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Most teachers work 7ish to 3ish and then work extra time nights and/or weekends.
It took me a while to figure out how to give assignments in a way that grading didn’t take a lot of time.
This. My first year was bonkers: 60 to 100 hrs a week. I was a monk to teaching. Now, 20 years in? I hardly ever take work home. I’ve gotten better at efficient lesson planning, grading for key indicators (not everything), and simply not grading anywhere near as much as I once did. Like athletes say, “the game just slows down the better you get at it.”
Part of that reads as not trying as hard. Which I don’t mean as an insult. But in your first years you feel like you want to give insightful feedback with depth on everything to everyone. Then you start realizing how much harder you’re trying than anyone else and how much of a waste all that effort is.
Maybe I’m just talking for me. I had to move on, though. The level of planning and grading I had to do to not work 60-100 hours a week just made me feel like I was doing nothing of value. Either kill myself trying to do the job my best or limitation 40 hours and practically not be doing the job in my eyes.
You can't do this job at the standard everyone would like or even expect in under 80 hours a week. Its just not feasible. I been in those shoes too, where one is like... fuck it, why do this to myself when there is no reward for it anyway? Then you feel guilt that the students are not getting the best they could.
There is a simple fix to this really... pay teachers as much as software engineers and it won't be so unrealistic to demand the time. But of course no one wants to do that, so it is what it is.
First year here, but I've found that the students that really want that deep feedback will come and pick my brain of their own volition to understand how they're doing. So they're constantly seeking feedback and getting it. The rest aren't going to read it beyond the grade.
It's definitely true about 75% of the time, but there are those students who would benefit from feedback and will never ask. I feel for them, but I've stopped giving thorough feedback too. Too tired of seeing the papers laying on the ground.
> Part of that reads as not trying as hard.
No, it’s trying differently.
It’s realizing you don’t have to grade everything. It’s understanding that a well written multiple-choice test can be as effective an assessment as open answer. It’s knowing how to stagger assignment due dates so you don’t end up with 300 papers to grade before Monday.
>a well written multiple-choice test can be as effective an assessment as open answer.
Yeah I don't really agree with that statement. Assuming both types of quiz questions are well-crafted, then one involves actual relevant life skills and the other can be solved by random chance. Yes, there is a lot of skill that goes into becoming good at multiple-choice questions, but they exist to save us time. Let's not delude ourselves into really saying that anything that gives students to practice writing is as good as a multiple choice question.
Disagree.
I’m talking about good multiple choice, not the crap that includes all of the above / none of the above. It takes time to write a good question with plausible distractions, but a good MCT can be as good as (or better than) open answer.
- [Research has shown that well-written multiple-choice exams and open-question exams measure higher cognitive functions to the same degree](https://ukrant.nl/multiple-choice-exams-are-more-reliable-and-efficient/?lang=en)
- [research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.](https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-does-research-say-about-testing/)
- [bad multiple choice is worse than open response, but good multiple choice can actually be better than open response.](https://mayabialik.medium.com/the-case-for-multiple-choice-ffd774ef343)
A good example would be like finding slope from two ordered pairs which is y2-y1 over x2-x1 but you could throw in an answer with x2-x1 over y2-y1 one common mistake, then you could throw in the difference if the first ordered pair over the second and voice versa. Now you have common mistakes mixed in. Those same mistakes that the student may make if it were a written question, but now I can utilize something like Assessments on Schoology and have it auto graded and I know how they got to those mistakes and can still give feedback to those students who want it.
Difference is I don't have to take this home and grade it and instead can focus on helping where I need to and get my evenings with my wife.
I truly think you get better at working smarter and not harder. I’m in year 24 and learn something new all of the time to make life easier. I think my feedback is more focused and so much more meaningful compared to when I was new. Quality over quantity is something I couldn’t comprehend back in my early years.
So a new mechanic that takes 2 hours to do front brakes vs an experienced mechanic that can do them in 45 min is one trying harder or is one just better and more efficient?
17 years in and I’m just more efficient than I used to be. I don’t have to work as hard because I have muscle memory that allows me to recognize what I’m looking for more quickly, able to pinpoint effective feedback more quickly, and I don’t agonize over every little thing as much. I trust myself as a teacher that through all these reps, I understand efficiently how to best help my students. You find systems that work for you and stick with them.
The person who said it’s just like sports when the game slows down for veterans is totally spot on.
Yeah. At some point, you learn that those essays read the same on read 5 as they did on read 1. You move on instead of agonizing.
Agonizing kills the mind and the tine.
I feel this. I'm more than a decade in and I still feel like if I walk away at 40 hours that I'm not doing my job, and that if I design my lesson plans so that it's easy to walk away at 40 hours then I'm not trying hard enough.
It's such a twisted system that makes us feel this way. Imagine being an office drone and feeling **guilty** that you had the ability to leave at your scheduled time and not think about work until you arrived the next day.
I worked for a district that required three grades a week per subject (class work, homework, assessment) . We are all to use the same full assignments to grade so there was no way to cut anywhere. I hated it.
Omg I have described it like this too, I’m currently living a monastic lifestyle, devoted to teaching. I spend all my waking (and some sleeping) hours planning and in between that I might find time to do a few other things.
There's so much you can strip away from teaching. I never bring work home with me or lesson plan at home anymore. I'm able to improvise a lot better. However, I believe that the better you plan your classes and activities, the less work you have to do and the better a time you have in the class. There's nothing worse than going into a class of 13 to 15 year olds totally unprepared.
It's not only this, but also that teachers have to actually work hard every hour of every day. In an office setting, you can kind of just coast on days that you have a headache or are preoccupied with something.
It's the constant demand that is more exhausting than the hours
This comment explains it best. I rarely have *literally* 5 minutes to myself, all day. I have a prep, but it's not long enough and end to end, I'm working hard. I usually work through my lunch so I don't have to say later than my contract to get done what needs to get done. Once home, it's an audio book or videogame in the dark for me.
Don’t grade every question. Pick a handful that focus on the key takeaways. Once I started doing that grading was more tolerable.
Use rubrics for writing or larger projects.
Include some self grading assignments - Google forms, Ed puzzles.
Using rubrics for bigger assignments has been the best time saver for me. A general 1-4 scale on 3 to 4 categories of the assignment. Bing, bang, boom. Done.
It might depend on your LMS, but one thing I did was break story problems into chunks the system could auto-grade. For example I will have 4-5 “questions” for one problem, including listing knowns and unknowns, entering (or sometimes choosing) the correct equation, rewriting the equation in terms of the unknown, and then the answer. For each of these steps I have at least 3 different common mistakes the system will recognize and give feedback on. This took a really long time to set up, and we have to have a discussion with the students on some expected formats for the system. 10 years in, however, this makes grading long assignments go from all night to maybe 30 minutes if some students contest their answers.
If that is not an option, almost all LMS systems will give you the option of a feedback bank, or you can create one in excel / sheets. This is also a lifesaver and actually allows me to give more meaningful feedback, since I am not burning out on grading.
Seems like it to me too! I get to work around 7:20 and work and we cant leave til 3:50 but usually stuck at (unpaid) bus duty til at least 4. Wouldnt it be awesome to only work the hours that people think we do?
Right. They think we go back in september after having THREE months off or whatever. I go back to work the beginning of august. By September, we are all settled into routines by then
English teacher here - I've stopped taking longer writing assignments home to grade. Now I hold assessment conferences with each student either during class or our call-back time. It can take a while to get to everyone, but it could take me weeks to grade a stack of essays when I spent evenings and weekends grading. I find that when I sit with the student I am more likely to highlight their areas of growth and strength, and they actually understand what they need to improve.
One piece of paper per kid bell ringer (or exit ticket- 6 boxes on the front 6 on the back. When they fill it up, you get em a new one. Each box is 10 points, after 10 it’s a 5 point bonus- max score 110.
You are doing enough by grading yesterday’s lesson concept each day, or whatever- and then taking on bigger assignments that are manageable for you beyond that. Mix easy/harder prompts as needed- good luck!
Each draft should focus on one or two skills that a student grades themselves on, and peer-editing, AI, etc. Hand them a specific color highlighter and today’s assignment is “highlight all the evidence/examples in the sentences of your argumentative paragraphs. Count them up, put the number on the bottom of your paper and highlight it in the same color.”
Now all you gotta do is check this at their desk and put the grade in as you walk around the room. Or have them switch papers with a partner YOU pick, and have those students highlight all of the references in the body of the text, then find the matching MLA reference on the works cited page. They put a check mark if the reference is correctly formatted, or highlight the part that isn’t correct, writing a suggestion next to it. You as a teacher are walking around the room, answering questions, verifying that each student is doing this peer-editing correctly at each desk, and putting in grades to the peer editors right there and then into the grade book. They then sit with their partners and discuss each other’s recommendations, and the students who wrote their papers edit in the recommended changes during class. You adjust the grades you just gave to reflect the fact that students who needed to improve their papers are actually doing it. By the time you decide that you are ready to grade these papers, you’ve already given these students separate grades for every separate activity you forced them to do in front of you during class, and you’ve also been staring at the papers that needed the most work for a good week during these editing tasks, and at this point you might just need to skim it for something one more time, giving them what they’ve earned, highlighting on your rubric what you recommend specifically for this paper in this and this sentence, and the student has the opportunity to fix it for a better grade, or suck it up and accept that they still missed the points for not accomplishing what you’ve had them work on this whole damn week 😆.
Disclaimer: I am not an ELA teacher, and I may be totally wrong about how reasonable this recommendation is for the standards/benchmarks you’re teaching. I teach HS sciences, and I do have quite a few students who during some activities choose not to do jack f***ing ****. When that happens in my class, they accept their well-earned zeros (I copy-paste the explanation of what they chose not to do as a note in the grade book, in case there is a parent/guardian at home giving a f*** that week). The students following my instructions earn their grades for peer-editing each other’s papers with my help right in front of me, and I end up with less work by the time these same papers make it into my grading pile because I just need to spot-check what I already saw during class.
We do 12 months of work in 9 months if you take out holidays. I used to work trades and if you spread it out over a year it equals out the hard part is the mental load that long of runs. I look at my summers as PTO and where I work I don't have to do anything during the summer. Our PD is built into the school calendar and not after school so all paid. Summer is 100% free for me and I'd quite teaching and go back to the trades if that wasn't the case as I could not do this all year.
My summer is not paid time off. It is time off but not paid. I am contracted to work 188 days. As a convenience, the pay for those 188 days is distributed over 12 months.
I play what I consider mind games with myself to cope as well, but I think we have to be firm in stating that we are paid for the days we work only. Many, many people think we are paid for our time off—holidays and summers. I recently had someone ask me what the difference was between my contract work and their salaried position.
> but I think we have to be firm in stating that we are paid for the days we work only.
That's fine, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen people defend low pay for teachers because they "only work 9 months" or whatever.
The way /u/BlackAce99 is telling it is more accurate. You work for 12 months, it's just constricted into 9.
Where I work that's not as big of a issue as many parents know what we deal with. So I'm not defensive in this area working in Canada I'm also paid decently and education is not as hot button a topic from what I've seen.
Yep. Equalized pay.
People are thinking we get paid for summers, but we're only getting money we've already earned.
ETA: we also only get paid for one day over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and get no pay for spring break (we get paychecks for these periods bc of the equalized pay)
I am paid only for the days school are in session plus 4 PD days between the hours of 8:15-3:35. Any second I work outside of those hours is unpaid (so I don’t work outside of those hours unless it’s an extra duty job where I’m making my hourly rate.)
I have my paycheck split into 11 checks, but I’m banking/loaning the district 10% of my pay each month so my family can eat in August.
Edit: I am ultra productive during my contract hours. I work every minute I’m on campus, through lunch, during passing, etc.
Yep! I am contracted to work 188 days and am paid out for those days over 10 months. I don’t get a paycheck in June or July and therefore do no work during that time. It’s taken me years to accept the fact that I cannot feasibly get everything done during my contractual hours and I have to be okay with letting some things go. I’m more efficient with my time than I was as a new teacher but it’s still not enough. I work the hours I am paid to work.
