BEND OVER AND TAKE IT

This is how I feel today. To complain about a work schedule may seem pointless to you, but when you have been planning around something different for the last month, it begins to become a huge deal. I've been the nice one. I've done whatever the department heads have asked of me. However when I am once again teaching an overload for the quarter, I respectfully asked if I could have one class over another. Meaning that instead of teaching from 6-10 on Monday night and coming in to teach 8-5 Tuesday, they could schedule me for an afternoon Friday class or something else to fit with the bulk of the classes I'm teaching. It's not so much that I have to teach the course. (Mind you I'm not even in his department...they get confused because I've taught so many of their classes. So in all trueness he's supposed to be planning around my other department's schedule. Which he did not.) It's the fact that I sat down with the head of the department and we had at least an hour discussion and came to the conclusion that I would take over an unfilled Friday afternoon class. We discussed the requirements for the class. He told me where I could get all of the information for that class. He even wrote it down on one of the many schedules he had. But alas, to my dismay I come to find out that I still have the night class. Nothing has changed and he has no recollection of the conversation we had. The president of the school does not want any teacher teaching more than 5 classes (I have 6). He also doesn't want anyone to teach from 6-10 and then 8am the next morning. I have done that for every quarter I've been at that school. Sometimes at least 3 days a week. I've just come off an awful schedule, and once again I'm back on another. If you're not a teacher you don't understand what this feels like. Most people look at a teachers schedule, especially a college teacher, and figure that we have so much time off. But when you take into account the planning (the school figures in about 2 hours or so for planning..I have 4 preps), the grading (it takes me anywhere from 3-6 hours to grade one class project depending on the size), the mandatory office hours (another 1-2 hours you are supposed to be available for your students per class), the mandatory committee you have to serve on as a full-time instructor, mandatory faculty meetings, mandatory "training" sessions, all the administrative paper work we are required to do, not to mention the countless questions via email you get after you leave class daily from your stupid students you are left with ZERO time to breathe. So I'm not really writing for understanding because unless you're in it you don't get it. I'm venting cause I know I can't do it anywhere else. Maybe by Monday I'll feel like painting back on that big red smile and doing my jigg for them again. Dance....