Thanks, Tim! I think there are many aspects people don't consider when looking at hours that teachers work. Class sizes and number of classes taught in a day have increased in most schools. In our social studies department, each member had to teach 6/7 periods a day at least every other year. This was necessary in order to teach all the new classes that are demanded by students, parents, and administrators. One year I was teaching 6/7 periods a day 163 students a day! I was sometimes at school by 5:30 those years and usually stayed until at least 4. So do the math if I assign an essay that takes 15 minutes to grade each. That adds up to an extra FULL week of work if they are graded to the standards that are necessary to promote student learning and provide adequate feedback. Some years I had as many as 25 IEP's and it was usually the year I was teaching 6 classes. That entailed reading the IEP, adapting lessons, meeting regularly with the Learning Support Teachers, sometimes filling out daily behavioral reports, and having a couple formal meetings a year. A ton of work goes into writing those IEP's so that was a major source of "unpaid" overtime for Learning Support Teachers.
I also taught AP European History. For the most part, all of the AP courses necessitated summer work in order to cover the needed content by the time of the AP Exam. So, students were submitting work throughout the summer that I needed to grade and provide feedback on. That was probably an extra 2 weeks of work during the summer depending on the class size.
The other thing that was a great challenge was Covid which at least one person on here thinks was where we showed our "true nature". Covid collided with many other social and political trends all of which provided tension in the classroom and continue to this day. Also throw in technological changes, and as an earlier poster mentioned, attacks on certain jobs on the internet. I think the school choice movement stoked this fire on behalf of their financial supporters who hoped to profit off providing alternatives to public schools. It was really demoralizing for many of us to see these unwarranted attacks. While not all is right with the public schools, I still think they are essential to the well-being of our communities and our nation. I think I was lucky in that most in our community supported us. There was some backlash from some groups often related to some of the local conservative churches and anti-mask groups. But in the end we weathered the storm and even had a school board member who was also a pastor in a local church , apologize to us for how his congregation had treated us the previous year!
And of course, the biggest advantage of being retired now is that I can actually find time to fish during prime fishing season, not during the summer doldrums!
I also taught AP European History. For the most part, all of the AP courses necessitated summer work in order to cover the needed content by the time of the AP Exam. So, students were submitting work throughout the summer that I needed to grade and provide feedback on. That was probably an extra 2 weeks of work during the summer depending on the class size.
The other thing that was a great challenge was Covid which at least one person on here thinks was where we showed our "true nature". Covid collided with many other social and political trends all of which provided tension in the classroom and continue to this day. Also throw in technological changes, and as an earlier poster mentioned, attacks on certain jobs on the internet. I think the school choice movement stoked this fire on behalf of their financial supporters who hoped to profit off providing alternatives to public schools. It was really demoralizing for many of us to see these unwarranted attacks. While not all is right with the public schools, I still think they are essential to the well-being of our communities and our nation. I think I was lucky in that most in our community supported us. There was some backlash from some groups often related to some of the local conservative churches and anti-mask groups. But in the end we weathered the storm and even had a school board member who was also a pastor in a local church , apologize to us for how his congregation had treated us the previous year!
And of course, the biggest advantage of being retired now is that I can actually find time to fish during prime fishing season, not during the summer doldrums!
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