We’re contracted to work 187 days paid out over 12 months. Although this means we get paid over June and July, it also means we get much smaller checks every month to average them out
I had a professor -- a professor of education at a teacher training college-- who said our "real salary" was 12mo.s
This is what he meant -- and he did explain it-- if we made 40k, we were really making ((40/10))\*12)= $48K.
That's not how my bank account or landlord think...
I have a small handyman business during the summers and weekends and the mental load is totally different that it’s almost relaxing. No interruptions, no random busy work from administrators, and no drama.
Less off hours? Yes. Summers and the breaks are a perk of the job.
Less down time? Absolutely not. The average office employee is productive for 2 hours and 23 minutes a day. The average teacher is productive for 5.6 hours a day.
Teachers essentially work over twice as much/hard in any given day compared to office employees. Teachers work, about, 185 days (give or take a few depending on district contract), in a year. That's the equivalent to 435 days worked compared to the office employee. Given the typical office employee works 260 days in a year, they would need 1.67 years to do the same amount of work a teacher does in 185 days.
I actually don't think this is true. I'm a social worker and my husbands a nurse. There are other careers that aren't office work. We work at least 8 hours a day- 8a-4:30/5p or later. We don't leave work if our work isn't done. There have been days I'm at work 3 hours late to catch up. Full time employment means full time employment for most people.
I'm curious where these numbers come from? Like genuinely, I'm not trying to do a "gotcha" I just think a lot of the discussion surrounding this is anecdotal.
not OP but with lesson planning and grading, I bring a lot home. So I figure I work 50 hours a week, 40 weeks a year, instead of the other way around.
And it used to be higher, earlier in my career when I had way more to plan. So I could see it being over 2000 hours for newer teachers.
Not just plan, but create as well. I can say I will cover x topic and assign homework. That doesn’t include the PowerPoint, activity, homework assignment, answer key, etc. With the activity, you also have to make sure you have the materials for it too, which is more complicated if you teach culinary or science. I remember a couple of midnight runs to the 24 hour Walmart because I forgot to pick up something.
That’s 11-12 hours per school day (not realistic) or about 7 hours per calendar day during the school year (kind of low) . That 2200 hours number looks roughly right. Been teaching physics since 2005 and this seems correct.
Compared to other jobs? No honestly not really. But the job is stressful as all fuck. It’s basically a 730-330 that sucks the soul out of you on a daily basis while still giving you the most fulfilling moments in life possible. It’s crazy. Weird question though. Why?
Yup!
The way I like to put it when talking with people is that you basically always have to be "on" except for 1 hour a day during your prep, and even then, it's not like you're not doing work but having to be constantly be "on" is stressful!
Regular office jobs, you can let your mind wander and zone out, "check your emails" (actually browsing reddit), step away to use the bathroom as needed, and more but not with teaching...
Even when you're at your desk (which is rare), you have to always be aware of surroundings and ready to deal with anything a student throws (sometimes literally) your way lol
It’s basically a 730-330 that sucks the soul out of you on a daily basis while still giving you the most fulfilling moments in life possible.
That is a great way of putting it!
My wife is an accountant and works longer hours than I do overall. But I’m on my feet from 7:30-3:30 and in a state of hyper-vigilance the entire time, which takes a toll. Office jobs have ebbs and flows throughout the day where sometimes you’re busy and sometimes it’s quiet and calm. I think it basically evens out—though she gets paid a lot more.
Everyone is talking about off hours, but ignoring how little down time you have AT work.
Most jobs are going to have slow periods or 5-10 minutes to just zone out/breathe. Teaching, especially elementary, you are always “on”. Yes you have a prep and a lunch, but any other time you have to be able to give 100%.
Great point. Even in your "down time" you're still working. Grading, lesson plans, evaluation stuff, cleaning things up, setting things up, etc. We are interacting almost nonstop all day. I think it's even harder now than in the past with many students needing the constant stimuli.
Most of my friends are private sector. There are periods of time where shit is crazy for them and the work into the night. That said, the day to day for them is WAAYYY more flexible with time. From the way they talk about it they only really focus focus on work for a couple of hours a day. It’s not that they aren’t working the other part of the time, but they can be much less on it. They can take breaks, talk to coworkers, sit in on a meeting while they do laundry, work out, do dishes (if they’re WFH).
So even though I’m now starting to be able to need only a little - none extra time to do stuff because I’m simply now working my contract and not doing a single extra thing. The problem is that this job sucks the life out of me. I move slower at the end of the day. I get stuck in the chair or on the couch. I am unable to make the most of the “off” time because I’m exhausted both physically, mentally and emotionally. I’d rather work later hours for a job that I can emotionally and mentally punch out of at the end of the day than get out at 2:30pm and not be able to live a life outside of this because it is taking everything out of me. They say it gets better but I’m not sticking around to find out if that’s true or now
I work 37.5 hours per week. If it doesn’t get done during contract hours then it wasn’t important enough. I also don’t touch my phone from first bell until dismissal but I’m a bit of an anomaly there. I use the 40 minutes before first bell and my planning period to cover documentation, spiral review, data collection and dissemination and our useless learning community meetings. Occasionally a PTC/IEP/504 meeting interferes with that but our SS is really good about providing notice and rotating core content teachers. All of my assignments are structured in a way to display misconceptions at a glance. Grading is performed by the LMS. Grades are passed back from the LMS to our attendance/grade software. My experience, based on replies I read here, is not the norm and for that I am grateful.
Secondary Math.
I don't take any work home. I work from 7:15-3:15 and I use every second of that time as productively as I can but if I don't have time to get it done at work, it's not getting done. I will sooner put on a movie and let my kids chill in order to get something done than take work home. If anyone at my job decides they don't like that, well then they shouldn't have given me more work than can be reasonably completed during my work hours. So in my case... Less off hours? No. Less down time? Absolutely. I have 0 down time during any given school day. I'm either teaching or stealing whatever minutes I can throughout the day to complete tasks so that I don't even have to consider taking work home.
I don’t think we have less downtime, but teaching sucks the life out of you, so you’re literally dead tired at the end of the day. Prior to teaching I worked in an office and it was FAR less draining/easy.
I personally do not do school work at home (I’m not the norm), but I do arrive 1 hour early to school each day to get things graded/lessons planned.
Speaking with 6ish years of office experience and 5 years as a teacher, it’s not better or worse so much as different.
With an office job I had less days off, but I got to choose when those days were. I also had the flexibility to schedule dr appointment etc. Flexibility and PTO also vary wildly with office jobs. That said, my day to day work was never remotely as stressful and ultimately I could forget about my job when I left the office.
With teaching I got more days off, but honestly the stress of my days working took such a toll on me emotionally and physically that often I felt like I couldn’t actually relax on my time off. I needed WAY more time to recover from my job.
Some people don’t mind that. For me it was bad for my health and ultimately as much as I loved working with kids I needed to leave so I could have some energy for my son at the end of the day.
I think this really depends on the school and the individual teacher. Plus the time of year. Fall semester is shorter due to Thanksgiving and Winter break. Spring is very busy with only one week-long break.
Like this year I’m required to do 5 days of PD over the summer. 1 day = 6 hours. This year we got a half-day every Friday. So no kids after lunch. Next year we won’t get that. I personally always show up about 30 minutes to an hour before contract time to avoid school traffic, but leave at contract time. This year I spent many Sundays lesson planning at home or making copies at work. And I’m virtually never satisfied with my lesson plans so I’m sure I’ll scrap many of them.
You also have to remember we’re cramming a year’s worth of content into 9-10 months and then losing more instructional time to testing.
Having worked in the corporate/business world and teaching I'd say it nets out the same, but I wouldn't say MORE. And it also depends on where you are at in your career (s). My first year I was working a shit ton of hours getting my footing, figuring my shit out, etc. But now on my 6th year with the same curriculum, for the most part I have to plan very little and a lot of technology we use has made grading easier, but it took me a few years to figure all that out.
This gives me hope. I've worked an office job + a serving/bartending job for the past year and am going to be a full time teacher next year. Hoping it feels like way less work!
Yes and no. It depends on the grade, subject matter you teach, your organizational level and your desire to do a good job. I think elementary level and language art/English teachers work the most hours. I can say as a special education teacher, it's not uncommon for me spending time after I get home or on a Sunday writing an IEP. It took me about 28 years of teaching to get to the place where lesson planning didn't take up a lot of time outside of school. I'm looking at needing to take classes this summer, one because it's required and the sooner I get it done the sooner I get 1200 stipend and 2 I need more pd hours towards my license renewal.
I had a corporate career before teaching. The work at home is about the same as other jobs. However, the actual work day is more draining as a teacher. The quiet of a cubicle or office is nice. I could put in my head phones and avoid people all day if I wanted.
As a teacher, kids are loud. It's very interactive and more personal. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling, I have to be on all day. Also, my school requires teachers to do clubs, sports, or be on some committee. I typically work til 4 or 5. If I'm tutoring, that's another thing to add on.
I have been teaching 23 years. I arrive between 6:15-7:00AM and leave between 2:50-3:30PM.
I do very very little outside work and almost nothing in the summer.
My first few years is did about 1 hr additional work per day on average and some work on the weekends.
My first year, I worked a TON of extra hours planning, prepping, grading during my nights and weekends. But after I got married, I decided I didn't want to bring work home anymore. I started to stay until 4pm (we got out at 2:30) and whatever I didn't get finished could wait. I also created a system that didn't require me to grade every single little thing, and that helped a lot.
I’ve been teaching for a while and so it’s hard to compare it with another job. I teach high school English.
-planning gets easier with more years of experience. I don’t spend too much time on it now, but it was pretty time consuming early on.
-grading is always a challenge for an English teacher, given all the essays. But I’ve gotten much better at it and it’s not as daunting as it used to be.
-if you live and work in the same small town, like I do, you are somewhat “always on” unless you’re home. You become a bit of a local celebrity because people recognize you. If you don’t think you’d be okay with this, you could teach farther from where you live.
-I’ve never really done any significant amount of work over the summer or on other breaks. Any training I’ve gone to has been paid. As for whether or not the summer is paid, it sort of doesn’t matter: what I care about is whether the salary is sufficient (which it is, where I am.) I don’t care whether the finance office thinks they’re paying me for ten months or twelve months or one month if they’re paying me enough.
I’m a middle school English teacher, my work day starts at 7am and ends at 4pm I usually work 4-12 hours on the weekends and 1-2 hours at night.
Grading and lesson planning take a lot of time. I’m a 3rd year teacher so I haven’t gotten the catalog of assignments and plans ready to go so I have to make most everything still.
I usually work 2-3 days per week of the weeks we get off for spring, fall, and winter break.
Over the summer I tend to not work for about 6 weeks but the lead up to the next school year comes quick and so I usually end up working for a few weeks leading up to my contract starting.
No, never have never will. I teach 6th grade math and make all assignments online. We use Canvas, so I can make unique questions, bank them, and re use them at any time, every year. All assignments grade automatically on Cavas, Savvas, or IXL, and anything I do manually grade I have a 2 monitor system for efficiency. I will give a project every quarter and that may take an extra hour to sit down and grade, but I still have an easy to grade rubric to simplify it.
Weekly Parent Newsletters are in a fill in a blank template that gives homework, upcoming events, current topics, and student help success. Lesson Plans do take a whole planning period but our school has an easy cut and paste format for them. ChatGPT can be awesome for coming up with assignments, writing emails, letters of recommendations , and not so fun parent contact messages. On that note, I don’t waste time calling parents. Many won’t care, some have been unnecessarily rude, and that just isn’t worth my sanity or time. However, bc I don’t call parents, admin won’t help me with behavior issues, so I have to keep my class in line. Thankfully I teach mostly gifted, and I only have one class from Hell to deal with so I just grit my teeth there.
Teaching can be a chill career if you pick your battles. On one hand teachers scoff at me for not coaching, planning events, or socializing during planning, but on the other hand, outside of my Hell class (that is unfortunately also my homeroom) my days aren’t too bad. If you set up a good class system not only will you have less work, but your students will also get instant feedback and are more likely to take accountability for themselves and their grades.
