If teaching is so 'horrible', why do you keep teaching? (employment, skills)
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are non-educators now involved in the school system, forever wanting everything documented and costs justified. I think they've applied the corporate approaches to kids and instructors: charting, testing out the wazoo, financial incentives, numerical improvement targets pressure, fire and hire someone newer and cheaper, etc.
Most of the people in my system (non-public) who dictate the methodology of the paperwork (what of it isn't dicated by state and federal standards, anyway) are indeed people who do not have education backgrounds. It's not as much about costs in my particular system (our tuition is exorbitant), and it's not a corporate/financial approach, necessarily...it's more a psych research approach.
My wife and I both teach. We put in zero hours during the summer.
What do you teach? I am curious because most of the high school teachers I know do put in prep time during the summer. This is especially true if you will be teaching a different class or different level than you did the previous year and that is fairly common for hs teaching.
What do you teach? I am curious because most of the high school teachers I know do put in prep time during the summer. This is especially true if you will be teaching a different class or different level than you did the previous year and that is fairly common for hs teaching.
I have one old prep, and two new preps next year. I'll putter with my old prep this month improving lesson plans and activities and looking for better labs and demos to do. I'll, pretty much, work full time in August making sure the other two are ready to go in September.
What do you teach? I am curious because most of the high school teachers I know do put in prep time during the summer. This is especially true if you will be teaching a different class or different level than you did the previous year and that is fairly common for hs teaching.
Third grade and sixth grade.
My neighbor teaches hs math and we have a friend who teaches biology and oceanography. Prep for classes is done during the school year.
I work a lot outside of work, because I'm constantly on the lookout for new ideas, materials, ways to make the material as engaging as possible (can be a challenge with typically developing kids, even moreso kids with ASDs). I don't HAVE to do this, i.e., I'd still be paid even if I did less, but why not do as good a job as I can? Makes my day go more smoothly.
I found the rubric I used for teacher evaluations at the last district I worked at interesting...it was 50% based on teaching and 50% based on correct paperwork. So...in theory you could be a completely rotten teacher, but with an up to date grade book and lessons plans still get a "Satisfactory" evaluation.
Third grade and sixth grade.
My neighbor teaches hs math and we have a friend who teaches biology and oceanography. Prep for classes is done during the school year.
Must be nice. There was never enough time to do this during the school year when I taught. Again, it was more true if you had new classes than if you were teaching the same class each year. I often had 3 to 5 different classes when I taught HS math. If, for example, I had taught Algebra I and Geometry and Geometry honors one year and was going to teach Algebra II/trig and Calculus the following year, there would be quite a bit of prep over the summer. We only had one hour each day during the actual school year and often that was taken up with tutoring students who needed extra help or grading papers or ... well, you get the idea. After school was taken up with preps too for the next days classes as often the class did not go at the pace you had planned and you had to reteach or go faster depending on the particular class. Sometimes all five classes could be the same subject and yet be very different in pacing.
Third grade and sixth grade.
My neighbor teaches hs math and we have a friend who teaches biology and oceanography. Prep for classes is done during the school year.
If all of you are able to get prepared for new units, revise and improve current units as well as keep everything well organized, sorted out and correctly filed during the school then "I tip my hat to you". I've been teaching for over 30 years and and I can only recall a handful of good elementary teachers that didn't spend at least 20 to 30 hours each summer preparing and organizing and many spent five to ten times that amount of time. Some teachers spend too much time preparing over the summer and don't have time to "recharge their batteries" but very, very few spend zero time preparing.
Perhaps your school district has more preparation time built into the daily/weekly/monthly calendar than most school districts. At our elementary schools most teachers are lucky if we find time to go to the bathroom and scarf down a quick sandwich at our desks during the school day let alone do extra planning.
Up until this past year my district had three paid days to prepare in the fall and meetings were scheduled for almost that entire period. Our contract stated that we had to have four hours where we could work in our classroom without district, school or department scheduled meetings. If you can get prepared for a new school year, putting up all the bulletin boards, writing out all the name tags, counting & setting out textbooks, getting the bus charts/seating charts/reading groups/etc organized as well as preparing your lesson plans for the next week (while fielding phone calls and visits from the parents of your new students). WOW! All of you are AMAZING! I certainly couldn't get that done in the four hours that our district gave us.
Third grade and sixth grade.
My neighbor teaches hs math and we have a friend who teaches biology and oceanography. Prep for classes is done during the school year.
Wow, I have taught bio and oceanography, that was not my experience nor that of literally any other science teacher I know. My daily prep period was spent preparing and setting up labs, grading, mountains of paperwork, etc and the overflow was done after school. There was literally no time for revising lesson plans.
Must be nice. There was never enough time to do this during the school year when I taught. Again, it was more true if you had new classes than if you were teaching the same class each year. I often had 3 to 5 different classes when I taught HS math. If, for example, I had taught Algebra I and Geometry and Geometry honors one year and was going to teach Algebra II/trig and Calculus the following year, there would be quite a bit of prep over the summer. We only had one hour each day during the actual school year and often that was taken up with tutoring students who needed extra help or grading papers or ... well, you get the idea. After school was taken up with preps too for the next days classes as often the class did not go at the pace you had planned and you had to reteach or go faster depending on the particular class. Sometimes all five classes could be the same subject and yet be very different in pacing.
I have two third grade classes for language arts and social studies. This year I'll probably have about 28 in each class. They definitely don't work at the same pace and of course the plans get adjusted as the days go by. For reading alone I am usually 6 to 8 reading groups and writing workshop takes a lot of management to keep track of. During the school year I usually use the planning period to get things in order for the next day. During the school year I do bring a lot home and will spend at least 1-2 hours a night on school related items. Mondays the students leave 2.5 hours early. One of those Mondays is taken up by a staff meeting. The other Monday afternoons I usually have for my own planning or team planning. Tuesday-Friday I have either 35 minutes (one special), an hour (art), or 70 minutes (back to back specials) of planning a day, so it varies. Each week we have an hour long "CLT" meeting for which we get coverage. Once a quarter we have a retreat day. This is when the grade level team gets subs for the day and we can meet to plan. A ton gets done on these days. The school district has pacing guides developed that we use for planning. So much is laid out by the district and its curriculum staff. My wife teaches science and the lessons and kits that go with them are prepared by the district, but of course the lessons get adapted and supplemented as needed.
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