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It is going to vary from district from district but where our kids go to school the teachers are contracted to be there an hour before school and an hour after school so for the high school that is 6:30-3:30 and the middle school that is 7-4.
In the district where I used to work high school teachers are there from 7:15 until 3:30. During that time they get a 30 minute lunch and a 50 minute planning period. Many days they spend the planning period covering another teacher's class because they are usually short on subs.
thanks to everyone who replied............so teaching is really an eight hour day.
No, teachers are required to be on campus for 8 hours a day. You didn't ask how many hours anyone spends outside of their contract grading or planning.
Yeah, eight hours at school then another eight hours at home.
The contracted time you have to be at school basically covers the actual in-class time and usually one planning period.
But you also have to work lesson plans, call parents, grade, fix up your classroom, grade some more...the actual school year may be 9 months, but you'll do a full years worth of work in that 9 months.
RELAX...................grading papers and "fixing up your classroom" isnt that time consuming. If you are efficient and productive then it shouldn't consume that much time out of the classroom.
RELAX...................grading papers and "fixing up your classroom" isnt that time consuming. If you are efficient and productive then it shouldn't consume that much time out of the classroom.
Really? You don't think grading papers for 140 students is time consuming? I'd like to know what your secrets are. If they each turn in three assignments a week and it takes me an average of 1 minute an assignment to grade (wishful thinking here but just trying to show how silly the notion is that grading doesn't take time) I'm looking at 7 hours per week spent grading. That's an extra day.
Every teacher I know takes papers with them wherever they go. I sit in my daughter's piano lesson and grade papers every week. I grade if I'm waiting at the dentists office. I take my grading folders with me wherever I go. Grading is non stop.
If you have some secret we don't know to cutting down on grading time let us in on the secret. It can take me 3 hours to grade lab reports for just one class and I have 6 classes doing labs.
As far as setting up your room, the teachers I work with spend the last week of their summer "vacation" (usually spent taking the continuing education credits we all have to have under NCLB) doing that. If you don't get it done before school starts, it'll be Christmas by the time it's done. We also need to do seating charts and send post cards to our new students before the term begins.
Phone calls home are another thorn in my side. I only seem to be able to get 6-8 calls in in an hour by the time I look up phone numbers and pull up grade reports. Got any secrets for that too?
Personally, I find that teaching compares to the term I took 18 credits in engineering school and worked 30 hours a week.
And another misconception is that we have as much time off as the kids do. We don't. Many of their half days and days off are in service days for us. We are required to work one week after school gets out and are in training for one week before school starts so that week to set up our rooms has to be before that. I'm contracted for 200 days per year. As an engineer, I used to work 220 days per year. Trust me, I work enough in the evenings and on weekends during the school year to make up for that 20 day difference many times over.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 04-16-2010 at 06:16 PM..
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If they each turn in three assignments a week and it takes me an average of 1 minute an assignment to grade (wishful thinking here but just trying to show how silly the notion is that grading doesn't take time) I'm looking at 7 hours per week spent grading. That's an extra day.