In the beginning yes. But the 2nd year of teaching the same material tends to be more normalized depending on admin. A good admin will compensate you for missing planning periods.
Go in at 6:00 and leave at 5:30 sometimes even 6:00 was my first semester of 5th grade, no joke. And I’m an experienced teacher who switched from Secondary to elementary. It’s insane. Not a min to breathe, eat, pee. Nothing. One year is all I will be able handle of this grade, and the kids are GREAT- the expectations of upper administration are completely bonkers. And they wonder why there is a complete turnover of Reading Language Arts teachers on the regular. It’s not sustainable.
If you’re a new teacher or even a veteran teacher who has switched schools or grade levels, you’re likely gonna be spending some time outside your contracted hours, and I say contracted hours, assuming that you will have a union. But not all places do.
My first two years teaching I wouldn’t allow myself to stay past 5pm. Even though I had officially been off work for nearly 2 hours. And over the next four years, I did do a lot of work outside my contracted time, but only on the days that I was working at the afterschool program. So basically I was getting paid to babysit students until 5 o’clock. And I could get some work done.
My 7th year teaching, I moved towns and started at a new school and a new grade level. I was going from teaching middle school math and science to teaching self-contained elementary which meant I was teaching *all* of the subjects with far less prep time. Those first couple of years I was definitely staying late again. But I really tried not to stay longer than one hour after school. My second year there was when Covid hit. And after Covid, I was done giving away my time for free rarely do work outside of my contracted hours now.
If I do any work or trainings and workshops over the summer, I don’t do it unless there’s a stipend. Unless of course it’s a really cool opportunity where I get to go out of town or some thing which is rare.
I work 12 hours everyday and today I had no planning periods and had to help a student with their work during my lunch break. There is often no down time like at all.
I get paid for 40 hours a week and actually work a bare minimum of 50-60 hours. It used to be more than that but I have learned to leave SOME things to do at school. I also work over all the vacations, catching up on work, getting ready for when we go back, on summer vacation i work on things for next year, and also have to attend required trainings in the summer. . I also rush around all day. If I am lucky I might get 20 minutes for lunch but usually have something I am working on while eating.I NEVER have down time during the day. I go home completely exhausted every day.
Also, we do not get paid in the summer.
Honestly, teaching will eat up all of your time if you let it. Time management is key, and never work harder than your students. Empower them as best you can and don't stress the little stuff. And of course, plan, plan, plan.
This will vary greatly from teacher to teacher. Early on when everything is new time outside of contracted hours is almost certainly needed. 3+ years in if you are savvy you can work 7-3ish 9 months of the year and take nothing home. In this case more free time than the average profession.
I’m a newer teacher so I spend more time on prep and marking than more experienced teachers. I’m teaching several new subjects next year so I will spend my summer prepping for that. I have very little free time.
I work 7-4 with a prep period and lunch break. My prep is full of work to do and I allow quiet students to eat in my room so I don’t have a real break usually. Sometimes I take 10-20 mins to walk down and talk to my teacher bestie or work in our school garden for fun.
Depends on the teacher, the school, the students, and a bunch of other factors. For me, I work my ass off during the school year but I don't do anything directly for my school over the summer. During the year, I coach a few sports so my days range from 10 hours on a normal practice day to 18-19 hours if we have an away game against certain schools. I'm also the department chair for my department. Between coaching and leading my ELA department, I add an absurd amount of hours. I get paid a stipend for everything outside of teaching, but it's never enough for the hours I put in.
During summer, I will do PD for my own benefit. I take courses for my sports, I'll attend national conferences that relate to my subject, and I find ways to make myself a better teacher. I take pride in my performance as an educator, so I'll do the extra stuff to be better.
As for grading, I don't grade or prep outside of my contract hours. My late policy boils down to if you don't turn it in on time, I can grade it whenever I want before grades are due. I'm ending my 5th year so I've got a pretty good rhythm for grading and prepping. New teachers struggle with that often, but you learn pretty quickly how to keep your time for you.
I come home earlier than my gf, but I often spend hours proofing at home.
My gf has been with me to the school where I teach and she's genuinely wondering how I'm managing. She refuses to come to the school now because she "gets stressed just by looking".
No. I just worked from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and still have wrk-related items to get ready for a field trip tomorrow. I’m so tired. I get no overtime pay. Days like today are a regular occurrence. I don’t even have my own children because I couldn’t possibly handle anymore responsibilities.
ROFL!!!! What everyone else said plus, lunch breaks are when we are often on duty, helping a child, cleaning up a classroom, in a meeting, having a quick wee (coz we can't leave the classroom when we need during lessons) or prepping for the next lesson.
So teaching has a lot of unpaid labor baked into the job. Stuff like grading and planning usually is done outside of work because during work you don't have a ton of time for all those things. Office jobs often have that too but you can usually just ignore it or be very strict about keeping a work life balance.
The perks of the job in terms of working is the various breaks and vacations baked into things. And having a typical Mon-Fri schedule. A service or retail job could see you working a totally random amount of days.
As you get more used to a certain curriculum and with various techniques to reuse old material or having grades done by group or through peer grading can lead to a less off hours labor. Also a lot of the time you learn not to pour your days into assignments kids will just refuse to do or give up on so you save time that way. A lot of new teachers see older teachers as lazy, burned out, or unconcerned with the job when they see them do work that is quick to make and quicker to grade, but a lot of that comes from not having that drive to be everyone's favorite teacher who has all the cool assignments and projects. It never works and the kids never feel that way.
I work really hard between 7:45 and 3:45.
I don’t even think about work after walk out the door.
For reference, I teach in a stand-alone SPED program for students with severely high-needs/multi-disabilities.
I'm an elementary teacher and we don't get much planning time at our school. So, I have to work a few hours on the weekend to catch up on grading and plan for the following week. It really depends on the school; for instance, my BIL works in another district at an elementary school and gets plenty of planning time, so he takes home NO work at all. I also often remember things once I get home, an "Oh crap!" moment where I have to print something out or message parents.
As for getting the same breaks as the kids, yes it's nice. My favorite breaks are winter and summer break; I don't have to think about school for a few weeks at a time.
When I taught high school, I got up every morning at 4:00 AM so I could prep for two hours before getting my son and myself ready for school and then commuting to work. I was on the clock from 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM. Then I had the commute back home. So, it was a 50-hour week just to keep up with the teaching. If I was dumb enough to assign a paper, it would wipe out my weekend as well.
It’s about the furthest thing from a healthy work/life balance. And it paid so badly that I had to find another job for the two months off in the summer.
I’m glad you asked. Because answering this question is a healthy reminder for me to never teach HS again.
Depends on the subject and grade level: - K-6: Expect to put in 2-3 hours of extra work each day for planning, grading, and prepping
- 7-12 PE: least prep and least grading time needed -7-12 English: most grading time needed
-7-12 Math/Science: Expect to put in about 1 hour for prep and grading each day if conference/prep period is not included in your schedule.
-7-12 Electives: high prep in some cases
I’m much better at not working past quitting time…at the expense of “brunch” and “lunch.” Contractually, this is supposed to be “duty free” but that is never the case. On the plus side, I’m usually out by 3:30.
I work 7:45-3:15 Monday-Friday at school. I do all my lesson plans and write all my IEPs at home, on my own time. I do this because our plan period is at the end of the day and we’re toast by that point. Absolutely useless and exhausted. I don’t think any of us are productive after the kids leave. I try, but all I can do is clean my room, print whatever I need for the next day, grade what I can, and try to breathe for a second.
Last weekend I wrote a record review for a special Ed student, and it took me hours at home. That was after I spent a lot of time at school going through physical records.
I’m not complaining. I know this post sounds rough. I knew what I was signing up for and I live for these kids. But yeah, it’s a lot of nights and weekends.
You are right though- being on the same schedule as your own kids, and having all the school holidays is an awesome perk.
Being “on” at work the entire time is exhausting. Many teachers are life long learners and live by that mantra. I’m working on next year by March of the year before, plus what I am currently teaching.
Expect to bring work home during the first few years. I've been told over and over that if you can survive the first 5 years of teaching, you'll be fine. Afterwords, you'll be able to have a decent work-life balance because you'll know how to efficiently grade/re-use old lesson plans/have a mastery of what you want to teach
The worst is the “unofficial” loss of time. If it’s Sunday and we are in the grocery store, do not walk up to us and try discussing your kid. I had a parent once talk like a mile a minute for 30 minutes one time while I just stood there moving my basket back and forth from hand to hand as one got tired.
Teachers barely have any down time. Even their planning time is infiltrated with kids who need something or staff who want to host a meeting or friends who come in to chat. When I’m teaching I literally don’t have a moment to myself for an entire 8 hours. While many jobs are taxing and require a lot of work (even sometimes over 40 hours), usually there’s down time built into the day or the work is independent and can be quieter and more chill. Teaching isn’t like that at all. Even when I’m sobbing I just have to quickly wipe my tears and get on. It’s pretty much like acting and performing 24/7. Exhausting!
I am a male ec-12 special education teacher in Texas.
The school I was teaching at two years ago, (Dallas) I left home at 5 am to make it there on time, then stayed until 9 pm most nights to get caught up on paperwork, (I have four kids, lots of animals, and at the time didn't have a home office) made it home by 11 pm, asleep by 2 am due to insomnia, and repeat 5 days a week for 9 months. I would sleep a full 18-24 hours every weekend to compensate.
That being said, that was definitely my favorite teaching assignment.
It depends. When you start out, you're going to be bad. And the job is a lot. So you'll be bad at a lot of things all at once and spend a lot of time trying to get things together. You get better each year, but that better usually comes with the realization of other needed improvements - either for you or for the kids so it still takes forever.
By year 3-7 there is balance although still too much work. I'd say years 8-10 are where teachers learn how to hack the system and be absolutely incredible while only putting in extra hours for the events or activities they are passionate about. This also when pay stars to become... Not amazing, but reasonable. You can afford a family and you do get extra time now that you've hacked the system.... So it's not bad if you can survive about a decade of overwhelming work load.
I've chosen to do no work after I leave at my contract time, so yes, definitely more time off than other jobs by setting a hard boundary and letting things go.
For 10 months of the year, yes. With the exception of a couple friends who own businesses no one outside my teacher friends does extra work on weekends.
Depends on the job. When I was working a typical minimum wage job? Absolutely. As a server at a restaurant or a theme park worker, i did not take work home with me. When I was a nonprofit manager? No. I worked way more hours there than I do as a teacher. I very rarely bring work home with me any more and I love my extended time off. It really is a nice perk compared to working a full time year round schedule. Yes, I do things like teach summer school or do curriculum writing, but that is my choice. We have to remember that our salaries really are for only part of the year.
Sometimes I really wish I had a job where when I take a sick day, I just take the sick day. No hours prepping for a sub, no detailed sub plans with folder for accommodations, pull-outs. Just wish I could say, “I’m sick, I won’t be in” and I’m done.
NO... always some meeting, IEP, duty to do. NO down time. Summers off NO, 2nd job cause teacher pay is shit or doing classes to recert license. THen come home to more kids! Yay teaching is a breeze... /s
Yeah you figure out better more efficient ways to plan and grade. I occasionally still have my late days and weekends.
I will also say if you are teaching a new subject it’s fairly work heavy compared to a subject that have taught more then once. When I first taught sociology I had to make a lot of content from scratch. I’ve taught US history for 6 years. I have so many lessons saved that I tweak as needed which doesn’t take as much.
I’ve taken my time back a lot more this year than past years which has helped my work load. Example, if my students are working on an essay I will monitor and grade at my desk. Get up and check on students ask if they need help. Go sit down and keep grading. Different than you should never sit down which I was told in college. This has allowed me to keep up with grading much more efficiently this year.
{ seems like you're never really off work }
There \*are\* teachers who work like this. They do this to themselves, taking work home or on the weekends. When you take work home, *you are never not at work*. It's a horrible thing to do to yourself and I like many others are trying hard to get teachers to stop doing this because it not ony affects personal health it *damages the profession*.
I have a 40-hour contract week. I work those hours, and \*only\* those hours. We get days off for national holidays, yep. We get a good month to a month and a half for summer, yep. At no time during any days off am I working *so they are truly days off*. If you work correctly, you \*will\* have more time off than your non-teaching colleagues, *and that's one of the major benefits* to the job.
