Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how working contract hours is possible. I'm in fairfax, and I have kids or CT meetings for all but 3 hours of my week. I have 3 middle school preps, and due to my wonky schedule see 2 of those courses 3 times, and one 5 times. That means I have 11 different lessons to prepare each week...in 3 hours of free time. Honestly, I have dropped all extras--no clubs, no tutoring, no volunteering for anything. Even still, I think is physically impossible to plan a lesson, make the activities, and run the copies for a single lesson in 15-20 minutes.

Honest question: are people suggesting I should hand out textbooks and just set kids loose to read/learn the material themselves? That would make it possible to leave at 2:40 when my contract ends. As a parent, would you be okay with that? I would be horrified if that's what my child's teachers did. Why have a teacher at all if that's all that do?

I love what I do and don't complain about the workload much, but the idea that it can reasonably be done within the contract window is mind boggling.

I am also in Fairfax County and understand what you go through with planning. It's a lot. I'm not too familiar with policies and regulations for secondary grades but planning time in the elementary school is protected by school board policy. We have to have at least 300 minutes/week. A minimum of 60 minutes is used for collaborative planning AND a minimum of 240 is teacher directed. They define the difference between collaborative and teacher directed time. The planning time is provided by specialists so it has to occur during the school day.

During a STAC Meeting I seem to remember hearing from Dr Garza that secondary planning had protections at the state level, but I'd have to research it more. Elementary planning didn't have the same protections so the local school board put them in place. Are you a member of a teacher organization such as FEA or FCFT?

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP. I teach in IL. I have a low salary for someone with my experience and educational level. I should really be close to 90K at this point. Unfortunately, when one changes districts a few times over their career, they do not take all their "years" with them. So, while I have 25 years in, I am only paid as if I have 7 years in. Again, though, this is not really about the money. It is about the time. I love my students and love my work, it is just too much of it. And I have children of my own and a spouse who I love. I leave the house at 6 a.m. and don't arrive home until 5 or later each night. And I'm doing so much work at home and on the weekends. I brought up my pay because the people I know who are working the hours I work are all making at least double what I make. It is somewhat comforting to hear that many others making comparable pay to me also have to put in long hours. But in the long run, I'm still not there enough for my kids and I find this does not gel with my moral code around mothering. I'd give anything to be able to teach half time. We just can't afford it.

It looks like it's both about the money and the time. As a fellow teacher in IL, I'd suggest doing whatever possible to downsize your expenses. On teacher salaries, we managed to pay off our home in 4 years and SAHP too. A key was choosing a home that didn't cost more than 2x HHI.

That's good!

How much was the house and your salaries? In Northern VA you wouldn't be able to find a home that's only 2x your HHI. I have 25 years and my DW is only 2 steps behind me. That puts our HHI at ~180k. Even as far up as we are in the scale we wouldn't be able to find a home 2x our HHI.

Thank you. The house was 95k and our salaries were combined 47k at the time, due to one of us being in school, then shot up to 95k combined shortly after, so we threw more at the mortgage. The feasibility does depend on where you are, as you note. In Illinois, if you can stay out of Chicago, though, there are a lot of good houses available with a 100k budget. If OP really wants more time, chopping expenses (smaller / cheaper house, used cash cars, etc) could make PT possible. Alternatively, so could dropping all of the ECs she's involved in, but OP's mostly ruled that out in previous posts.

That is not realistic in our area. We got a fixer upper (most people would be horrified at the condition) and it was $370K. Basically everything needed/needs to be redone replaced. For 95K we could have easily paid it off quickly too given we had a downpayment of 75K.

Where are you and what 's your HHI? If it's not realistic, you ultimately can either move somewhere where it *is* (and there are plenty of places in the US where it is) or accept that you'd rather live where you are. But you don't get to live in a HCOL while enjoying LCOL housing.

I'm one of the PP's and I'm in Northern Virginia (Fairfax County). I don't think anyone is saying we expect to live in a HCOL area and have LCOL housing, but shouldn't the pay be proportionate? It may be a local issue, but the salaries are falling behind. I go back to the PP who wrote that teachers in VA/MD/DC don't know how good they have it compared to others. Obviously this is not the case if a basic fixer upper is more than 2x the HHI of two teachers with 25 years service each.

