Days-Off Woes

In a previous post I mentioned how strange it has been to work regularly on Sundays.

Another, slightly-related issue, is the fact that the students (often) go to school 6 days a week. However, teachers and administrators usually only work 5 days a week (or less). (My experience in the U.S. was that most teachers were there when the students were there and certainly the administrators were almost always in the building when students were there.)

The fact that in Israel, the students are often in school more than the faculty has major implications on internal communication in the school. For example, the mechanech has his day off on Sunday, he is obviously not there to help his students that day with any problems they may have.
The next day, for example, the mechanech may be there to talk about the issues but the teacher who had the problem yesterday with that student may not be there.
The rakaz (coordinator) of the grade or of that subject may be the one who coordinates all of this communication traffic, but he/she has a day off too!
The administrator who oversees all of this has a day off as well!
And so on and so on.

Of course memos and paper trails are a good place to start, but there is nothing like talking face to face and that is lost when not everyone is around all the time.