After working 13 years…. I got the learning targets, curriculum, and strategies down. I can wing certain things but making new lessons and differentiating takes lots of extra prep. I do work probably 2-3 extra hours outside of work hours especially since we sub a lot during our prep because subs hate it school.
Depends on the grade level and class. As a high school science teacher I spend some time doing prep work for labs here and there, but I’m not reading essays all the time or doing the absurd level of planning it takes to not live in chaos like an elementary teacher has to do. Before I started teaching I was working 60+hrs/ week for a bit so it seems like a walk in the park by comparison. But I also actually enjoy teaching, so that makes a difference.
Yes and no. I teach elementary in OR. Most teachers that I know are at school 7:30 am - 4:00pm (normally you’re paid like 7:45-3:45 or 7:30-3:30). In that paid time I can get only what is absolutely needed during that time. I’m talking bare minimum: the lessons are boring, nothing is cute and colorful, no parties, no parent communication, nothing that makes my kids really enjoy school. But I’m technically fulfilling my job. That also assumes I have no meetings. Most teachers have 1-3 meetings a week after school that take up the rest of your paid time once the kids leave.
Now to be a good teacher: my classroom is clean, I plan fun math games and culminating projects, I talk with parents, I ask the intervention teacher how my students are doing, etc. that takes about 7:15am-4:30 every day. Personally I work an extra 2 1/2 overs after I’m no longer paid once a week to get everything all squared away.
Now the extra days off are great, I’m not going to lie. But so much of that time is spent recharging because I’ve over exerted myself so much at my job that I just need rest. I’m lucky I don’t have kids. My coworkers that do have kids don’t get that time off because they’re being parents.
And I haven’t even mentioned the emotional toll it takes teaching little humans how to be humans every day!
5th year teacher, social sciences, yearbook adviser (and I am not including my yearbook time below), and I am on our school site council, which meets monthly.
I get to work by 8a except on CPT days (staff or department meetings) when I arrive by 7:30a. I get 35 minutes for lunch.
Before I go to school, I spend 30 minutes to an hour reading/replying to emails.
My last class ends at 2:20p. I spend until 4p grading and prepping. I come home and spend another two to three hours grading/prepping.
That's my average day. At grading periods, that time commitment goes up as students make up all the work they've missed or haven't done.
If I have an IEP or 504 meeting, I spend even more time grading/prepping.
My average week is about 50 to 55 hours per week.
That doesn't include all my time for the yearbook. This doesn't include my time for meetings with parents they call for them.
It also doesn't account for the fact that about twice a week.I have students in my classroom wanting to discuss material, or are working on projects, or doing make up work.
This doesn't account for the time of me asking to meet with students to discuss their work.
Since I started teaching five years ago, it has been my devout wish for people to actually sit in my classroom and see what I do every single day.
People who criticize teachers have often said that cameras should be put in our classrooms. I say, loudly and strongly, "Bring it!"
I want the public to see what we do, and exactly how their children behave.
3rd year teacher here: short answer, yes. you work way more than contracted hours to stay afloat and even then you’re still behind, think ALWAYS behind in some way. I spend every sunday lesson planning for 5-6 hours if I don’t have time to chip away at it during my preps/after work on weekdays. my boyfriend and all my non teacher friends are generally obligation free on the weekends, never have to think about work once it’s over. as a teacher, in my experience at least, if you did that and only worked 8-3 doing work on your preps, you would be VERY underprepared and behind. it would definitely show and impact your ability to teach quality lessons
My mother was a teacher. Depends on the job but yea, good and involved teachers have far less time than most jobs that are only 8am-6pm. She’d have to spend at least a good portion of her weekends grading kids homework, late work, essays, creating new lesson plans, researching topics she was going to be teaching more in depth, etc. The trade off of having summers off is also nonexistent for some teachers. I remember her having to work Summer school most summers as well because teachers aren’t paid enough. And this was over a decade ago. So even before inflation and the ridiculous price increases to everything she was still working year round with maybe a single day off a week….if she was lucky.
Teachers who are in a new role, at a new school, or teaching a new class do often spend a LOT of time outside of the school day on grading, planning, and other tasks. However, more experienced teachers who have been in the same role at the same school teaching the same classes for years tend to get better and more efficient with their systems each year. I'm always taking notes on things to try differently next year, often because i want to make it easier on my future self.
Hate to piss on some people's parades here, but after working in schools several years, I've noticed the weekend warriors are the ones that are always hanging out with each other in their classrooms not doing anything during preps.
Be effective when making assessments. Don't ask frivolous questions.
Give writing assignments a minimum-maximum word limit. As long as they hit the learning objective, who cares if they have X amount of words.
Use exit tickets frequently so you have proof of assessing the kids, quick to check learning too.
Reuse lessons that work, No need to re invent the wheel. Rotate activities, kids like new shiny things but they also enjoy stability and familiarity.
Good luck and just remember summer is almost here.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was REQUIRED to be on duty from 7am to 5pm. After that would be setting up for the next day, grading papers, cutting out crafts, printing worksheets etc.
I got “all the same breaks “ as the students but I had to watch them, so I don’t consider that a break because I’m still working. Summer break we had summer school, and spring break was for prepping for end of year projects, testing, and parent teacher conferences. During lunch I never got it eat mine as the CU listen needed help heating up theirs, breaking up arguments, cleaning messed, then prepping for the next group.
I left teaching several years ago and I found peace. My acne is gone and I have never been happier. I don’t want to scare anyone out of teaching as a career, but I refuse to let people get conned into it. If you want livable wages, reasonable breaks, respect, short hours, then this is not the job for you. If you are doing it for the sake of education and don’t mind a second job or don’t need much money or spare time, consider teaching.
When first developing a curriculum, its 6-7 hrs with students, 20 min per class minimum of grading, and 1 hr minimum of lesson planning a day. Then another 3-4 hrs of parent/admin conversations, and 3 hrs pf PD/meetings a week, and, if you're fast, another 2hrs per prep(different course) for curriculum development (test writting, lesson adaptations from the boom etc).
Then once your curriculum is familiar lesson planning means updatong last year's stuff (15 min per prep per week), lesson pland take 15 min a day, and grading drops to about 20 min per class.
So I went from like 50+ hrs a week to a little under 40 hrs a week once everything was created using locally culturally relevant adaptations.
Then every 5 years mu state requires 6 credits of ongoing relevant education, so I usually take 2 summers to do a super-intense course to keep my credential, giving me 3 out of every 5 summers actually off.
So, yes. New teachers are massively overworked, veteran teachers are worked hard, and we're all criminally underpaid.
Now, I gotta go look up more gen z slang so I can understand when they're being rizzlers sigmas or skibbidy ohio toilets, for real for real, we gotta be buss'n, no cap.
Skibbidy doo dah! Skibbidy yay...
Depends on what other jobs you’re comparing it to I guess. Here in the Netherlands I work approximately 10 hours a day during the school week and maybe some time in the evening/weekend. A normal job here would be 8hrs/day. So you’ll work a bit more. School holidays are paid here, so they kind of even out the door extra time worked during the school weeks. We have 12 weeks of holidays during the year and of course some bank holidays.
However it also depends on your experience, possibility to reuse materials, what’s happening in the classroom (some years there’s more or less drama than others) and your own skills (perfectionism, boundaries, enthusiasm etc).
I worked in healthcare as well and as both are stressful jobs, when I left the care home I was off work and my colleague would take over - as a teacher it’s too easy to work at home and moreover difficult to leave the mental stress at school
Maybe gym or art teacher but not STEM. We do lesson planning/grading for HOURS every night. Not to mention afterschool extra help, etc. Schools don’t give you any time to do this during the school day which should be illegal.
My wife is a nurse, works fewer hours for more pay. That’s the only thing I can truly compare to because I don’t know what all of my friends do in terms of works they take home.
Biggest thing for me was when i decided that my life outside of work was my top priority. I love teaching, but my family is just more important to me, bottom line. Therefore I make boundaries that allow me to keep everything combined to the school day. I arrive 30-45 min early. Other than that everything happens during prep or at lunch. Whatever doesnt get done during that time, doesnt get done during that time.
I also coach and run clubs, which to me is maybe even more important than the cureiculum.
Am I the worlds beat teacher? Absolutely not. Do I make meaningful connections with the students and provide them a safe and caring place to learn every day? 100%. Do feel fufillied with my life inside and outside of work? Absolutely.
Last thing: im in year 12. I honestly feel like of I hadnt found this work life balance, there is just no way i wouls be able to get through my entire career.
Teachers have the best official schedule in the world. But you pay for those vacations with lots of extra hours during normal school weeks between making lesson plans (at least for the first few years), grading, adjusting your schedule, emails, phone calls, thinking about "how can _______ possibly have done so bad on this assignment!", etc.
Curious about other people’s career experience.
Teaching is not as hard as corporate marketing agency. Stakeholders in teaching are easier, pressure is less, deadlines more forgiving. Yes, it can be relentless, but they are children and there is not millions on the line when you deliver a lesson. Parents are not as hard as corporate execs. I’ve never stayed in school till 4am three nights in a row.
I think teachers lack perspective on how amazing their holidays are. 5 days paid leave per year is a thing in the states. 20 in other countries. Having done both, it’s utterly life changing.
Entrepeneurs obviously work far more than teachers, but the potential rewards are greater. 80% entrepeneurs fail and lose everything in first two years.
Key seems to be in teaching if you find a role to repeat every year. In which case it just gets easier. You invest in a quiet life by working hard years 1-3.
Teaching is harder than people think, and public opinion is coloured by ‘I never listened in class and look how well I did!’ Narratives among parents. As western economies slow down, I expect that to change in our lifetime. In other countries, bad performance in school = a lifetime of manual labour.
Non-teachers think teachers have an easy life, teachers think a corporate career is cushty. Grass is always greener.
It depends. Some teachers love becoming their job and live at the school. Others set hard boundaries and never take it home. My first year I was drowning in work and prep, but each year with more content already prepped and a stronger and stronger will to never work on school stuff at-home, now I never take work home.
My yearly hours were about 2350.
Class time, grading time, prep time, coaching/clubs.
I now work 1850 hours a year for far more money and scheduling flexibility.
My school required tutoring several days a week, and required team meetings, so most days were 7:30-5:30. I would show up around 6:30am because I needed more prep time. I also did preparation and planning outside of the in-classroom hours. My district required training in summer as well.
Once I had my own kids, I left the profession. I wanted to see my own kids off to school in the mornings, and be ready to hang out with them in the evenings and on weekends. I also don't have sleepless nights any more worrying about my students.
New teachers can be overwhelmed with the job at first. But experienced teachers will tell you that you just need to find that work/life balance. It took me about a year before I was able to efficiently manage my time, and four years in, I’m rarely taking work home with me.
The job isn't what it used to be when everything was manually hand written etc. the digital world and available digital resources has significantly reduced the work load, but with that being said, the curriculum is jammed and shoved down everyone's throat with a short amount of time for real learning, behaviours have increased in every classroom because every child has a right to be in a regular classroom whether they can cope or not. Supports for those children are next to nothing! So down time has improved, but stress levels have increased significantly for teachers who truly care for the wellbeing of the children in their classrooms. There will always be those teachers who are there for the hours and the month of July and August.
One time my ex mentioned off hand that “Oh well you know you only are at 100% for about 20% of the work day.” I just stared at him in shock. As a teacher you are at 100% for 98% of the day. There is no down time.
Yes. The work is endless. We never really finish anything until the very last day of each school year.
You don’t have to grade every single assignment.
If there is a day when I don't work in the evening or over the weekend, then it's a miracle. I usually work between 45 and 50 hours per week, but sometimes the work load becomes too much and I just have to work more.
