Teachers - How Hard is Your Job, Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I simply don't understand these threads about how easy/hard teachers' jobs are. What is this about? I don't see similar threads about other professions.

In any profession, aren't there people who work incredibly hard and others who do the bare minimum. What am I missing?

plus 1 million

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I simply don't understand these threads about how easy/hard teachers' jobs are. What is this about? I don't see similar threads about other professions.

In any profession, aren't there people who work incredibly hard and others who do the bare minimum. What am I missing?

Teachers are very public about wanting raises. That is all. They are constantly talking about how hard their job is and why they need a raise. I agree it is though, but what I've never understood is why they don't fight for better working conditions. It's always about money rather than improved working conditions.

I always said that I didn't want a raise, I wanted a secretary!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I simply don't understand these threads about how easy/hard teachers' jobs are. What is this about? I don't see similar threads about other professions.

In any profession, aren't there people who work incredibly hard and others who do the bare minimum. What am I missing?

Teachers are very public about wanting raises. That is all. They are constantly talking about how hard their job is and why they need a raise. I agree it is though, but what I've never understood is why they don't fight for better working conditions. It's always about money rather than improved working conditions.

I always said that I didn't want a raise, I wanted a secretary!

I am very active in the teachers' union and have worked far, far more for better working conditions than for raises. (One of the main issues that I have worked on directly impacts kids and that is class sizes. In case, you haven't noticed, MoCo classes are huge this year.) In fact, it was only after our salary steps were frozen for years, that I did any work at all related to financial benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I simply don't understand these threads about how easy/hard teachers' jobs are. What is this about? I don't see similar threads about other professions.

In any profession, aren't there people who work incredibly hard and others who do the bare minimum. What am I missing?

Teachers are very public about wanting raises. That is all. They are constantly talking about how hard their job is and why they need a raise. I agree it is though, but what I've never understood is why they don't fight for better working conditions. It's always about money rather than improved working conditions.

I always said that I didn't want a raise, I wanted a secretary!

I am very active in the teachers' union and have worked far, far more for better working conditions than for raises. (One of the main issues that I have worked on directly impacts kids and that is class sizes. In case, you haven't noticed, MoCo classes are huge this year.) In fact, it was only after our salary steps were frozen for years, that I did any work at all related to financial benefits.

In FCPS it is all about the money. Not a strong teacher's union either.

[Anonymous]

Not a rant about how hard my job is, but rather a sad note: I love some aspects of my job. Helping kids. Sparking their curiosity about a field that I love. I don't even mind getting up early in the morning.

I pretty much hate grading. Not because it's a chore, but because it both matters too much to parents (they want grade inflation) and too little to the big wigs (to them only HTS scores count). However, this weekend, I'll haul home a book bag full of essays to grade. I'll write comments on each that few students will bother to read. Parents won't read the comments either or look at the rubric. They will look at the letter grade and be happy or not.

I wish what I spend so much unpaid time doing mattered.

[Anonymous]

I worked for 15 years as a high school teacher and have read many of these types of threads - how hard do teachers really work, how hard is the job, etc. I'll tell you what knocked me on my ass and led to my burnout and exit from the classroom. The emotional toll it takes on you every day. As a teacher, you LOVE these kids (well, most of them anyway!). You can't help letting their lives and what happens to them affect you.

A beloved student of mine that was an absolute joy to have in my class committed suicide. None of us had any inclination that he would do this. Seeing the absolute devastation of his parents, hundreds of kids crying, teachers beyond grief was something nobody should experience. Another student of mine was murdered. These are obviously extreme cases and not every teacher experiences them; but all the other day to day problems whether they be drugs, divorce, apathy, a father crying in my classroom because his son had joined a gang, etc. eventually eat at your soul. And you may think I was teaching in an inner-city school. I was not! This was an affluent suburban school district.

