Teachers - How Hard is Your Job, Really?

[Anonymous]

I left this year after decades of teaching many grades. I should have been able to work at least 6 more years, but I could not. The amount of testing and dealing with severe behavioral issues was just too much. Teachers are also held accountable for an amazing amount considering they have no control over the variables...poverty, gang affiliations, hunger, I Q, disabilities, lack of parent support, lack of viable families. I was also on my feet all day.....all day, with the exception of a meeting. I was at work by 7:30 and I had to force myself out by 5, but there was still about 4 more hours of work each night. Tons on the weekend. It has become the hardest job ever. Don't forget the emails at night in addition to grading and planning!
It is 8 hours during the day, but 12 hours a day at least between work and home. You never are able to leave the building, you have to plan your bathroom break and hope you make it. Let's hope you are not ever sick or have a family emergency because you still have to plan differentiated lesson plans for all day classes..whether you are in the hospital or your parent is in hospice. And yet...people think you have the easy job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raised on the idea that teachers work incredibly hard for not much money, and deserve every benefit that flows their way. Now that my kids are in public school, however, I'm having trouble reconciling that with my actual experience with my kids' teachers. School starts at 9:20 and the parking lot seems to clear out at around 4:30. Kids are away from the teachers for lunch and recess, plus specials. With 2.0, the curriculum planning needs seem to have lessened, as every teacher is doing the same thing across the grades.

This *looks* like a MUCH shorter day than most of the rest of us with full time jobs are pulling. So, I want to be on the side of teachers. I'm a big union supporter, and a card-carrying Democrat. But, honestly, my engagement with the public education system is not convincing me.

[Anonymous]

Summers off, bank holidays, extended breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

[Anonymous]

I can't speak for the ES teachers who have Curriculum 2.0. However, I've taught for 15 years and find that I spend more time now in structured lesson planning than I did before MCPS released a revised curriculum for my course. We do not have have a bank of canned lessons. My cohort and I meet daily to plan and revise lessons and materials based on data from student assessments and informal checks. We have to submit lesson plans and our rationale to the department head once a week. I also have to document that I am modifying instruction and assessments for students with various SN, ELL, GT, and the underperforming on level students. My schedule designates 45 minutes a day to do this. It takes three times that so 2/3 of the time is off the clock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Summers off, bank holidays, extended breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

In MCPS teachers work Columbus Day (Open House) and Veterans Day (Parent Conferences). We are paid firv10 months of work, not 12, so of course, summers are off. Would you work two months unpaid every year?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'll be the voice of dissent here.
A boyfriend that I lived with for 2 years was a teacher.
He never ever brought work home unless he "goofed off" during a planning period, he had 2, in addition to lunch.
He did all his grading during those times, he said lunch hour was more for socializating and he wasn't interested.
It was his 5th year teaching the same grade, and he had perfected his curriculum the first couple years and continues to follow that with some tweaking.
He was home by 4 pm every day.
It was eye opening to say the least!

There's a big part of it right there.

The rest of it? Not the norm.

I'm concerned that your boyfriend believed that he had "perfected" his curriculum and didn't 'need to do more each year than tweak it. He doesn't sound like a very reflective and responsive practitioner of the craft.

I don't see an issue with this.

Exactly! You always have to tweak it because what worked for one class doesn't work for the next.

I tweak from class period to class period. Just "tweaking" from year to year seems insufficient. Sounds like a teacher I replaced who had a file cabinet with the days labeled 1-180. For 10 years, he pulled out the folder for that day and taught whatever was in it. Didn't incorporate new approaches or info from action research.

I would actually prefer a teacher like this as long as they weren't bored with their job. It sounds like an entire year curriculum was taught and that he was very organised. A middle ground is great too. The worst teachers for us though have been the ones that great every day as a new experiment. Little ends up being planned, papers are lacking, and teachers often appear flustered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raised on the idea that teachers work incredibly hard for not much money, and deserve every benefit that flows their way. Now that my kids are in public school, however, I'm having trouble reconciling that with my actual experience with my kids' teachers. School starts at 9:20 and the parking lot seems to clear out at around 4:30. Kids are away from the teachers for lunch and recess, plus specials. With 2.0, the curriculum planning needs seem to have lessened, as every teacher is doing the same thing across the grades.

This *looks* like a MUCH shorter day than most of the rest of us with full time jobs are pulling. So, I want to be on the side of teachers. I'm a big union supporter, and a card-carrying Democrat. But, honestly, my engagement with the public education system is not convincing me.

