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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

The problem is it takes 3-4 hours of work to prepare for that 7 hours, especially if you are a newer teacher. You don’t actually get time AT work to complete your work. I get 42 minutes to myself each day to plan all my lessons, grade all my assignments, contact my parents, respond to emails, complete required trainings, plan for committee meetings, meet with committees, etc.  The remaining 6 hours of my day are directly in front of students. I may get to sit at my desk for 2-3 minutes at a time, but that is rare and [b]I can’t actually complete any of my tasks when students are in the room with me.[/b] That 42 minutes needs to actually be 3-4 hours. Since it isn’t, I get a tremendous backlog of work. That’s why I work 6 days a week, with Saturday being my “catch-up” day from home. Usually it’s 10-12 hours, so I spend almost every Saturday in my home office completing what I didn’t have time to do during the work day. I often can’t do it after school because I have an obligation to run one club, help with parking duty, and run tutoring. When I do get home, usually 2 hours after my contracted time, I have to check in on my own family.

This is why I am dissatisfied. I think many teachers would feel better if our time in front of students was scaled back to give us more time for the other 50% of our job.

- Signing off to start working. I attended 6 hours of meetings today, so received no time to prepare for the school year [/quote]

Friend -
 
You HAVE to .... HAVE to ... HAVE to! figure out ways to automate and get most of your work done while you are "in front" of the students.

Things finally got manageable for me when I started working like a doctor. You know how they sit in the room with you but are spending the whole time typing on the computer?  You need to assess and grade, and organize, and clean up, WHILE the students are in the room with you.

You need to reduce the amount of grading and planning you are doing ahead of time. If it can't get done at school, it isn't going to be done at all.  Automate, automate automate. Grade for completion and participation. Computer score multiple choice tests. Parent contact via automated systems if at all possible instead of lengthy phone calls. Plan adequate lessons, not fancy lessons. Have handouts or slides that are decent, good enough.  Use whatever your school district provides; don't reinvent the wheel.

Spending Saturdays, all day, at home doing schoolwork is completely unsustainable.

We aren't paid enough for that. Sure, it's an amazing way to be a teacher. But to teach the way you are doing, you should teach 3 hours and have 3 hours for reflection and planning and grading. But, they won't give you those three hours without students. So you need to skimp on the thoughtful reflection, use whatever they will give you instead of creating your own, and take back your life.

Check out the 40 hour work week if you haven't already:

https://join.40htw.com

[/quote]

High school teacher? I'm just guessing you teach at a secondary level because an elementary classroom teacher is not going to be able to be that automated. There is no way to get all of that done when you are running a morning meeting, facilitating a sense making session, meeting with small math groups while monitoring stations during Math Workshop, meeting with students during Writing Workshop, meeting with groups during an intervention block, preparing materials from the science kit, meeting with reading groups, etc.[/quote]

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