Is it rude to email on a Sunday

[fluffyslipper1]

Im a SCITT trainees I'm in tomorrow and I'm planning a lesson for Tuesday that I had a question about. Is it Rude if I email the teacher today? Shall I just ask about the lesson plan when I'm in tomorrow instead

I don't think it is rude, necessarily. However, some (not all) people frown upon on it as they shouldn't be expected to work on a weekend. There is also the very real possibility that they won't reply until tomorrow anyway, so it might not help you right now.

I would email but I would also acknowledge that it's Sunday and that I don't expect a reply til a work day

Do you need an answer today? You could always write the email but schedule it to be received tomorrow.

It wouldn't be rude to send the email, but I would acknowledge that it's the weekend.

As an aside, if the answer is important to the lesson, I'd still plan the full lesson anyway and adapt once you get a response. Our ITT providers say trainee planning should be submitted to class teachers a set time before the lesson, usually 2 days. At least if you have planned the lesson you're organised in case your mentor/class teacher only has time to reply on Monday after school.

Getting an email from a trainee at the weekend would piss me off (but then I'm fairly grumpy anyway.)
You wouldn't know it though as I would reply nicely to you.

Mistressinthetulips

Whereas I don't mind if they send an email over the weekend, as long as they're not expecting an immediate reply or it to be a priority first thing on Monday morning.

@LolaSmiles

Mistressinthetulips Whereas I don't mind if they send an email over the weekend, as long as they're not expecting an immediate reply or it to be a priority first thing on Monday morning.

I left it! I figured we all need protected time and as long as it wasn't urgent I could wait. But also remember you guys were trainees once and we all start at the same place so no need for being pissed off by us. This is probably one of the tougher years to train lol

@Mistressinthetulips

Getting an email from a trainee at the weekend would piss me off (but then I'm fairly grumpy anyway.) You wouldn't know it though as I would reply nicely to you.

Yeah I left it as it's their protected time. However, one thing I will say is you were a trainee once. Circumstances this year sometimes to require some understanding and we've had to adapt to so many changes too so there's no need to get annoyed by a trainee just asking for support.

I wouldn't be remotely annoyed at a trainee asking for support. I would bend over backwards to help them. But I will not put them ahead of my own dc, which is what you are asking for by interrupting my weekend.

When I was a trainee emailing anyone in the department would have been impossible - I'll let you imagine why

@Mistressinthetulips

When I was a trainee emailing anyone in the department would have been impossible - I'll let you imagine why

Definitely!

@LolaSmiles

I left it! I figured we all need protected time and as long as it wasn't urgent I could wait. But also remember you guys were trainees once and we all start at the same place so no need for being pissed off by us. This is probably one of the tougher years to train lol It's not a case of being pissed off. Part of working with trainees is equipping them for life in school in addition to becoming competent in the classroom.

One of our training providers is excellent at communicating reasonable/unreasonable expectations to trainees, and also to mentors. Some mentors ignore this and reply at all hours/over weekends/give their numbers out, but in my experience that's how problems occur later when the trainees is in a different school who do things by the ITT provider expectations.

One of the best lessons from my training year came from one of my mentors. She was a great teacher and a very helpful, friendly colleague, but I remember admiring her outlook that teaching is a job, and it will take up as much of your life as you allow so it's important to have boundaries. More people need that attitude in my opinion.

Yep agreed my old mentor at placement one gave me her number. I never texted it once because again there's really nothing that urgent. But yeah I mean my last mentor was willing to do most things like reply any time etc. But I kinda figured texting could lead to an issue of unprofessionalism by my provider

I do think your reply to me was quite rude OP. You did, after all, start a thread asking if it would be rude to email so you knew there was a possibility people wouldn't like it!
I'd already said I would have helped you out and you wouldn't have known from my response that it annoyed me, but that wasn't enough - are you actually telling me that it is wrong for me to feel annoyed if my weekend is interrupted?

It's not automatically unprofessional to text, but it can cause some issues.