I worked 80 hours a week and planned and graded for hours every day. I had some crappy administrations that didn't support teachers as well as obnoxious parents who thought we were idiots. But it was the emotional toll that finally did me in. I still work in education, but in a completely different context now.

When people ask my opinion about entering the teaching field, these are the things I emphasize, because they are often left out of the discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is hard. I've worked in two other professional fields for 3 and 4 years respectively. It is slightly less intellectually challenging depending on the courses I'm assigned to teach and the particular students I get. This one career is definitely hardest on the body. For example, I had to have varicose veins treated due to standing all day. It's also emotional hard in a way that maybe only clergy, health care workers, and social workers understand. Financially, it is a lot harder. Not only am I paid relative little for my education and experience, but I shell out hundreds each year for basic classroom supplies.

A typical day:

I'm a morning person so I put in 2 hours of grading or prep for my classes at home before I wake up my children. I arrive at work a half an hour before the required duty time. I'm not the earliest staff member to arrive.

I have hot tea and a Greek yogurt while I handle email or make copies. This is important because I may not eat again until I arrive home.

Colleagues start arriving. This is when the important "meetings" happen. Information about students is exchanged, we learn which staff will be out and need someone to support their sub.

I make adjustments to my lesson and hit the bathroom. This is my one guaranteed opportunity to go before 1 pm. There is one female staff bathroom near my room, it has a single stall, and we are not allowed to use student bathrooms.

Students start arriving. Like all teachers, I have hall duty between classes, but I also am one of the few teachers with a locker key so I dash up and down the halls dealing with jambs and forgotten combinations. At the same time, students are looking for me to solve other issues: needing a pass to retake a quiz at lunch, a missing book, a crisis with a partner on a project.

I teach my first two classes and go to a team meeting during my "planning period" that could have been handled via email.

I teach a third class and tutor through lunch.

I teach my fourth class.

Finally, I have my real planning period. I dash to the bathroom. I'd love to sit in my room quietly to eat my lunch while I set up the next day's lesson, but my classroom is used by another teacher. I go to the media center and plan there. I have to post homework and any upcoming assessment information to Edline before 3 pm so I usually do that before the bell rings to change classes.

I teach my last class of the day.

I set up my room for the next day. Answer emails. Pack a bag with grading and print out anything that has to be copied the next morning. It's useless to try to copy after school because that's when flyers for the whole school and IEPs are run.

I head home. From now until they go to bed, I belong to my own children. I will sneak in emails while they are at sports practice or in bathroom, but I am not at my best at 3:30 so I try to conserve my energy and good will for them.

As I drift off, I do think now and then of something I want to do in the classroom so I keep a pad beside the bed for jotting down a quick note or making a simple sketch. If I really can't sleep, I get up and grade since light doesn't bother my partner but noise from tv does.

Grading, prepping, and dealing with email is also a big chunk out of each weekend.

I haven't even delved into dealing with confidential student records. I used to get IEPs at a glance. Our RTSE stopped the case managers from giving them because a few teachers didn't keep theirs locked up. Now I need to access the entire thing on MyMCPS to find the one piece of info I need.

This is actually a pretty good day. A bad day involves a student with SN having a meltdown mid class, technology failures (like bldg svcs unplugging my Chromebook cart overnight) and all the times I have taught sick because it's more effort to plan for a sub than to drag my feverish self in.

Despite this vent, the first 3 weeks of this school year were the easiest of my decade and a half long PS teaching career. By that, I mean that, I didn't sit in too many long and useless staff meetings, the copiers didn't break down, and the materials that I stored over the summer weren't misplaced or thrown away when building services cleaned my room.

However, all the usual stresses and strains that occur behind the scenes were still there. I received a new shipment of textbooks (finally) at 3 pm the Friday before school opened. I had no choice but to come in Saturday unpaid to inventory them and get them on shelves if I didn't want 10 boxes in the middle of my classroom floor.

