Tulsa Teachers To Cut Out Non-Contract Work

Many Tulsa Public School teachers are getting ready to work only during school hours, starting Monday. 

That means no arriving early or staying late and no grading assignments at home. 

One elementary teacher hopes this will get lawmaker's attention.

The Oklahoma Education Association is asking Tulsa Public School teachers to walk into school together and leave together on time and leave all their work at school.

When the bell rings at 2:35 p.m. and children head home from Eugene Field Elementary, first-grade Teacher Kirsten McCullough stays in her classroom and may not leave until 5:00 p.m. 

"Even whenever they're not around, they're around in my mind. Because they're like my kids," McCullough said. 

McCullough sits in her empty classroom, sticking post-it notes on each one of her 18 students' workbooks.

It's the page they will turn to in the next day's lessons. 

What might seem like a little task, she said, makes a big difference in how time is used during the school day.

And it's a task she won't be taking the time to do starting Monday. 

McCullough, a Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association member, said she will be doing exactly what the teachers union and the district is asking. 

"I'm not gonna put in any outside work and if I can't grade all my papers, If I can't get everything done that I need to do, it's staying here," McCullough said. 

That outside work: grading papers and planning lessons, means she works 50 to 60 hours each week.

She said working to contract will have a negative impact on her first graders. 

03/08/2018 Related Story: 'Working to the Contract' Hurts Students, Tulsa Teacher Says

"It's gonna be really chaotic, trying to figure out 'oh, we're gonna do, uh, this today.'," said McCullough. 

McCullough said she doesn't want to do it but she feels she need to.  

"I'm gonna feel really bad the whole time," she said. 

"This is absolutely necessary because a line needs to be drawn," she said.