Reply to how many hours a week do you put in as a teacher?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Years ago, my union called for teachers to work to their contract. That meant 7 hour days. It was astonishing to outsiders how little actually got done. I taught 4 grade levels so I managed to get maybe half of my lessons done during my 45 minute planning. I occasionally got a bit of grading done too but usually not. No parent emails, no meetings with teachers. My neighbor teaches HS and she hardly got any grading done at all. 150 students plus tons of writing assignments means a lot of extra hours. Teachers in the U.S. have more student contact hours than teachers in other countries. I used to work in a school in Europe and I got a 45 minute duty free lunch, an hour planning per day plus rotating recess duties (I supervised a 30 minute recess for a week every 6 weeks or so) plus another 45 minutes free when the students went to language class.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/09/the-ticking-clock-of-us-teacher-burnout/502253/[/quote]

This only supports the argument for addressing the true issues in our public schools: poverty and inequality. All the extra work we do or don't doesn't change the fact that student achievement is primarily tied to SES, long before any teacher or school-related factors. The US narrative is that teachers and students need to work harder, harder, HARDER!, which is a convenient diversion from the fact that students in many other countries do better while spending less time in school, and teachers spend far less time working both in and out of the classroom. There's no reason whatsoever for teachers to need to have "tons" of writing assignments to grade outside of school hours besides the backwards belief that lots of homework leads to lots of achievement, which it doesn't (as proven by countries like Finland where high schoolers don't have more than half an hour of homework per day, and only a few minutes throughout elementary school). All this extra work isn't benefiting the kids or the teachers, and poverty has always been and will continue to be the problem, since it's something we're not willing to meaningfully address in society (e.g., through universal daycare, universal healthcare, paid parental leave, living wages, affordable housing, etc). Many teachers will continue to put in too many hours while attacking those who don't, admin will continue to expect more and more free labor while providing ever fewer resources (but ever larger class sizes), the poor students will continue to do worse than the rich ones, and the bread and circuses of the need to privatize public education will continue. Isn't greed great? :D[/quote]

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