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If You Want Teachers to Attend After School Events, Pay Them
Until then, I won’t feel guilty about saying “no” to these functions.
I sit in a school improvement meeting zoning out during a discussion of our nonexistent cell phone policy plan when something snaps me out of my daydreaming.
“How do we get more teachers to go to school events? Lizzie and Kayla were pretty much the only teachers at prom,” one of our assistant principals declares, gesturing to two math teachers.
First of all, rude because I was there at prom albeit I pretty much stood by the food the whole night gossiping with one of my friends I dragged along. But still, I was there and I talked to a lot of students. They noticed my presence.
Second, I have an answer to the question of how to attract more teachers to after-school events: Pay them.
But I don’t say that because that will never happen.
However, teachers should not be shamed for not going to extracurricular functions outside of their contract hours.
Just last week, I perched in my familiar spot at yet another meeting, zoning out. This one is a Mentor-Beginning Teachers Meeting. They were looking for mentors to attend a summer session on mentoring. They couldn’t pay the attendees…