Anonymous wrote: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/

With millenials joining the ranks of the teaching profession and now having children, they will be the ones to sue the schools for breach of contract. They will also be the ones to change Virginia from a Right to Work State to one that allows real teacher unions. I see them leading the charge in my school.

Anonymous wrote: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/

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?

I don't understand how working contract hours is possible. I'm in fairfax, and I have kids or CT meetings for all but 3 hours of my week. I have 3 middle school preps, and due to my wonky schedule see 2 of those courses 3 times, and one 5 times. That means I have 11 different lessons to prepare each week...in 3 hours of free time. Honestly, I have dropped all extras--no clubs, no tutoring, no volunteering for anything. Even still, I think is physically impossible to plan a lesson, make the activities, and run the copies for a single lesson in 15-20 minutes.

Honest question: are people suggesting I should hand out textbooks and just set kids loose to read/learn the material themselves? That would make it possible to leave at 2:40 when my contract ends. As a parent, would you be okay with that? I would be horrified if that's what my child's teachers did. Why have a teacher at all if that's all that do?

I love what I do and don't complain about the workload much, but the idea that it can reasonably be done within the contract window is mind boggling.

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/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?

You parents are a big part of the problem. If you don't want your child to be taught that way, then be willing to pay for it. Otherwise, you should get what you pay for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?

I feel there's a lot of insecurity and bitterness in the teaching profession, and teachers who put in many additional hours look down on teachers who don't and basically call them bad teachers over and over again (the way the PP just did and several others have done in this and other threads). The funny thing is that from the public's perspective, you're all bad teachers because that's the current narrative in the US toward public education. If teachers in the US were less individualistic, we'd band together and stop working for additional hours without additional resources instead of developing Superman complexes and badmouthing each other for not putting in the "right" number of unpaid hours. But because we're raised in a culture that champions the individual instead of the collective, and teachers aren't necessarily any smarter than other college-educated Americans, we turn on each other while the expectations continue to climb until teachers are putting in 60-70 hour weeks for 40h pay and lashing out at those who have enough self respect not to do so. It's a fine mess we're in.

How do YOU put in just 40 hours and manage to be excellent? Please provide a detailed schedule of your 40 hours so we can learn from you and all work just the paid duty day.

It's telling how your first response was to attack and attempt to shame a fellow teacher for suggesting that we shouldn't be working 20-30 unpaid hours a week. With teachers like you, who needs administration?

Anonymous wrote:Based on what I'm hearing here, do they even teach contract law as part of the admin endorsement? Seems like there's a whole lot of contract breaching going on and it seems to be getting worse.

Teaching isn't just a matter of clocking in and clocking out at a certain time each day. Teachers are given certain tasks that need to be accomplished (writing lesson plans a certain way, making sure lessons are differentiated a certain way, and making sure students master certain skills) and how they decide to get those tasks accomplished is up to them. 7.5 hours must be spent at school each day but there's no realistic way for all the tasks to be accomplished during those hours.

The most experienced teachers I know manage to automize paperwork and do what can't be automized while children are in the classroom during the school day. It's the only way to get it all done.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?

I feel there's a lot of insecurity and bitterness in the teaching profession, and teachers who put in many additional hours look down on teachers who don't and basically call them bad teachers over and over again (the way the PP just did and several others have done in this and other threads). The funny thing is that from the public's perspective, you're all bad teachers because that's the current narrative in the US toward public education. If teachers in the US were less individualistic, we'd band together and stop working for additional hours without additional resources instead of developing Superman complexes and badmouthing each other for not putting in the "right" number of unpaid hours. But because we're raised in a culture that champions the individual instead of the collective, and teachers aren't necessarily any smarter than other college-educated Americans, we turn on each other while the expectations continue to climb until teachers are putting in 60-70 hour weeks for 40h pay and lashing out at those who have enough self respect not to do so. It's a fine mess we're in.

How do YOU put in just 40 hours and manage to be excellent? Please provide a detailed schedule of your 40 hours so we can learn from you and all work just the paid duty day.

What exactly does it mean to be "excellent", and why is that the requirement for every teacher? Do you think that there's actually a number of hours you could put in that someone couldn't find fault with?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?

