What Teachers Don’t Get Paid For When School Reopens: Practical Tips for Parents and Teachers
I’m unlocking my fourth-grade classroom door at 7:22 a.m. on the first day back from winter break, coffee still half-frozen in the cupholder because I stopped to fill my gas tank on the way, and I was actually feeling good. For two weeks I didn’t open my work email once, I ate my kid’s leftover Christmas fudge for breakfast three days in a row, I slept until 8 a.m. like it was a rebellious act. Then I flip open my lesson plan clipboard and see the neon pink sticky note I scribbled before break: Auction basket due Friday. Mia needs bed.
That’s when it hits me: I forgot all the bullshit that doesn’t show up in my job description, the stuff I don’t get paid a single cent for. It’s not the lesson plans or grading, that’s the work I signed up for. This is the extra: the fundraiser baskets, the coordinating of donations for a student whose family just lost their housing, the 8 p.m. texts asking to let a parent back in the building for a forgotten lunch box or inhaler, the mediating of parent fights that started on the PTA Facebook page, the buying of winter gloves for the kid whose family can’t afford them that comes out of my grocery budget.
I’ve been teaching for seven years, and I didn’t even realize how much of this I normalized until last spring, when I was sitting in a parent-teacher conference with a mom named Sarah, and we got to talking about how rent went up $300 for everyone in town this year. When I told her my base salary, she blinked and said, “Wait, you bought that whole class snack bin out of your own money? No one pays you for that?” I laughed and said that’s just how it is, but she kept asking. She had no idea. Most parents don’t. They assume the school budgets for this stuff, or that it’s all part of what my salary covers. They don’t know that our one school social worker is responsible for 800 kids, so any basic need a student has that pops up between her scheduled meetings falls to me. They don’t know that after-school meetings, fundraiser prep, and coordinating donations all happen after my contract ends at 3:30, with no overtime, no comp time, no extra pay.
Last year, for this same auction basket, I spent three nights after my own kid went to bed gluing tissue paper decorations, messaging 18 different parents asking for donations, and ended up dropping $45 of my own money on a new board game because all I got was three donated candy canes and a used deck of cards. I left school that Friday stressed, behind on my own kid’s laundry, and $45 lighter, and that’s just one small thing. Multiply that by 10 extra things a month, and it adds up fast, in both time and money.
But what I’ve learned over the last couple years is that small, concrete changes from both parents and teachers can take a lot of the weight off, without anyone having to overhaul the whole broken system.
For parents, the biggest thing is to skip the vague “let me know if you need anything” and offer something specific, or respond to requests quickly with concrete help. When I sent my text to the parent group this morning asking for a board game for the auction, one parent dropped it on my desk before first bell even rang – that saved me that $45 this year. If you need to ask the teacher a non-emergency question outside of school hours, just ask yourself if it can wait until the next work day. A question about what time the class party is doesn’t need to be texted at 9 p.m. That’s time the teacher is supposed to be with their own family, and they don’t get paid to answer it after hours. If you have 20 minutes free one afternoon, offer a specific help: “I can wrap your auction basket after school Wednesday, I’ll bring the wrapping paper” instead of making the teacher coordinate and follow up with 10 different people to get it done.
For teachers, the small change that’s made the biggest difference for me is I started setting clear limits that don’t require a big fight with admin. I keep a running note in my phone of all the extra, uncompensated work I’ve agreed to that month. If it hits more than two hours of extra time, or more than $10 of my own money, I tell admin I can’t take anything else on. I used to say yes to everything because I felt guilty, but it’s not my job to fundraise for the school out of my own salary, and it’s not my job to cover for understaffed support departments. Saying no isn’t being unkind, it’s keeping me from burning out so I can actually show up for the kids for the work I do get paid for.
By 9 a.m. today, I already had three offers of board games, one parent offered to wrap the basket tomorrow after work, and another parent said she has a gently used twin bed she’s looking to get rid of, and she’ll deliver it to Mia’s mom next weekend. That’s all I needed.
The system’s still broken. I’ll still have unexpected extra stuff pop up that I don’t get paid for, and some weeks I’ll leave school frustrated and tired. I don’t have a big fix for all of it. But these small, concrete steps take the edge off. This year, I’m not staying up until 10 p.m. gluing tissue paper to a basket. I’m going home to eat dinner with my kid, and someone else is wrapping it. That’s enough for this first week back.
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