I teach at a MS that is not only known for being a pressure cooker for MoCo's affluent kids and a good place for twice exceptional children, but is experiencing a small demographic shift. We doubled our ESOL enrollment in the short time I've been there. I'd be willing to bet my entire salary that none of these students are the illegal immigrants that DCUM's armchair pundits like to wail about. In fact, the majority aren't even Latino or lower income. But they still have enormous unique educational and socioemotional needs that we are struggling as a school to meet. I know my Down County colleagues have it harder.

Thank you! Our middle school sounds very similar to our MCPS school. The teachers clearly work hard and make themselves available to students before and after school and during lunch. Like you, many share classrooms. Not every teacher in our middle school is terrific but the majority seem very dedicated. I think teaching middle schoolers must be the most unpleasant job in the world, but my daughter's teachers tell me they enjoy it. My daughter is thinking about being a middle school teacher when she grows up which I believe is a direct reflection of the caring and commitment of her teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can think of a hundred jobs where people stand on their feet all day and can't pee on a whim. Geez

How many of these 100's of these standing jobs without bathroom breaks require a college education and often a master's degree? I can't think of them.

Well, surgeons. But they get paid a lot, and people respect them.

Okay, now PP only has to give me 99 more.

Stop with the no bathroom breaks. You get a lunch break and planning periods. Yes I understand you have to work through them but that 3 opportunities to go. Before and after the kids leave that is 5 times in a 7 hour day. I'm sure if you need more than that you could get a doctors note and accommodation.
Love all your nursing friends who don't get that or people die

Not the PP but I'd really love to know what schools have planning periods (plural!)

At the elementary level we'd have lunch and recess duty (rotating). Planning periods were cut down to 30 minutes a day (often less by the time all the kids left for specials and often they'd come back 5 minutes early and if there was a special event or a school play coming up we'd lose our prep time altogether). The 45 minutes before students arrived for the day were mandatory meetings, not planning time. After school there was bus duty, which frequently went past the regular contract time and I'd have to go back to my classroom afterwards to clean up and set up for the following day.

During prep I'd have just enough time to pee, set up for the afternoon, and sometimes write in student log books then the kids would be coming back down the hallway. That still left emails, copies, laminating, lesson plans, student concern meetings, writing IEPs, prep/planning for future days/activities, doing progress reports/report cards, creating or completing student behavior charts, data collection, completing induction requirements, submitting work orders for the things that were always breaking down, running to the book room to get materials, running to the office/storage rooms to get materials, DHS calls and follow ups (they were frequent), etc... I'd frequently have a 1-2 page to do list every single day and would only get through a very small portion of it.

Yes, nurses have difficult jobs too, but I rarely see people pissing on nurses and I rarely see so many misconceptions about nurses.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I worked for 15 years as a high school teacher and have read many of these types of threads - how hard do teachers really work, how hard is the job, etc. I'll tell you what knocked me on my ass and led to my burnout and exit from the classroom. The emotional toll it takes on you every day. As a teacher, you LOVE these kids (well, most of them anyway!). You can't help letting their lives and what happens to them affect you.

A beloved student of mine that was an absolute joy to have in my class committed suicide. None of us had any inclination that he would do this. Seeing the absolute devastation of his parents, hundreds of kids crying, teachers beyond grief was something nobody should experience. Another student of mine was murdered. These are obviously extreme cases and not every teacher experiences them; but all the other day to day problems whether they be drugs, divorce, apathy, a father crying in my classroom because his son had joined a gang, etc. eventually eat at your soul. And you may think I was teaching in an inner-city school. I was not! This was an affluent suburban school district.

I worked 80 hours a week and planned and graded for hours every day. I had some crappy administrations that didn't support teachers as well as obnoxious parents who thought we were idiots. But it was the emotional toll that finally did me in. I still work in education, but in a completely different context now.

When people ask my opinion about entering the teaching field, these are the things I emphasize, because they are often left out of the discussion.

