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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New poster - I can't get over the "70 hours" comment. There is 0 way you on average spend 70 hours throughout the school year and if you do, well you need to find a better way to do your job. One random "70 hour" week maybe? but probably very inflated. Might have gotten away with 55-60, but come on.[/quote]

When people hear “teacher,” they often picture a 7:30–3:30 school day. But for many educators, the real hours stretch far beyond the bell. A 70-hour work week isn’t an anomaly—it’s [u]routine[/u]. Here's how those hours add up:

Grading Isn’t Just Checking Boxes  
- Essays: 15–20 minutes per essay. A class of 30? That’s 7.5–10 hours for one assignment.  Multiply that times 5 (5 classes) for English and humanities teachers. That's up to 50 hours of grading for one essay.
- Short Answer Tests: 5–10 minutes per test. Multiply that across multiple classes. Many secondary teachers have 140-160 students, so each test could take several hours to grade.  
- Feedback: Thoughtful, personalized comments can take 5–10 hours per major assignment. This is where learning deepens—and where time disappears.

Lesson Design Is a Daily Marathon  
- Creating engaging, differentiated, evidence-based lessons takes 2+ hours per day. That’s 10+ hours a week just on planning—before the teaching even begins.

Meetings That Matter (and Multiply)  
- CT (Collaborative Team) Meetings: 1.5–4.5 hours weekly.  
- IEP/504 Meetings: 1–2 hours monthly, often outside contract hours.  
- These aren’t optional—they’re essential for supporting diverse learners.

The Hidden Time Thieves  
- Answering parent emails  
- Writing letters of recommendation  
- Updating grades and learning platforms  
- Supervising clubs, sports, or events  
- Attending professional development  
- Supporting students in crisis  
- Rewriting plans after fire drills, assemblies, or snow days

Each task may seem small, but together they form a mountain. And teachers climb it daily—not for praise, but for their students.

The Takeaway  
A 70-hour week [u]isn’t a sign of inefficiency[/u]—it’s a reflection of how deeply teachers care and how manyntasks they’re juggling. They’re not just delivering content.

[b]Yes, there are other professionals who also work an unreasonable number of hous per week. No one is denying that. No one is saying teachers have it worse than other professionals[/b]. However, no one has the right to effectively call teachers liars when they say they [u]routinely[/u] work 70-hour weeks. Do all teachers work those type of hours? Not even close; some teachers barely work more than 40 hours per week. But many teachers do work 70 hours per week, and they deserve to be believed. 
[/quote]

This does sound like an insane amount of work for a job that pays government level salaries.

But I don’t think it has always been like this. So what changed to make the hours so crazy? [/quote]

Again, another topic that has been discussed endlessly on this forum. There are additional meetings, paperwork, data collection, trainings, duties, etc., that I’ve been added in the past 20 years.[/quote]

I began teaching 20 years ago. Back before Schoology/Blackboard/Online Systems.  And parents couldn't see our online gradebook - they saw grades at interim and end of quarter.

To give an assignment, I would write all of the assignments on the board or hand out a worksheet. Now it has to be assigned in Mathspace, cross-listed in Schoology (but make different due dates for odd/even classes!), and then an assignment created in SIS. For paper assignments, a blank version it has to be uploaded to Schoology with an answer key.

To check the assignment, we'd either check off it was done (and students would get a zero if they didn't do it) while putting the answer key on the overhead for 5 minutes. If I did that today, it would take students 15+ minutes because they come in unprepared and want to be spoon-fed.

Now, I get dozens of emails a week from students and parents asking "how do I raise my grade" because they have instant access to grades and can't connect cause and effext. I spend 30 minutes to an hour each week (outside of contract hours) just grading/updating late work.

That's just one snapshot of why the workload has increased. Parents and students expect more, which as a parent I understand, but planning time has only been diminished or decreased by other obligations.

[/quote]

I hate that poorly designed apps are making life harder for people in so many domains. This is a good example of “enshitification”, and I wish there was something better for teachers, students, and parents.[/quote]

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