I feel there's a lot of insecurity and bitterness in the teaching profession, and teachers who put in many additional hours look down on teachers who don't and basically call them bad teachers over and over again (the way the PP just did and several others have done in this and other threads). The funny thing is that from the public's perspective, you're all bad teachers because that's the current narrative in the US toward public education. If teachers in the US were less individualistic, we'd band together and stop working for additional hours without additional resources instead of developing Superman complexes and badmouthing each other for not putting in the "right" number of unpaid hours. But because we're raised in a culture that champions the individual instead of the collective, and teachers aren't necessarily any smarter than other college-educated Americans, we turn on each other while the expectations continue to climb until teachers are putting in 60-70 hour weeks for 40h pay and lashing out at those who have enough self respect not to do so. It's a fine mess we're in.

How do YOU put in just 40 hours and manage to be excellent? Please provide a detailed schedule of your 40 hours so we can learn from you and all work just the paid duty day.

Anonymous wrote:Based on what I'm hearing here, do they even teach contract law as part of the admin endorsement? Seems like there's a whole lot of contract breaching going on and it seems to be getting worse.

This is why a strong Union is needed. Not just pushy folks in the union leadership, but school staff who are active union members and willing to stick their necks out. My building has two people who are supposed to do that, but they don't because they both want to be admin one day. No one else --including me--- is brave enough to be the person who stands up in the staff meeting to point out the violation. I've seen what happens to teachers who are the only one to speak up. They get the worse course assignments and schedules, there are suddenly anonymous complaints about their teaching requiring constant observations. Their activities are approved or funded.

^ Interestingly, the same hazing due to poor working conditions also exists in medicine. The residents who put in 100h weeks call the ones who put in 80 "bad doctors" while the ones who put in 80 call the ones who put in 60 "doctors who don't care about their patients." The sustainable idea, of course, would be to work together to change the culture and refuse to put in so many hours, since it benefits neither the doctors nor the patients, and only, as always, benefits the administration who profit from the millions of dollars each year in free labor. However, doctors aren't necessarily any smarter than teachers; they're just on a different career path.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?

I feel there's a lot of insecurity and bitterness in the teaching profession, and teachers who put in many additional hours look down on teachers who don't and basically call them bad teachers over and over again (the way the PP just did and several others have done in this and other threads). The funny thing is that from the public's perspective, you're all bad teachers because that's the current narrative in the US toward public education. If teachers in the US were less individualistic, we'd band together and stop working for additional hours without additional resources instead of developing Superman complexes and badmouthing each other for not putting in the "right" number of unpaid hours. But because we're raised in a culture that champions the individual instead of the collective, and teachers aren't necessarily any smarter than other college-educated Americans, we turn on each other while the expectations continue to climb until teachers are putting in 60-70 hour weeks for 40h pay and lashing out at those who have enough self respect not to do so. It's a fine mess we're in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. To the teacher getting her middle school endorsement. No way will you EVER be able to put in 40 hour work weeks. Maybe 50 on a good week and especially if you have a 4 day week due to a holiday. The first few years will be the hardest and you can plan on 70-80 hour weeks then. Make sure you get at least 5 years in before having kids.

So what about all the teacher moms? Are they all really pulling 60 hour weeks while raising kids?

I do. From what I see and hear my colleagues and teacher friends do as well.

For most of us, it's leaving at the end of the duty day, but staying up very late at night or getting up at an ungodly hour in the AM.

There are teachers who put in 40 hours weeks. I've worked with a few. Generally, they "teach" using worksheets and videos that are never updated or differentiated. They give assessments that are graded by scantron. If forced to give projects or essays, they don't really grade them or write personalized comments. I was hired to replace a veteran teacher who had a file cabinet with each of the 180 school days labeled. He'd pull out the folder, make 150 copies of the worksheet and then read the newspaper until the students arrived. After they did the worksheet, he'd go over the answers and students would correct their papers. Then he'd put on a video. At the end of the week, he gave an open notes quiz. The students loved him because he was such an easy A. He retired after the County added a required standardized test to each unit and began collecting results. This isn't the way I'd want my child to be taught.

So sure, a teacher can work 40 hours a week. Just like a teacher can use only the materials provided by the school or district rather than spending their own funds or seeking donations. Doable, but is it good teaching?