in the school day to do this but, due because we teach during the school day, this rarely happens.

RANT OVER

No problem with only one teacher for shared classes attending, but where you are the class's only teacher for that subject then I think you should be at parent's evening. And for me that meant all my GCSE classes, as I was their only Biology teacher, even though they had other Science teachers. I know I am in a minority here though .

DS1 this year (Y6) has the deputy head or assistant head (I can't remember which), and on top of 0.5 day PPA she also has 1 day mgt duties, plus some other absences. DS1 appreciates consistency and continuity and I wasn't sure how he would cope, but it's been fab. He's had specialist MFL, IT, and RE teachers during this time. It is planned and well-organised and the communication is good.

In addition to the above they also set the whole year group for literacy/numeracy, so every morning he has 1hr with the other class teacher.

Obviously his teacher is not PT - far from it, but she doesn't teach him FT. He clearly benefits from the breadth of experience, and it is a stepping stone to secondary I feel.

Next week we have parent's evening, and I will be observing closely to see how much information she has gathered from the other staff who teach ds1.

did you find parents evening that useful mater?? (serious and honest question)

Sadly I tend to find that I mostly see the parenst of children who are doing fine, and the parents that I need to see tend not to attend. Although this has improved somewhat following the start of review day long side parents evenings.

I do see you point that sometins saying something good, helps to pain a better picture, but the kids I uesed to see were the ones who's parents spent 2 hours being told their kids were great.

One thing we do now is to send home post cards telling parents if children are doing well in science. Thses have proved very sucessful on the 'positive' side of the equation.

Popsycal, maybe I should have just denied it and told her to p*ss off but she just said something like,'oh your DH said such and such, didn't he?' It was true but not something I would have told friends in RL who know him IYKWIM so it just gave me the creeps a bit.

I really do find them useful MB. I remember telling one dad that his daughter needed to work a bit less hard . She was only in year 8, and was working so hard that she wasn't enjoying it as much as she might. She needed to pace herself . Even when the news is good, I still think there is often something useful to say.

And I always did see my fair share of "he needs a boot up the backside" parents as well...

I've done that one a few times too....girls who were like racing horses, ever so clvere, hardworking and fragile!

Mostly the boot up the arse cases used to 'avoid' us. That was when I used to phine [evil cackle emoticon needed]

Well, strangely the school with the highest proportion of boot up the backsiders had the highest proportion of parents attending. And I would demand the sign up sheets from t he children in question and make myself an appointment. I have also been known to drag parents without an appointment over to my desk once I've identified them

I found my one to one meetings or telephone conversions far more useful than I ever found parent's evening appointments. The latter were always more rushed, always running late, not enough time and not very private. Depending on the year group I could be teaching up to 90+ children - it was impossible for me to see ALL of these children's parents even if I was at the parent's evening. I could see 25-30 sets of parents maximum.

It was out of the question anyway. If I had no one to care for my child for all or part of that time then I simply couldn't attend. Sorry, but my child IS more important to me than seeing other children's parents for a 5 minute appointment. She has to be. I'm her mum.

tellusmater - I found the opposite. As I mentioned on another thread. The final straw was the non attendance of parents after I had made the 80 mile round trip, taking a good 3-4 hours out of my non contractual day, without pay.

I has 90 children in those Y9 classes. I had a very full parent's evening list, starting before the normal parent's evening time and finishing after it slightly. I managed to find childcare for DD - DH doesn't finish work until after I have to leave for the evening. Know how many parents actually bothered to show up? Three!

Oh, I've 'caught' parents in that way as well.

Sadly lots of our kids will make an appointment to placate the teacher and then 'forget' to tell their parent!

That is when I phone them.

I've found phone calls to be most useful, but that could be an oddity of our school, I suppose.

We are working to move away from seeing all parents at P/T meetings, and just targeting those children who are not making progress.

The other stuff tends to be covered in review day.

Review days are new to me. Never done one.

Haven't read the other thread.

And we will have to agree to disagree on this I think Hula

Of course, I may be seeing everything with t he rosy glow of hindsight...

In our review days each parent/carer and child gets a 20 minute chat with the Form tutor who outlines progress towards targets, discusses behavioural issues, and agrees new targets with Parent and child.

they alow a 'whole' child picture to be painted. Subject teachers give feedback to form tutors who them discuss with parent/ child.

priority appountments are made with parents who's children are not making progress to see specific teachers. parents can still see all members of staff at P/T meetings, but they are now seen as more 'targeted' evenings in the main.

review day is popular with the parents I've seen. Attendence is about 95% as opposed to around 50% for the parents evenings.

They sound good.

How about GCSE and A level, especially A level - then you see parents individually though?

Yes TellUsMater - after my experiences I have no rosy tint left at all when it comes tothose last years of teaching. Everything very bold in black and white now! I can only talk from what worked very well with my situation re parent's evenings, etc. We had review days too - and it was on my work day, but I didn't have a form then as PT.