We invest in a college savings for our two kids. I have repeatedly told them that IF they go into education, we will not be paying for them.

How sad, eh?

I would never want my children to be in a profession where so many question what we do and how we do it.

never

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught for 5 years before going back to school to pursue a different career. I taught middle school at a private school. Frankly, it was a pretty cushy job. I got to work at about 7:30 and left by 4:15 every day, except for the one day a week I had dismissal duty and left around 4:30ish. I almost always had time to get my planning done during the day during free periods. Most days, I actually taught 4-5 class periods, leaving at least a couple hours for getting other work done. I had lunch duty once a week but the other days I was free at lunch time, except that I was expected to stay on campus. I took work home only occasionally.

The pay was terrible, but I had the summers off (and I was really off - did ZERO work for at least 8 weeks), winter break, spring break, all the holidays... It was a pretty sweet lifestyle.

Let me guess - textbooks and worksheets? You only taught 4-5 class periods? I've never taught middle school, only elementary, but that does not sound typical to me.

Nope, very little use of textbooks. Taught multiple subjects so I had multiple preps. But honestly, I had several free hours each day at school for planning/grading. Even on days when I taught 5 50-minute classes (my heavy days - totaling just over 4 hours of actual instructional time), I still had 4 hours or so free to get stuff done during the school day.

several free hours a day?

That's a teaching position?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We invest in a college savings for our two kids. I have repeatedly told them that IF they go into education, we will not be paying for them.

How sad, eh?

I would never want my children to be in a profession where so many question what we do and how we do it.

never

Yes, it is sad to attach such strings to the money you intend for your children's college education. But it's your money.

[Anonymous]

I've had immigrant students from cultures where education is valued and teachers are respected. They are uniformly appalled at the behavior of their American-born peers. It's not the fault of the native US kids. They learn these attitudes at home from their parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught for 5 years before going back to school to pursue a different career. I taught middle school at a private school. Frankly, it was a pretty cushy job. I got to work at about 7:30 and left by 4:15 every day, except for the one day a week I had dismissal duty and left around 4:30ish. I almost always had time to get my planning done during the day during free periods. Most days, I actually taught 4-5 class periods, leaving at least a couple hours for getting other work done. I had lunch duty once a week but the other days I was free at lunch time, except that I was expected to stay on campus. I took work home only occasionally.

The pay was terrible, but I had the summers off (and I was really off - did ZERO work for at least 8 weeks), winter break, spring break, all the holidays... It was a pretty sweet lifestyle.

I also taught at a private school for two years, before moving to the public schools. Yes, it was a much cushier job -- much less accountability, no real requirement to handle children with special needs, less oversight from administration (as long as parents weren't complaining); no documentation of lesson plans or grading except for quarterly "comments" in lieu of grades. Very little testing pressure, and a more manageable daily life.

To be honest, as a first and second year teacher, I had really no idea what I was doing! Fortunately, no one really figured it out and I made it through my first two years unscathed. Hope the kids learned something. (-;

I left for the better pay at public schools and frankly, room for professional growth. But yes, as a teacher if you want an easier job, private schools are much less onerous to work for. On the other hand, there is much less job security, at a private school -- you can be let go for basically any reason.

[Anonymous]

There was little evidence my child's teachers were working as hard as some of these descriptions. Some were. Others fled the buidling within 2 minutes of the final bell and couldn't correct work within two weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was little evidence my child's teachers were working as hard as some of these descriptions. Some were. Others fled the buidling within 2 minutes of the final bell and couldn't correct work within two weeks.

If you're a good teacher, you aren't zipping out after the kids and giving feedback weeks later. But isn't the same true of any profession? We all know folks who phone it in. There's probably a colleague who comes to mind. Doesn't mean the others aren't hard working and competent. I had a doctor who misdiagnosed me twice (and I almost died) during her limited holiday hours. I don 't assume all doctors are rushing to leave the office and just care about the money.