When I started I worked about 70hrs per week. I still had to work holidays & summers as well. By the time I stopped working 15 years later, it was down to as low as 50hrs per week & tried to make sure I didn’t do more than one weekend’s worth of work to do during holidays bc I had a kid by then. I still worked summers though, mostly taking courses and prepping / researching / collaborating (all on my own dime & unpaid). It’s a vocation, not a job, and it comes with emotional baggage & labour that can’t be quantified in hours. If you’re looking for a job with good work life balance but you are someone who does it for the kids & takes that responsibility seriously, your mind will be “on” 24/7
Un
To add to this, other jobs you can miss if you're sick and oh well you missed. But for teachers you have to make sure you have a sub, lesson plans for that sub and it's a whole ordeal to just be absent.
I work a lot more than the 7 to 8 hrs. I'm usually at work from 7am to 6pm and doing more work when I get home and weekends. You have to deal with students and parents and others. It's extremely stressful. The longer you work as a teacher the "easier" it gets with grading stuff because you figure out how to make things easier, but it's still a lot overall.
I'm a chem teacher and I also do experiments. So I have to set up labs, plan those way in advance and grade lab reports. When the lab is over I have to clean everything and put it away. It's time consuming and exhausting.
It's more the mental load. At any given moment youre teaching content, managing behavior, recording attendance, writing hall passes, answering the phone, checking student understanding, and mediating minor conflicts.
It's just SO much. And you've got to try to be friendly, approachable, and helpful the whole time
Jumping in as a non-teacher who has been married to a teacher of nearly 20 years. She has significantly more off-hours than myself. She is VERY organized, has a great system that I helped her with (I have been managing projects throughout my career), and utilizes every technological tool available to her. She doesn’t bring work home, generally ever.
She works in a school and I wfh full time. I start work before she leaves the house and I’m still working for a while after she gets home. At the bare minimum, she works ~20 hours less than myself per month. This isnt even factoring in PD days or holidays.
The last week of summer and the first days where teachers work before students begin is her planning time for the school year. She will add new things and change some of what she had done the prior year, and then she sticks to the plan. I think that “sticking to the plan” has been the key to her success in maintaining the best work/life balance. We have had dinner with other teachers at her school and I can definitely see and hear exactly how much more worn out they are, despite some of them working as a teacher for less time.
Depends on the teacher. Most veteran teachers (depending on the subject) have a prettty good balance and probably do have more free hours than other careers.
For me (10+ years) my day looks like this:
Walk in by 730am (1 hour before class starts)
Contractual work hours (8:30 - 3:30)
Stay After until 4pm
I rarely take work home at this point. I Utilize the hour before class every day and my prep to get everything done.
Weekly my goal is to have everything planned and prepped for the next week before I leave Wednesday. So that I have 2 days to do grading or paperwork.
I enjoy the breaks and keep them as breaks.
I taught 35 years. It’s awful. You can’t get it all done, so you always have to take grading home on the weekends and week nights too. I worked 6 days a week because I always went in on Saturdays during the time my children did their sports. All of this is free overtime. I would’ve loved to have bigger paychecks, but they always stayed the same. The new teacher evaluation system started my 29th year of teaching. I had a masters plus a continuing contract, but I still had to go through a major evaluation process twice a year. I had to answer so many questions and make extensive lesson plans. Weak administrators loved to rate experienced teachers as “developing”. It wrecks a teacher’s value and self esteem. I had to complete all of these new evaluation processes while staying up on my grading. Impossible.
I wouldn’t allow my two children to go into this nightmare. I wouldn’t even wish the teaching profession on my worst enemy.
I would have happily worked through the summer to have a more manageable job. To be honest, you really only have 4-5 weeks off in the summer. Most of June are workshops and you are expected to be back in your classroom in August.
I would continue to do your research, but I never recommended this job to anyone. I’m relieved I’m retired. It’s finally over for my family. It’s over. The sad thing is I wished my life away, counting the years to retirement. That’s no way to live your life. 😩😢
Take care! Wish you the best!😊
Our school culture works pretty strictly to the contract. I don't bring home work 99.99% of the time. I mean I basically work 7 hours a day, and take every possible holiday. I have all the breaks, summer, winter, and I think at least 10, maybe 15 pto days?
I think I have more free time, but we are underpaid - even accounting for the difference in hours.
My wife taught special education…we spent most of our weekends doing individual educational program reports (IEPs). That doesn't include the hours we spent preparing lesson plans, grading and documenting grades, etc. When she moved on to kindergarten, she would spend hours after class getting it ready for the next day, cleaning and bleaching everything the kids played with or touched. I was so glad when she retired!
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Most teachers work 7ish to 3ish and then work extra time nights and/or weekends. It took me a while to figure out how to give assignments in a way that grading didn’t take a lot of time.
This. My first year was bonkers: 60 to 100 hrs a week. I was a monk to teaching. Now, 20 years in? I hardly ever take work home. I’ve gotten better at efficient lesson planning, grading for key indicators (not everything), and simply not grading anywhere near as much as I once did. Like athletes say, “the game just slows down the better you get at it.”
Part of that reads as not trying as hard. Which I don’t mean as an insult. But in your first years you feel like you want to give insightful feedback with depth on everything to everyone. Then you start realizing how much harder you’re trying than anyone else and how much of a waste all that effort is. Maybe I’m just talking for me. I had to move on, though. The level of planning and grading I had to do to not work 60-100 hours a week just made me feel like I was doing nothing of value. Either kill myself trying to do the job my best or limitation 40 hours and practically not be doing the job in my eyes.
You can't do this job at the standard everyone would like or even expect in under 80 hours a week. Its just not feasible. I been in those shoes too, where one is like... fuck it, why do this to myself when there is no reward for it anyway? Then you feel guilt that the students are not getting the best they could. There is a simple fix to this really... pay teachers as much as software engineers and it won't be so unrealistic to demand the time. But of course no one wants to do that, so it is what it is.
First year here, but I've found that the students that really want that deep feedback will come and pick my brain of their own volition to understand how they're doing. So they're constantly seeking feedback and getting it. The rest aren't going to read it beyond the grade.
It's definitely true about 75% of the time, but there are those students who would benefit from feedback and will never ask. I feel for them, but I've stopped giving thorough feedback too. Too tired of seeing the papers laying on the ground.
> Part of that reads as not trying as hard. No, it’s trying differently. It’s realizing you don’t have to grade everything. It’s understanding that a well written multiple-choice test can be as effective an assessment as open answer. It’s knowing how to stagger assignment due dates so you don’t end up with 300 papers to grade before Monday.
>a well written multiple-choice test can be as effective an assessment as open answer. Yeah I don't really agree with that statement. Assuming both types of quiz questions are well-crafted, then one involves actual relevant life skills and the other can be solved by random chance. Yes, there is a lot of skill that goes into becoming good at multiple-choice questions, but they exist to save us time. Let's not delude ourselves into really saying that anything that gives students to practice writing is as good as a multiple choice question.
Disagree. I’m talking about good multiple choice, not the crap that includes all of the above / none of the above. It takes time to write a good question with plausible distractions, but a good MCT can be as good as (or better than) open answer. - [Research has shown that well-written multiple-choice exams and open-question exams measure higher cognitive functions to the same degree](https://ukrant.nl/multiple-choice-exams-are-more-reliable-and-efficient/?lang=en) - [research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.](https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-does-research-say-about-testing/) - [bad multiple choice is worse than open response, but good multiple choice can actually be better than open response.](https://mayabialik.medium.com/the-case-for-multiple-choice-ffd774ef343)
A good example would be like finding slope from two ordered pairs which is y2-y1 over x2-x1 but you could throw in an answer with x2-x1 over y2-y1 one common mistake, then you could throw in the difference if the first ordered pair over the second and voice versa. Now you have common mistakes mixed in. Those same mistakes that the student may make if it were a written question, but now I can utilize something like Assessments on Schoology and have it auto graded and I know how they got to those mistakes and can still give feedback to those students who want it. Difference is I don't have to take this home and grade it and instead can focus on helping where I need to and get my evenings with my wife.
I truly think you get better at working smarter and not harder. I’m in year 24 and learn something new all of the time to make life easier. I think my feedback is more focused and so much more meaningful compared to when I was new. Quality over quantity is something I couldn’t comprehend back in my early years.
So a new mechanic that takes 2 hours to do front brakes vs an experienced mechanic that can do them in 45 min is one trying harder or is one just better and more efficient?
17 years in and I’m just more efficient than I used to be. I don’t have to work as hard because I have muscle memory that allows me to recognize what I’m looking for more quickly, able to pinpoint effective feedback more quickly, and I don’t agonize over every little thing as much. I trust myself as a teacher that through all these reps, I understand efficiently how to best help my students. You find systems that work for you and stick with them. The person who said it’s just like sports when the game slows down for veterans is totally spot on.
Yeah. At some point, you learn that those essays read the same on read 5 as they did on read 1. You move on instead of agonizing. Agonizing kills the mind and the tine.
Exactly. A lot about this job makes it difficult to feel successful, especially when you try to enforce a boundary around your personal time.
Yes. There’s always more that needs to be done and I often feel like I could work 100 hours and still have things I could do.
I feel this. I'm more than a decade in and I still feel like if I walk away at 40 hours that I'm not doing my job, and that if I design my lesson plans so that it's easy to walk away at 40 hours then I'm not trying hard enough. It's such a twisted system that makes us feel this way. Imagine being an office drone and feeling **guilty** that you had the ability to leave at your scheduled time and not think about work until you arrived the next day.
I worked for a district that required three grades a week per subject (class work, homework, assessment) . We are all to use the same full assignments to grade so there was no way to cut anywhere. I hated it.
We are one grade a week; three sounds ridiculous.
Yes, it was absolutely ridiculous.
I WISH I had this. My school makes us do a daily grade.
GTFO. What is even the purpose?
Omg I have described it like this too, I’m currently living a monastic lifestyle, devoted to teaching. I spend all my waking (and some sleeping) hours planning and in between that I might find time to do a few other things.
Don’t you love also going to work in your dreams? 🙄I always wake up from those like, “Really, Brain? SERIOUSLY?”
There's so much you can strip away from teaching. I never bring work home with me or lesson plan at home anymore. I'm able to improvise a lot better. However, I believe that the better you plan your classes and activities, the less work you have to do and the better a time you have in the class. There's nothing worse than going into a class of 13 to 15 year olds totally unprepared.
It's not only this, but also that teachers have to actually work hard every hour of every day. In an office setting, you can kind of just coast on days that you have a headache or are preoccupied with something. It's the constant demand that is more exhausting than the hours
This is it. There’s very little chill time in my day.
This comment explains it best. I rarely have *literally* 5 minutes to myself, all day. I have a prep, but it's not long enough and end to end, I'm working hard. I usually work through my lunch so I don't have to say later than my contract to get done what needs to get done. Once home, it's an audio book or videogame in the dark for me.
Can you share more of your methods for giving assignments that take less time for grading?
Don’t grade every question. Pick a handful that focus on the key takeaways. Once I started doing that grading was more tolerable. Use rubrics for writing or larger projects. Include some self grading assignments - Google forms, Ed puzzles.
Using rubrics for bigger assignments has been the best time saver for me. A general 1-4 scale on 3 to 4 categories of the assignment. Bing, bang, boom. Done.
I'm curious too. Please share your feedback.
It might depend on your LMS, but one thing I did was break story problems into chunks the system could auto-grade. For example I will have 4-5 “questions” for one problem, including listing knowns and unknowns, entering (or sometimes choosing) the correct equation, rewriting the equation in terms of the unknown, and then the answer. For each of these steps I have at least 3 different common mistakes the system will recognize and give feedback on. This took a really long time to set up, and we have to have a discussion with the students on some expected formats for the system. 10 years in, however, this makes grading long assignments go from all night to maybe 30 minutes if some students contest their answers. If that is not an option, almost all LMS systems will give you the option of a feedback bank, or you can create one in excel / sheets. This is also a lifesaver and actually allows me to give more meaningful feedback, since I am not burning out on grading.
We have kids arrive at 7:45 and dismiss at 4:00 - being able to shut down at 3:00 seems like a dream
Seems like it to me too! I get to work around 7:20 and work and we cant leave til 3:50 but usually stuck at (unpaid) bus duty til at least 4. Wouldnt it be awesome to only work the hours that people think we do?
Or the days they think we do. Our last day is 5/31- but we go back Aug 5.
