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[quote=Anonymous][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’ve been teaching the same amount of time.  You need a better late policy. I update them when they are due and then again at the end of the unit.  I tell them this at the beginning of the year and at BTSN.  That’s the penalty of turning it in late, they sit on the zero until the end of the unit.  You are spending way too much time updating late work! [/quote]

DP. I update late work grades on Fridays. I also tell students/parents that at the beginning of the year. The zero can sit for a while.

That’s the only way that task doesn’t consume my day. There’s always late work. There are always emails about late work, to which I respond with a cut/paste reminder about Fridays. [/quote]

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