duty

Teaching always has extra duties.

In New York, my extra duty was "emergency" coverages.  Teachers will always calling in sick, the coordinator could rarely get a hired sub to come from the outside, so teachers were given an extra lesson and time-and-a-half pay.  Because of union rules, they couldn't give you more than one, and couldn't give you three lessons in a row, and so on...but even so, I was willing to pay double in order not to take this extra duty.  It was hard enough teaching your regular classes, but with students you didn't know - they lied about their names, you had no weight with them, and usually, no lesson plan.

At my character school - my extra duty was ... I don't know, the lines blurred between my life, work, and the outside world.  I had more students, more classes, more hours, more small groups, more everything.  Even more money, but I'm not sure it was an even trade off.

When I substituted in Minnesota, sometimes I took over for a teacher who also had an extra duty.  Hallway duty for an hour, a morning, a lunch period - I wasn't ever sure about it, and I tried to remain that way.  Extra duties seemed to be for fools, administrative tricks to cover lack of man power.

So, I shouldn't be surprised there are extra duties in Turkey as well. Once a week my extra duty is to monitor an assigned hallway in between classes and though the lunch hour.  In addition, I also must sit in an assistant principals room for two periods to lend a hand with whatever he/she needs.  So while I only have three teaching hours that day, I have two room duties, a lunch duty, and hallway duty.

It's not difficult, it's extremely boring, and you mostly feel like a useless nag - so I try to keep the nagging to minimum and exercise the eye.  Duty days often give me headaches.  I don't know why, even on my best days, by the end of lunch period, the headache is there, or, if not - it's surely there by the time I get home.

I've turned it into my Starbucks day.  I stop at a Starbucks on the way to school and treat myself to a latte - I drink it in the car on the way to work and it gets me through the morning. I count my steps, work on my ballet moves (I have none, but I figured this was a good time to start).  I stretch, exercise discretely - going on my toes, balancing on one foot - it is terribly boring.

On the way home I bought a coke, hoping the caffeine would help my headache.  I got french fries for the kids and gave it to them when I got home so I could escape to take a shower and try to relax.  It helped.  The kids didn't eat, we watched a show, took a hot shower to help with their noses and coughs, and climbed in my bed with books.  Tolga is away in the field, but the kids seemed to accept bedtime tonight, accepting my no's and we slept together listening to kid's music.

Our beautiful babes.