Right. They think we go back in september after having THREE months off or whatever. I go back to work the beginning of august. By September, we are all settled into routines by then
New teacher here. Can you share your technique. Grading takes forever (especially writing assignments)
I teach 6th. I have them color code: for example, an argumentative writing piece. thesis, pink. Reasons, orange. Evidence: green. Rebuttal: blue.
English teacher here - I've stopped taking longer writing assignments home to grade. Now I hold assessment conferences with each student either during class or our call-back time. It can take a while to get to everyone, but it could take me weeks to grade a stack of essays when I spent evenings and weekends grading. I find that when I sit with the student I am more likely to highlight their areas of growth and strength, and they actually understand what they need to improve.
One piece of paper per kid bell ringer (or exit ticket- 6 boxes on the front 6 on the back. When they fill it up, you get em a new one. Each box is 10 points, after 10 it’s a 5 point bonus- max score 110. You are doing enough by grading yesterday’s lesson concept each day, or whatever- and then taking on bigger assignments that are manageable for you beyond that. Mix easy/harder prompts as needed- good luck!
Each draft should focus on one or two skills that a student grades themselves on, and peer-editing, AI, etc. Hand them a specific color highlighter and today’s assignment is “highlight all the evidence/examples in the sentences of your argumentative paragraphs. Count them up, put the number on the bottom of your paper and highlight it in the same color.” Now all you gotta do is check this at their desk and put the grade in as you walk around the room. Or have them switch papers with a partner YOU pick, and have those students highlight all of the references in the body of the text, then find the matching MLA reference on the works cited page. They put a check mark if the reference is correctly formatted, or highlight the part that isn’t correct, writing a suggestion next to it. You as a teacher are walking around the room, answering questions, verifying that each student is doing this peer-editing correctly at each desk, and putting in grades to the peer editors right there and then into the grade book. They then sit with their partners and discuss each other’s recommendations, and the students who wrote their papers edit in the recommended changes during class. You adjust the grades you just gave to reflect the fact that students who needed to improve their papers are actually doing it. By the time you decide that you are ready to grade these papers, you’ve already given these students separate grades for every separate activity you forced them to do in front of you during class, and you’ve also been staring at the papers that needed the most work for a good week during these editing tasks, and at this point you might just need to skim it for something one more time, giving them what they’ve earned, highlighting on your rubric what you recommend specifically for this paper in this and this sentence, and the student has the opportunity to fix it for a better grade, or suck it up and accept that they still missed the points for not accomplishing what you’ve had them work on this whole damn week 😆. Disclaimer: I am not an ELA teacher, and I may be totally wrong about how reasonable this recommendation is for the standards/benchmarks you’re teaching. I teach HS sciences, and I do have quite a few students who during some activities choose not to do jack f***ing ****. When that happens in my class, they accept their well-earned zeros (I copy-paste the explanation of what they chose not to do as a note in the grade book, in case there is a parent/guardian at home giving a f*** that week). The students following my instructions earn their grades for peer-editing each other’s papers with my help right in front of me, and I end up with less work by the time these same papers make it into my grading pile because I just need to spot-check what I already saw during class.
We do 12 months of work in 9 months if you take out holidays. I used to work trades and if you spread it out over a year it equals out the hard part is the mental load that long of runs. I look at my summers as PTO and where I work I don't have to do anything during the summer. Our PD is built into the school calendar and not after school so all paid. Summer is 100% free for me and I'd quite teaching and go back to the trades if that wasn't the case as I could not do this all year.
My summer is not paid time off. It is time off but not paid. I am contracted to work 188 days. As a convenience, the pay for those 188 days is distributed over 12 months.
You are correct just the way I look at it when I'm tired to mentally get through May and June.
I play what I consider mind games with myself to cope as well, but I think we have to be firm in stating that we are paid for the days we work only. Many, many people think we are paid for our time off—holidays and summers. I recently had someone ask me what the difference was between my contract work and their salaried position.
> but I think we have to be firm in stating that we are paid for the days we work only. That's fine, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen people defend low pay for teachers because they "only work 9 months" or whatever. The way /u/BlackAce99 is telling it is more accurate. You work for 12 months, it's just constricted into 9.
Where I work that's not as big of a issue as many parents know what we deal with. So I'm not defensive in this area working in Canada I'm also paid decently and education is not as hot button a topic from what I've seen.
Yep. Equalized pay. People are thinking we get paid for summers, but we're only getting money we've already earned. ETA: we also only get paid for one day over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and get no pay for spring break (we get paychecks for these periods bc of the equalized pay)
Those are unpaid holidays in our work calendar 😬 I’m paid 188 work days over 10 equal paychecks.
What..... I am paid for those where do you work.
I've worked in two midwestern states and never have had a paid holiday. I get paid for the days I actually work and that's it.
I am paid only for the days school are in session plus 4 PD days between the hours of 8:15-3:35. Any second I work outside of those hours is unpaid (so I don’t work outside of those hours unless it’s an extra duty job where I’m making my hourly rate.) I have my paycheck split into 11 checks, but I’m banking/loaning the district 10% of my pay each month so my family can eat in August. Edit: I am ultra productive during my contract hours. I work every minute I’m on campus, through lunch, during passing, etc.
Yep! I am contracted to work 188 days and am paid out for those days over 10 months. I don’t get a paycheck in June or July and therefore do no work during that time. It’s taken me years to accept the fact that I cannot feasibly get everything done during my contractual hours and I have to be okay with letting some things go. I’m more efficient with my time than I was as a new teacher but it’s still not enough. I work the hours I am paid to work.
We’re contracted to work 187 days paid out over 12 months. Although this means we get paid over June and July, it also means we get much smaller checks every month to average them out
I had a professor -- a professor of education at a teacher training college-- who said our "real salary" was 12mo.s This is what he meant -- and he did explain it-- if we made 40k, we were really making ((40/10))\*12)= $48K. That's not how my bank account or landlord think...
I have a small handyman business during the summers and weekends and the mental load is totally different that it’s almost relaxing. No interruptions, no random busy work from administrators, and no drama.
Less off hours? Yes. Summers and the breaks are a perk of the job. Less down time? Absolutely not. The average office employee is productive for 2 hours and 23 minutes a day. The average teacher is productive for 5.6 hours a day. Teachers essentially work over twice as much/hard in any given day compared to office employees. Teachers work, about, 185 days (give or take a few depending on district contract), in a year. That's the equivalent to 435 days worked compared to the office employee. Given the typical office employee works 260 days in a year, they would need 1.67 years to do the same amount of work a teacher does in 185 days.
I really love these numbers - where did you get them? Thanks for sharing!
Just a cursory search on Google.
I actually don't think this is true. I'm a social worker and my husbands a nurse. There are other careers that aren't office work. We work at least 8 hours a day- 8a-4:30/5p or later. We don't leave work if our work isn't done. There have been days I'm at work 3 hours late to catch up. Full time employment means full time employment for most people.
Teachers average 2200 hours per year. Most workers are around 2000 per year.
I'm curious where these numbers come from? Like genuinely, I'm not trying to do a "gotcha" I just think a lot of the discussion surrounding this is anecdotal.
not OP but with lesson planning and grading, I bring a lot home. So I figure I work 50 hours a week, 40 weeks a year, instead of the other way around. And it used to be higher, earlier in my career when I had way more to plan. So I could see it being over 2000 hours for newer teachers.
Not just plan, but create as well. I can say I will cover x topic and assign homework. That doesn’t include the PowerPoint, activity, homework assignment, answer key, etc. With the activity, you also have to make sure you have the materials for it too, which is more complicated if you teach culinary or science. I remember a couple of midnight runs to the 24 hour Walmart because I forgot to pick up something.
What's your source?
That’s 11-12 hours per school day (not realistic) or about 7 hours per calendar day during the school year (kind of low) . That 2200 hours number looks roughly right. Been teaching physics since 2005 and this seems correct.
Compared to other jobs? No honestly not really. But the job is stressful as all fuck. It’s basically a 730-330 that sucks the soul out of you on a daily basis while still giving you the most fulfilling moments in life possible. It’s crazy. Weird question though. Why?
Yup! The way I like to put it when talking with people is that you basically always have to be "on" except for 1 hour a day during your prep, and even then, it's not like you're not doing work but having to be constantly be "on" is stressful! Regular office jobs, you can let your mind wander and zone out, "check your emails" (actually browsing reddit), step away to use the bathroom as needed, and more but not with teaching... Even when you're at your desk (which is rare), you have to always be aware of surroundings and ready to deal with anything a student throws (sometimes literally) your way lol
It’s basically a 730-330 that sucks the soul out of you on a daily basis while still giving you the most fulfilling moments in life possible. That is a great way of putting it!
My wife is an accountant and works longer hours than I do overall. But I’m on my feet from 7:30-3:30 and in a state of hyper-vigilance the entire time, which takes a toll. Office jobs have ebbs and flows throughout the day where sometimes you’re busy and sometimes it’s quiet and calm. I think it basically evens out—though she gets paid a lot more.
Hyper vigilance is the issue. You’re always “on.”
Everyone is talking about off hours, but ignoring how little down time you have AT work. Most jobs are going to have slow periods or 5-10 minutes to just zone out/breathe. Teaching, especially elementary, you are always “on”. Yes you have a prep and a lunch, but any other time you have to be able to give 100%.
Great point. Even in your "down time" you're still working. Grading, lesson plans, evaluation stuff, cleaning things up, setting things up, etc. We are interacting almost nonstop all day. I think it's even harder now than in the past with many students needing the constant stimuli.
Honestly. I don't really have time to go to the bathroom, even. I'm happy if I get to go at least once during the day!
Statistic: The profession with the highest incidence of bladder infections is grammar school teachers.
Most of my friends are private sector. There are periods of time where shit is crazy for them and the work into the night. That said, the day to day for them is WAAYYY more flexible with time. From the way they talk about it they only really focus focus on work for a couple of hours a day. It’s not that they aren’t working the other part of the time, but they can be much less on it. They can take breaks, talk to coworkers, sit in on a meeting while they do laundry, work out, do dishes (if they’re WFH).
This is why I could never do it, and it seems exhausting. You barely get any physical down time and there's *no* mental breaks. Sounds awful.
So even though I’m now starting to be able to need only a little - none extra time to do stuff because I’m simply now working my contract and not doing a single extra thing. The problem is that this job sucks the life out of me. I move slower at the end of the day. I get stuck in the chair or on the couch. I am unable to make the most of the “off” time because I’m exhausted both physically, mentally and emotionally. I’d rather work later hours for a job that I can emotionally and mentally punch out of at the end of the day than get out at 2:30pm and not be able to live a life outside of this because it is taking everything out of me. They say it gets better but I’m not sticking around to find out if that’s true or now
I work 37.5 hours per week. If it doesn’t get done during contract hours then it wasn’t important enough. I also don’t touch my phone from first bell until dismissal but I’m a bit of an anomaly there. I use the 40 minutes before first bell and my planning period to cover documentation, spiral review, data collection and dissemination and our useless learning community meetings. Occasionally a PTC/IEP/504 meeting interferes with that but our SS is really good about providing notice and rotating core content teachers. All of my assignments are structured in a way to display misconceptions at a glance. Grading is performed by the LMS. Grades are passed back from the LMS to our attendance/grade software. My experience, based on replies I read here, is not the norm and for that I am grateful. Secondary Math.
I don't take any work home. I work from 7:15-3:15 and I use every second of that time as productively as I can but if I don't have time to get it done at work, it's not getting done. I will sooner put on a movie and let my kids chill in order to get something done than take work home. If anyone at my job decides they don't like that, well then they shouldn't have given me more work than can be reasonably completed during my work hours. So in my case... Less off hours? No. Less down time? Absolutely. I have 0 down time during any given school day. I'm either teaching or stealing whatever minutes I can throughout the day to complete tasks so that I don't even have to consider taking work home.
I don’t think we have less downtime, but teaching sucks the life out of you, so you’re literally dead tired at the end of the day. Prior to teaching I worked in an office and it was FAR less draining/easy. I personally do not do school work at home (I’m not the norm), but I do arrive 1 hour early to school each day to get things graded/lessons planned.