It was so damn hard I quit after 8 years. Loved the kids, but working with parents like you ruined it for me. You should volunteer in your child's school for a whole day and see if you could be a teacher. You'd go nuts. Have you even helped in a classroom (during a lesson not a class party)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Summers off, bank holidays, extended breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Lots of professionals with a master's degree get bank holidays and good vacation time, although most of them don't have to take in unpaid furlough every summer.

[Anonymous]

For a subject like math, I don't see the problem with the 1-180 day folder approach. It sounds very organized. Its not like the principles of math are going to change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raised on the idea that teachers work incredibly hard for not much money, and deserve every benefit that flows their way. Now that my kids are in public school, however, I'm having trouble reconciling that with my actual experience with my kids' teachers. School starts at 9:20 and the parking lot seems to clear out at around 4:30. Kids are away from the teachers for lunch and recess, plus specials. With 2.0, the curriculum planning needs seem to have lessened, as every teacher is doing the same thing across the grades.

This *looks* like a MUCH shorter day than most of the rest of us with full time jobs are pulling. So, I want to be on the side of teachers. I'm a big union supporter, and a card-carrying Democrat. But, honestly, my engagement with the public education system is not convincing me.

It was so damn hard I quit after 8 years. Loved the kids, but working with parents like you ruined it for me. You should volunteer in your child's school for a whole day and see if you could be a teacher. You'd go nuts. Have you even helped in a classroom (during a lesson not a class party)?

This is OP. My kid's teacher doesn't allow parent volunteers, in fact none of them have to date. Apparently that is the norm in our school.

[Anonymous]

My wife is a teacher and I work in law enforcement (another profession that has generous pension benefits but doesn't seem to catch the anti-union glare teachers do -- because we're mostly men, I guess).

Between the two of us, her job is a million times easier. While I do have a slightly greater risk in terms of danger (and it's slight being a detective statistically isn't terribly dangerous), my wife's life and job is just harder. She spends hours preparing that she isn't compensated for -- as an LEO, I can guarantee it's very rare to be expected to handle duties without compensation (like back to school night or other after hours duties. She doesn't get paid for these things.

She also is held accountable in a way, quite frankly, I am not. No one is looking through my files to determine a ratio of successfully closed cases. There are no consultants or audits or accountability measures. My wife has tons and spends a lot of time stressing over achievement gaps. I have no such concerns about urban crime. I am not responsible for whether or not crime increases or decreases.

I absolutely view the teacher bashing to be an inherently sexist issue. The industry is not only overwhelming historically female, it's still heavily populated with women (unlike law enforcement).

While I hear constantly "I'd be fired if we don't improve profits blah blah," I absolutely do not think any position that is serving society and all of society's ills (like law enforcement and medicine) should be expected to maintain the same mentality. It's just not possible and from a standpoint of wanting good people to enter and stay in the field, I don't think it's a good thing.

Unless we want to privatize education. I expect the next push will be privatizing law enforcement (they are already doing prisons). With that, we're all screwed.

[Anonymous]

PP, here. I meant her job is a million times harder. Excuse the typo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summers off, bank holidays, extended breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

In MCPS teachers work Columbus Day (Open House) and Veterans Day (Parent Conferences). We are paid firv10 months of work, not 12, so of course, summers are off. Would you work two months unpaid every year?

My mom worked as an elementary school teacher. She spent all of August in school, prepping for the school year. Unpaid. Summer "vacation" was about a month for her, tops.

Thank you, teachers, for all you do.

[Anonymous]

I think it's pretty hard. There is little down time as a teacher during the day. It's a lot harder to take off also, because you need a sub so you need to call off early enough for one to be secured. My husband taught for three years and he said those were the most difficult years of his life but he taught at a Title I school so behavior issues were rampant. He was injured breaking up a fight before and actually had to break up parents that started fighting during a teacher/parent conference, just all kinds of things like that happened when he taught. He was so happy to leave that profession behind.

[Anonymous]

I was a teacher and thought many, many times "i need a secretary". If you think about other professionals like doctors and lawyers, they all have people that assist them (nurses and para-legals), so they can do the thing they are educated to do. If I just had someone that would've graded papers (like multi-choice test) and entered them into the grade-book, or made copies or scheduled phone appts with parents. If teachers were paid by the hour like lawyers, no way would they be doing that kind of work.