At What Point Am I Allowed to Start Complaining About Mondays...When Truthfully, All of Us Have Been Living Mondays Almost for an Entire Year

I'll be honest. I'm just returning to the calendric world, which is ironic, because Calendric Crandall was my theme for 2020. I actually was good at keeping track of dates and deadlines, but when the sabbatical hit (at a time of Covid) I was freed from having obligations so Monday - Sunday, week by week, blurred. How was it different from any other day?

As a new semester creeps forward where I have to be responsible to contracted obligations, I realize the Monday conundrum returns. Don't get me wrong...in academia, Monday - Sunday is a phenomenon always in question because the work doesn't end on weekends; we have to be careful and strategic about making space for what we understand to be "personal time." That's almost a shameful thing to admit, but it's hard for us to ever get any of it. 

Sabbatical, however, is the pent-ultimate space for freeing the self from professional obligations. Although we still work 7 days a week, we don't feel guilty when we, say, take a walk....cook food for our families...check in with others...and (cough cough) watch television. 

My point here is not to be whiny or obnoxious, but to simply state that for five or so months I've been given the freedom to not care about the way time works in higher education; instead, I've defined what Monday means in my terms. That is very, very different from what Monday means in terms of traditional employment. This semester, too, Mondays will mean an 8 a.m. course which in the way I live my life is next to impossible, especially since I'm up to midnight most nights working with colleagues across the U.S. in other work.

Seriously, Crandall. 8 a.m. on Monday?

And then I think about all the years where I was in my classroom, easily, by 6:45 a.m. Monday-Friday, simply so I could be ready for my 8:00 a.m. (first class) experience. I also have to remember that each and every semester then I had 130+ students I was accountable for. That is not higher education at all. The class responsibility is minimal in comparison. I now see that the professions are very different and I point it out simply because (cough cough cough, again) K-12 teachers are abused, overworked, and under-compensated. That is more obvious now than ever before. 

At Syracuse, I took class with this brilliant educational philosopher who never taught K-12 schools. He'd always ask me questions, especially when I criticized his well-published, reputable trajectory in relation to the teaching reality of every day teachers (he never taught K-12, but was a professor of those who do). When I faulted his success in higher education next to what the everyday teacher experiences through their labor, he didn't understand, but did admit, "Yea, a lot of teachers I work with allude to that."

That's because it's true. 

Theorizing education, valuing the work that teachers due, and then putting dollar signs and hierarchies on it are part of the problem. Academia and K-12 realities are very different (almost to the point I might say, NIGHT vs. DAY). I might argue that the best academics, though, are the ones truest to the cause, and recognize the reality of schools. They never lose sight of it, and keep it in their daily flow.

Yet, those most disconnected from this truth are often the ones awarded as educational experts.

What am I? Year 25 now? I can't keep track. I will say, though: (1) kids expertise on their learning first, (2) K-12 teacher expertise second, and then (3) those of us who moved to higher education third. 

I know this might #$@#$ with people's thinking, but in reality it is 100% true. I know, because I've done both. I'm doing both. And I continue to get frustrated by how expertise in K-12 teaching gets defined. 

And with that, I'm stepping off my soap box for an early-morning meeting. Ah, Mondays.