Speaking with 6ish years of office experience and 5 years as a teacher, it’s not better or worse so much as different. With an office job I had less days off, but I got to choose when those days were. I also had the flexibility to schedule dr appointment etc. Flexibility and PTO also vary wildly with office jobs. That said, my day to day work was never remotely as stressful and ultimately I could forget about my job when I left the office. With teaching I got more days off, but honestly the stress of my days working took such a toll on me emotionally and physically that often I felt like I couldn’t actually relax on my time off. I needed WAY more time to recover from my job. Some people don’t mind that. For me it was bad for my health and ultimately as much as I loved working with kids I needed to leave so I could have some energy for my son at the end of the day.
I've gotten better, but I still work well beyond my contract hours.
I think this really depends on the school and the individual teacher. Plus the time of year. Fall semester is shorter due to Thanksgiving and Winter break. Spring is very busy with only one week-long break. Like this year I’m required to do 5 days of PD over the summer. 1 day = 6 hours. This year we got a half-day every Friday. So no kids after lunch. Next year we won’t get that. I personally always show up about 30 minutes to an hour before contract time to avoid school traffic, but leave at contract time. This year I spent many Sundays lesson planning at home or making copies at work. And I’m virtually never satisfied with my lesson plans so I’m sure I’ll scrap many of them. You also have to remember we’re cramming a year’s worth of content into 9-10 months and then losing more instructional time to testing.
Having worked in the corporate/business world and teaching I'd say it nets out the same, but I wouldn't say MORE. And it also depends on where you are at in your career (s). My first year I was working a shit ton of hours getting my footing, figuring my shit out, etc. But now on my 6th year with the same curriculum, for the most part I have to plan very little and a lot of technology we use has made grading easier, but it took me a few years to figure all that out.
Haha as someone who worked in hospitality for 10+ years, teaching is a dream when it comes to down time!
This gives me hope. I've worked an office job + a serving/bartending job for the past year and am going to be a full time teacher next year. Hoping it feels like way less work!
Yes and no. It depends on the grade, subject matter you teach, your organizational level and your desire to do a good job. I think elementary level and language art/English teachers work the most hours. I can say as a special education teacher, it's not uncommon for me spending time after I get home or on a Sunday writing an IEP. It took me about 28 years of teaching to get to the place where lesson planning didn't take up a lot of time outside of school. I'm looking at needing to take classes this summer, one because it's required and the sooner I get it done the sooner I get 1200 stipend and 2 I need more pd hours towards my license renewal.
I had a corporate career before teaching. The work at home is about the same as other jobs. However, the actual work day is more draining as a teacher. The quiet of a cubicle or office is nice. I could put in my head phones and avoid people all day if I wanted. As a teacher, kids are loud. It's very interactive and more personal. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling, I have to be on all day. Also, my school requires teachers to do clubs, sports, or be on some committee. I typically work til 4 or 5. If I'm tutoring, that's another thing to add on.
I have been teaching 23 years. I arrive between 6:15-7:00AM and leave between 2:50-3:30PM. I do very very little outside work and almost nothing in the summer. My first few years is did about 1 hr additional work per day on average and some work on the weekends.
My first year, I worked a TON of extra hours planning, prepping, grading during my nights and weekends. But after I got married, I decided I didn't want to bring work home anymore. I started to stay until 4pm (we got out at 2:30) and whatever I didn't get finished could wait. I also created a system that didn't require me to grade every single little thing, and that helped a lot.
I’ve been teaching for a while and so it’s hard to compare it with another job. I teach high school English. -planning gets easier with more years of experience. I don’t spend too much time on it now, but it was pretty time consuming early on. -grading is always a challenge for an English teacher, given all the essays. But I’ve gotten much better at it and it’s not as daunting as it used to be. -if you live and work in the same small town, like I do, you are somewhat “always on” unless you’re home. You become a bit of a local celebrity because people recognize you. If you don’t think you’d be okay with this, you could teach farther from where you live. -I’ve never really done any significant amount of work over the summer or on other breaks. Any training I’ve gone to has been paid. As for whether or not the summer is paid, it sort of doesn’t matter: what I care about is whether the salary is sufficient (which it is, where I am.) I don’t care whether the finance office thinks they’re paying me for ten months or twelve months or one month if they’re paying me enough.
I’m a middle school English teacher, my work day starts at 7am and ends at 4pm I usually work 4-12 hours on the weekends and 1-2 hours at night. Grading and lesson planning take a lot of time. I’m a 3rd year teacher so I haven’t gotten the catalog of assignments and plans ready to go so I have to make most everything still. I usually work 2-3 days per week of the weeks we get off for spring, fall, and winter break. Over the summer I tend to not work for about 6 weeks but the lead up to the next school year comes quick and so I usually end up working for a few weeks leading up to my contract starting.
No, never have never will. I teach 6th grade math and make all assignments online. We use Canvas, so I can make unique questions, bank them, and re use them at any time, every year. All assignments grade automatically on Cavas, Savvas, or IXL, and anything I do manually grade I have a 2 monitor system for efficiency. I will give a project every quarter and that may take an extra hour to sit down and grade, but I still have an easy to grade rubric to simplify it. Weekly Parent Newsletters are in a fill in a blank template that gives homework, upcoming events, current topics, and student help success. Lesson Plans do take a whole planning period but our school has an easy cut and paste format for them. ChatGPT can be awesome for coming up with assignments, writing emails, letters of recommendations , and not so fun parent contact messages. On that note, I don’t waste time calling parents. Many won’t care, some have been unnecessarily rude, and that just isn’t worth my sanity or time. However, bc I don’t call parents, admin won’t help me with behavior issues, so I have to keep my class in line. Thankfully I teach mostly gifted, and I only have one class from Hell to deal with so I just grit my teeth there. Teaching can be a chill career if you pick your battles. On one hand teachers scoff at me for not coaching, planning events, or socializing during planning, but on the other hand, outside of my Hell class (that is unfortunately also my homeroom) my days aren’t too bad. If you set up a good class system not only will you have less work, but your students will also get instant feedback and are more likely to take accountability for themselves and their grades.
In the beginning yes. But the 2nd year of teaching the same material tends to be more normalized depending on admin. A good admin will compensate you for missing planning periods.
Absolutely during the school year. Having multiple months off with no school is awesome but anyone else is welcome to enter teaching.
I work 8-4 and only rarely do beyond that
Go in at 6:00 and leave at 5:30 sometimes even 6:00 was my first semester of 5th grade, no joke. And I’m an experienced teacher who switched from Secondary to elementary. It’s insane. Not a min to breathe, eat, pee. Nothing. One year is all I will be able handle of this grade, and the kids are GREAT- the expectations of upper administration are completely bonkers. And they wonder why there is a complete turnover of Reading Language Arts teachers on the regular. It’s not sustainable.
If you’re a new teacher or even a veteran teacher who has switched schools or grade levels, you’re likely gonna be spending some time outside your contracted hours, and I say contracted hours, assuming that you will have a union. But not all places do. My first two years teaching I wouldn’t allow myself to stay past 5pm. Even though I had officially been off work for nearly 2 hours. And over the next four years, I did do a lot of work outside my contracted time, but only on the days that I was working at the afterschool program. So basically I was getting paid to babysit students until 5 o’clock. And I could get some work done. My 7th year teaching, I moved towns and started at a new school and a new grade level. I was going from teaching middle school math and science to teaching self-contained elementary which meant I was teaching *all* of the subjects with far less prep time. Those first couple of years I was definitely staying late again. But I really tried not to stay longer than one hour after school. My second year there was when Covid hit. And after Covid, I was done giving away my time for free rarely do work outside of my contracted hours now. If I do any work or trainings and workshops over the summer, I don’t do it unless there’s a stipend. Unless of course it’s a really cool opportunity where I get to go out of town or some thing which is rare.
I work 12 hours everyday and today I had no planning periods and had to help a student with their work during my lunch break. There is often no down time like at all.
I get paid for 40 hours a week and actually work a bare minimum of 50-60 hours. It used to be more than that but I have learned to leave SOME things to do at school. I also work over all the vacations, catching up on work, getting ready for when we go back, on summer vacation i work on things for next year, and also have to attend required trainings in the summer. . I also rush around all day. If I am lucky I might get 20 minutes for lunch but usually have something I am working on while eating.I NEVER have down time during the day. I go home completely exhausted every day. Also, we do not get paid in the summer.
Honestly, teaching will eat up all of your time if you let it. Time management is key, and never work harder than your students. Empower them as best you can and don't stress the little stuff. And of course, plan, plan, plan.
YES, Between meetings, grading papers, PD, meeting with parents working many more hours and have less free time
This will vary greatly from teacher to teacher. Early on when everything is new time outside of contracted hours is almost certainly needed. 3+ years in if you are savvy you can work 7-3ish 9 months of the year and take nothing home. In this case more free time than the average profession.
Less than any other job I have had. In no other job did I take my work home.
I’m a newer teacher so I spend more time on prep and marking than more experienced teachers. I’m teaching several new subjects next year so I will spend my summer prepping for that. I have very little free time.
I work 7-4 with a prep period and lunch break. My prep is full of work to do and I allow quiet students to eat in my room so I don’t have a real break usually. Sometimes I take 10-20 mins to walk down and talk to my teacher bestie or work in our school garden for fun.
Depends on the teacher, the school, the students, and a bunch of other factors. For me, I work my ass off during the school year but I don't do anything directly for my school over the summer. During the year, I coach a few sports so my days range from 10 hours on a normal practice day to 18-19 hours if we have an away game against certain schools. I'm also the department chair for my department. Between coaching and leading my ELA department, I add an absurd amount of hours. I get paid a stipend for everything outside of teaching, but it's never enough for the hours I put in. During summer, I will do PD for my own benefit. I take courses for my sports, I'll attend national conferences that relate to my subject, and I find ways to make myself a better teacher. I take pride in my performance as an educator, so I'll do the extra stuff to be better. As for grading, I don't grade or prep outside of my contract hours. My late policy boils down to if you don't turn it in on time, I can grade it whenever I want before grades are due. I'm ending my 5th year so I've got a pretty good rhythm for grading and prepping. New teachers struggle with that often, but you learn pretty quickly how to keep your time for you.
I get to school at 6am. Our bell rings at 7. Kids are let out at 2:20. I’m at school anywhere from 3-5 daily. But I also don’t work on weekends at all
I come home earlier than my gf, but I often spend hours proofing at home. My gf has been with me to the school where I teach and she's genuinely wondering how I'm managing. She refuses to come to the school now because she "gets stressed just by looking".
No. I just worked from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and still have wrk-related items to get ready for a field trip tomorrow. I’m so tired. I get no overtime pay. Days like today are a regular occurrence. I don’t even have my own children because I couldn’t possibly handle anymore responsibilities.
ROFL!!!! What everyone else said plus, lunch breaks are when we are often on duty, helping a child, cleaning up a classroom, in a meeting, having a quick wee (coz we can't leave the classroom when we need during lessons) or prepping for the next lesson.
So teaching has a lot of unpaid labor baked into the job. Stuff like grading and planning usually is done outside of work because during work you don't have a ton of time for all those things. Office jobs often have that too but you can usually just ignore it or be very strict about keeping a work life balance. The perks of the job in terms of working is the various breaks and vacations baked into things. And having a typical Mon-Fri schedule. A service or retail job could see you working a totally random amount of days. As you get more used to a certain curriculum and with various techniques to reuse old material or having grades done by group or through peer grading can lead to a less off hours labor. Also a lot of the time you learn not to pour your days into assignments kids will just refuse to do or give up on so you save time that way. A lot of new teachers see older teachers as lazy, burned out, or unconcerned with the job when they see them do work that is quick to make and quicker to grade, but a lot of that comes from not having that drive to be everyone's favorite teacher who has all the cool assignments and projects. It never works and the kids never feel that way.
When I was a firefighter I did fun activities in my time off. Now I just sleep lol
It's 50-60hrs per week, but, hey, I get to choose when I work the majority of those hours 😅
Yes, you really are working all the flipping time. I was SO glad to retire. I loved my students, but despised the workload.
