Top ten facts you may not know about teachers...

My place of work

 DID YOU KNOW???

10. Teachers are legally bound to administer an Epipen in an emergency situation.

9. Supply teachers  do not come from the supply closet.

8. Teachers have no expense account. They cannot claim gas mileage, lunches, friend's lunches, friends of friends' expensive dinners, hotel rooms etc.

7.  Teachers are expected to attend costly professional development conferences and workshops, usually held on nights and weekends. The teachers unions offer limited funding for PD -- which comes from our union dues -- not from our employer.

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#Topten facts you may not know about #teachers... nblo.gs/CPMyJ #ontarioteachers #Bill115 #Rant
— Holly Massie (@HollyWroteit) September 30, 2012

6. Teachers source, research and create MOST of their course content; from designing lesson plans for each class, creating assignments and tests from scratch, choosing textbooks and media resources to designing their own assessment and evaluation plan.

5. Teachers are obligated to make an offense declaration each year.

4.Teachers pay for their own Christmas party, TGIFs and retirement parties.

3. Teachers  do all their own photocopying, word processing, phone calls and emails. The school office staff have enough work to do with their own near excessive administrative duties -- they are not teachers' personal secretaries and never have been.

2. Teachers are expected to be involved in extracurricular activities. They do so unpaid and on their own time. Again -- no expense account, hence many more hours spent organizing fundraisers. Fundraisers where many of the customers are fellow teachers.

And ... Number One ... wait for it...

Luckily, my niece invited us -- her own hand-raised bird

1. Teachers don't get a Christmas bonus -- not even a turkey.

How Social Media is ruining Our Minds -- turn off the computer and go out to play for once!

Holly and Family having real fun in the real world

Oh My.  School will be up and the kids running again in less than two weeks.

I, myself have only the one semester left before I retire. As if I would never stop teaching -- self-proclaimed know-it-all here...

With this in mind, I came across this info-graphic (in itself a statement of how information has to be presented in a flashier, multimedia fashion to garner attention)

From Visually.

911 Ten years later -- first week of school

Sir Wilfrid Laurier parking lot

 Well, the first week of school is finished and It was fun but really tiring.

I have two lovely classes. Lovely so far. I expect it will continue, they seem like nice kids..

September 11 is on Sunday. This will be the 10th September 11 that I've spoken to my classes about that day. And each year less and less of the students actually remember September 11. This year, only two students had anything to say. This is no surprise, considering that the grade nines were four years old in 2001 and the great tens were five. However, they were all very attentive and polite and allowed me to once again recall where I was on September 11, 2001.

I'd only been back to teaching, after two years sabbatical, for about five days when September 11 crashed in on all of us. I was in a new school with new students -- I didn't know anyone. So, when a student opened my door and said, "Miss, there's something happening on the TV in the room across the hall", I felt very alone in my sudden responsibility.

Now, you have to understand that Sir Wilfrid Laurier high school in Orleans Ontario was, and still is, the most technologically advanced school in the Ottawa area. The "TV" was a projection of live CNN on a pulldown screen, the size of the opposite wall.



I brought all the kids in my class into that classroom and, together, we watched the second plane hit and we watched the towers collapse and we feared for a students uncle who worked at the Pentagon.

We thought World War III had started.

We had what they call a primary experience. Unlike other schools that only found out after, and other people who weren't tuned in to the news, we were traumatized because we lived it at the moment it was happening.

But, we also bonded. Everyone felt closer to each other and I think this actually helped the school be what it is today. I know it shaped me. It made me think about life and death and appreciation.

Take a moment to remember the 343 firefighters and policemen who lost their lives that day. As one survivor of 9/11 said, "I was walking down the stairs to my life and I passed the firemen walking up the stairs to their deaths."

I'd like you to think about your life and appreciate the gift that it is and how tenuously we all hold on. Give a hug to your mom or dad.

and never go to bed angry.

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