For example,
Trainee is used to being able to contact at all hours in School A, but School B follows the ITT expectations. Trainee doesn't actually learn how to manage their time, or how to make decisions (which would be reviewed with the teacher later) because they're so used to having someone on call.
Or trainee is used to a very informal relationship where it's straying more into friends than a friendly professional relationship. If there are concerns about trainee's progress then it's much more awkward to deal with, or it gets glossed over and another school has to pick up the pieces. In this situation the trainee thinks they're a great teacher because friend mentor didn't say anything and therefore the second school is viewed unduly negatively.

We've got a new rule not to email out of hours. I understand the principle but to be honest I don't like it. It means at the end of a holiday I get 1000 emails that staff have sent over the holiday and scheduled for Monday morning, and I have no time to respond to them. I'd prefer to respond to them in my own time over the holiday, and avoid the Monday morning onslaught. But I realise not everyone feels that way.

I'm with you valancy
I have several scheduled emails to staff which land at the same time weekly to help them plan - but I tend to send emails when it suits me but clearly acknowledging if it's not a typical work time.

Our policy is that people can send when they want to, but there is no expectation of a reply. It works well for this school culture. In another school with the same policy it was toxic workaholism.

What annoys me more are people sending emails about things that would be a 30 second conversation when we are in the same building, or people sending emails asking for urgent information based on their own piss poor time management.

We always sent when we liked because people are under no obligation to look at emails out of school. However, with Covid we have needed to look at emails during several holidays to be sure the school was reopening etc! I have noticed the ones I receive out of normal hours are more "important" ones now rather than stuff that could wait. Except for the ones pupils send of course

I wouldn't be remotely annoyed at a trainee asking for support. I would bend over backwards to help them. But I will not put them ahead of my own dc, which is what you are asking for by interrupting my weekend.

But the trainee isn't doing that.
E-mails are a particularly useful communication tool, simply because they do not 'interrupt' or 'demand an answer'.
Person 1 send the e-mail when they are working / thinking about the issue / wanting to communicate or ask something and there is no expectation whatsoever that the recipient will look at it right away or answer it even if they do notice it.
Person 2 (the recipient) chooses to look at their e-mails when it is convenient for them, and even then, still has the choice of choosing when to answer it.
I don't look at work e-mails if I am doing something with my family, or relaxing in some other way. When I do look at work e-mails, I then skim who they are from and the subject box and decide which ones to prioritise.

So, IMO, no, it's not rude at all, as long as you aren't 'demanding' an answer by any particular time but having read some of these answers, it would seem sensible to speak to the individual and get their stance on it.

BackforGood
I suppose a lot depends on the content of the email too.
Emailing on a Saturday afternoon because you've got a question that could easily be answered in passing when everyone is in work, or emailing Sunday asking for help resourcing Monday's lesson is going to get a different response to emailing some ITT forms across saying "I'm doing my ITT admin this afternoon. Here's your copy. Would it be possible to go through this in my mentor meeting?"

Trainees aside, I think a lot of people don't consider that each time they send an email they're adding work to someone else. My workload has been higher in schools where people send emails for everything the second a question enters their head.

I fall strongly on the side of scheduling the email for first thing Monday morning. Weekends are down time for me and I hate receiving emails from work, regardless of whether they come from a trainee or SLT. Like others I would write a perfectly nice reply but I wouldn't be that pleased about it really.
I would advise you not to email teachers/supervisors at the weekend unless it's super urgent.

But why are you looking at your email inbox, if you have made a decision to have your down time at the weekend ?

That's the point.
It isn't the sender of the e-mail's "fault". They haven't learned and then memorised the times of day or days of week everyone else chooses to work or chooses to rest. They have left the question there, and it is up to the recipient when they choose to pick it up.

That is one crucial way where e-mail is better than phoning someone, which interrupts what the person is doing and "demands" to be dealt with there and then - email is more akin to post in that it is up to the recipient when they open it.

We look at our email because something genuinely important might have come up (especially this year) but that doesn't mean wanting to mentally take on board absolutely anything someone may have chosen to send to us! This has been discussed time and again on threads about whether parents should email teachers out of school hours, for example. People don't need to memorise a whole load of different "downtimes" - weekends are automatically included! Does your school have any policy at all about sending emails @BackforGood?

Sorry, had meant to add on the end, avoiding emailing in the evenings or weekends is a strategy used by some schools to reduce teachers stress. (I may once have had a HT who would email us at 3 in the morning, whenever a new idea occurred to him!)