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[quote=Anonymous]I don't know why everyone keeps talking about grading papers or making copies being the reason why teaching takes so long.  The grading and copying takes time, but it's not the main thing.  The main thing is the lesson planning - figuring out what to teach tomorrow and how to teach it.  And if you are an elementary teacher, that's what and how to teach not one subject, but 5 subjects.  At multiple levels of ability.  That's what takes a long time.

Anyone who doesn't understand has simply never planned a lesson or taught anything at all.  Then after you plan it, you have to prepare all the materials you will need for each of those 5 lessons and organize them so that they are ready to go at the very moment they are needed (3rd graders don't do well with waiting around for the teacher to set something up).

In college they calculate your hours worked based on "contact" classroom time plus prep time.  Prep time, which means planning and grading, is generally calculated at 50% to 100% of contact time, depending on the school.  This is so accepted that the government actually issued a rule that when calculating hours for adjuncts for the purposes of health care regulations, schools are required to include  these prep hours.

But when I taught in elementary school, I taught for 6 solid hours with no prep time at all.  The time before and after school was taken up with other required duties (including standing in the hall telling kids not to run).  After that I had hours - really, hours - of required meetings, beyond my contracted hours, at least twice a week, usually more.  Do the math - guess when the prep happened?  Either I give up my entire life to get my job done or I just do a lousy job teaching.

And that's why I don't teach in K-12 anymore.  [/quote]

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