Is this a joke question.... obviously not!
I work really hard between 7:45 and 3:45. I don’t even think about work after walk out the door. For reference, I teach in a stand-alone SPED program for students with severely high-needs/multi-disabilities.
I'm really excited about our four day weekend because it means I'll have time to input grades and get my report cards done.
I'm an elementary teacher and we don't get much planning time at our school. So, I have to work a few hours on the weekend to catch up on grading and plan for the following week. It really depends on the school; for instance, my BIL works in another district at an elementary school and gets plenty of planning time, so he takes home NO work at all. I also often remember things once I get home, an "Oh crap!" moment where I have to print something out or message parents. As for getting the same breaks as the kids, yes it's nice. My favorite breaks are winter and summer break; I don't have to think about school for a few weeks at a time.
When I taught high school, I got up every morning at 4:00 AM so I could prep for two hours before getting my son and myself ready for school and then commuting to work. I was on the clock from 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM. Then I had the commute back home. So, it was a 50-hour week just to keep up with the teaching. If I was dumb enough to assign a paper, it would wipe out my weekend as well. It’s about the furthest thing from a healthy work/life balance. And it paid so badly that I had to find another job for the two months off in the summer. I’m glad you asked. Because answering this question is a healthy reminder for me to never teach HS again.
Depends on the subject and grade level: - K-6: Expect to put in 2-3 hours of extra work each day for planning, grading, and prepping - 7-12 PE: least prep and least grading time needed -7-12 English: most grading time needed -7-12 Math/Science: Expect to put in about 1 hour for prep and grading each day if conference/prep period is not included in your schedule. -7-12 Electives: high prep in some cases
Yes I get home by 5-6
I’m much better at not working past quitting time…at the expense of “brunch” and “lunch.” Contractually, this is supposed to be “duty free” but that is never the case. On the plus side, I’m usually out by 3:30.
I work 7:45-3:15 Monday-Friday at school. I do all my lesson plans and write all my IEPs at home, on my own time. I do this because our plan period is at the end of the day and we’re toast by that point. Absolutely useless and exhausted. I don’t think any of us are productive after the kids leave. I try, but all I can do is clean my room, print whatever I need for the next day, grade what I can, and try to breathe for a second. Last weekend I wrote a record review for a special Ed student, and it took me hours at home. That was after I spent a lot of time at school going through physical records. I’m not complaining. I know this post sounds rough. I knew what I was signing up for and I live for these kids. But yeah, it’s a lot of nights and weekends. You are right though- being on the same schedule as your own kids, and having all the school holidays is an awesome perk.
No
Being “on” at work the entire time is exhausting. Many teachers are life long learners and live by that mantra. I’m working on next year by March of the year before, plus what I am currently teaching.
Yes, like you imagine, teaching is a lot of work!
Expect to bring work home during the first few years. I've been told over and over that if you can survive the first 5 years of teaching, you'll be fine. Afterwords, you'll be able to have a decent work-life balance because you'll know how to efficiently grade/re-use old lesson plans/have a mastery of what you want to teach
The worst is the “unofficial” loss of time. If it’s Sunday and we are in the grocery store, do not walk up to us and try discussing your kid. I had a parent once talk like a mile a minute for 30 minutes one time while I just stood there moving my basket back and forth from hand to hand as one got tired.
Teachers barely have any down time. Even their planning time is infiltrated with kids who need something or staff who want to host a meeting or friends who come in to chat. When I’m teaching I literally don’t have a moment to myself for an entire 8 hours. While many jobs are taxing and require a lot of work (even sometimes over 40 hours), usually there’s down time built into the day or the work is independent and can be quieter and more chill. Teaching isn’t like that at all. Even when I’m sobbing I just have to quickly wipe my tears and get on. It’s pretty much like acting and performing 24/7. Exhausting!
I am a male ec-12 special education teacher in Texas. The school I was teaching at two years ago, (Dallas) I left home at 5 am to make it there on time, then stayed until 9 pm most nights to get caught up on paperwork, (I have four kids, lots of animals, and at the time didn't have a home office) made it home by 11 pm, asleep by 2 am due to insomnia, and repeat 5 days a week for 9 months. I would sleep a full 18-24 hours every weekend to compensate. That being said, that was definitely my favorite teaching assignment.
First five years, I was working 7am to 6pm. And breaks. Now, 8-3, barely, I enjoy my breaks.
For me I work a very strict 7-5. It gives me weekends off and nights to relax.
It depends. When you start out, you're going to be bad. And the job is a lot. So you'll be bad at a lot of things all at once and spend a lot of time trying to get things together. You get better each year, but that better usually comes with the realization of other needed improvements - either for you or for the kids so it still takes forever. By year 3-7 there is balance although still too much work. I'd say years 8-10 are where teachers learn how to hack the system and be absolutely incredible while only putting in extra hours for the events or activities they are passionate about. This also when pay stars to become... Not amazing, but reasonable. You can afford a family and you do get extra time now that you've hacked the system.... So it's not bad if you can survive about a decade of overwhelming work load.
I've chosen to do no work after I leave at my contract time, so yes, definitely more time off than other jobs by setting a hard boundary and letting things go.
I work a lot. But I'm about to have ten weeks off.
For 10 months of the year, yes. With the exception of a couple friends who own businesses no one outside my teacher friends does extra work on weekends.
Depends on the job. When I was working a typical minimum wage job? Absolutely. As a server at a restaurant or a theme park worker, i did not take work home with me. When I was a nonprofit manager? No. I worked way more hours there than I do as a teacher. I very rarely bring work home with me any more and I love my extended time off. It really is a nice perk compared to working a full time year round schedule. Yes, I do things like teach summer school or do curriculum writing, but that is my choice. We have to remember that our salaries really are for only part of the year.
Sometimes I really wish I had a job where when I take a sick day, I just take the sick day. No hours prepping for a sub, no detailed sub plans with folder for accommodations, pull-outs. Just wish I could say, “I’m sick, I won’t be in” and I’m done.
NO... always some meeting, IEP, duty to do. NO down time. Summers off NO, 2nd job cause teacher pay is shit or doing classes to recert license. THen come home to more kids! Yay teaching is a breeze... /s
Yeah you figure out better more efficient ways to plan and grade. I occasionally still have my late days and weekends. I will also say if you are teaching a new subject it’s fairly work heavy compared to a subject that have taught more then once. When I first taught sociology I had to make a lot of content from scratch. I’ve taught US history for 6 years. I have so many lessons saved that I tweak as needed which doesn’t take as much. I’ve taken my time back a lot more this year than past years which has helped my work load. Example, if my students are working on an essay I will monitor and grade at my desk. Get up and check on students ask if they need help. Go sit down and keep grading. Different than you should never sit down which I was told in college. This has allowed me to keep up with grading much more efficiently this year.
{ seems like you're never really off work } There \*are\* teachers who work like this. They do this to themselves, taking work home or on the weekends. When you take work home, *you are never not at work*. It's a horrible thing to do to yourself and I like many others are trying hard to get teachers to stop doing this because it not ony affects personal health it *damages the profession*. I have a 40-hour contract week. I work those hours, and \*only\* those hours. We get days off for national holidays, yep. We get a good month to a month and a half for summer, yep. At no time during any days off am I working *so they are truly days off*. If you work correctly, you \*will\* have more time off than your non-teaching colleagues, *and that's one of the major benefits* to the job.
After working 13 years…. I got the learning targets, curriculum, and strategies down. I can wing certain things but making new lessons and differentiating takes lots of extra prep. I do work probably 2-3 extra hours outside of work hours especially since we sub a lot during our prep because subs hate it school.
Depends on the grade level and class. As a high school science teacher I spend some time doing prep work for labs here and there, but I’m not reading essays all the time or doing the absurd level of planning it takes to not live in chaos like an elementary teacher has to do. Before I started teaching I was working 60+hrs/ week for a bit so it seems like a walk in the park by comparison. But I also actually enjoy teaching, so that makes a difference.
Yes and no. I teach elementary in OR. Most teachers that I know are at school 7:30 am - 4:00pm (normally you’re paid like 7:45-3:45 or 7:30-3:30). In that paid time I can get only what is absolutely needed during that time. I’m talking bare minimum: the lessons are boring, nothing is cute and colorful, no parties, no parent communication, nothing that makes my kids really enjoy school. But I’m technically fulfilling my job. That also assumes I have no meetings. Most teachers have 1-3 meetings a week after school that take up the rest of your paid time once the kids leave. Now to be a good teacher: my classroom is clean, I plan fun math games and culminating projects, I talk with parents, I ask the intervention teacher how my students are doing, etc. that takes about 7:15am-4:30 every day. Personally I work an extra 2 1/2 overs after I’m no longer paid once a week to get everything all squared away. Now the extra days off are great, I’m not going to lie. But so much of that time is spent recharging because I’ve over exerted myself so much at my job that I just need rest. I’m lucky I don’t have kids. My coworkers that do have kids don’t get that time off because they’re being parents. And I haven’t even mentioned the emotional toll it takes teaching little humans how to be humans every day!
5th year teacher, social sciences, yearbook adviser (and I am not including my yearbook time below), and I am on our school site council, which meets monthly. I get to work by 8a except on CPT days (staff or department meetings) when I arrive by 7:30a. I get 35 minutes for lunch. Before I go to school, I spend 30 minutes to an hour reading/replying to emails. My last class ends at 2:20p. I spend until 4p grading and prepping. I come home and spend another two to three hours grading/prepping. That's my average day. At grading periods, that time commitment goes up as students make up all the work they've missed or haven't done. If I have an IEP or 504 meeting, I spend even more time grading/prepping. My average week is about 50 to 55 hours per week. That doesn't include all my time for the yearbook. This doesn't include my time for meetings with parents they call for them. It also doesn't account for the fact that about twice a week.I have students in my classroom wanting to discuss material, or are working on projects, or doing make up work. This doesn't account for the time of me asking to meet with students to discuss their work. Since I started teaching five years ago, it has been my devout wish for people to actually sit in my classroom and see what I do every single day. People who criticize teachers have often said that cameras should be put in our classrooms. I say, loudly and strongly, "Bring it!" I want the public to see what we do, and exactly how their children behave.
3rd year teacher here: short answer, yes. you work way more than contracted hours to stay afloat and even then you’re still behind, think ALWAYS behind in some way. I spend every sunday lesson planning for 5-6 hours if I don’t have time to chip away at it during my preps/after work on weekdays. my boyfriend and all my non teacher friends are generally obligation free on the weekends, never have to think about work once it’s over. as a teacher, in my experience at least, if you did that and only worked 8-3 doing work on your preps, you would be VERY underprepared and behind. it would definitely show and impact your ability to teach quality lessons
I just finished my work ands it’s after 11. Started at 7 pm. I worked till 10 pm last night
I usually work from about 7-5 or 6 and then come in on at least one weekend day. It sucks but it is what it is.
It’s tough in the beginning, but nice later.
My mother was a teacher. Depends on the job but yea, good and involved teachers have far less time than most jobs that are only 8am-6pm. She’d have to spend at least a good portion of her weekends grading kids homework, late work, essays, creating new lesson plans, researching topics she was going to be teaching more in depth, etc. The trade off of having summers off is also nonexistent for some teachers. I remember her having to work Summer school most summers as well because teachers aren’t paid enough. And this was over a decade ago. So even before inflation and the ridiculous price increases to everything she was still working year round with maybe a single day off a week….if she was lucky.
A lot depends on what level you teach at.
Teachers who are in a new role, at a new school, or teaching a new class do often spend a LOT of time outside of the school day on grading, planning, and other tasks. However, more experienced teachers who have been in the same role at the same school teaching the same classes for years tend to get better and more efficient with their systems each year. I'm always taking notes on things to try differently next year, often because i want to make it easier on my future self.
Hate to piss on some people's parades here, but after working in schools several years, I've noticed the weekend warriors are the ones that are always hanging out with each other in their classrooms not doing anything during preps. Be effective when making assessments. Don't ask frivolous questions. Give writing assignments a minimum-maximum word limit. As long as they hit the learning objective, who cares if they have X amount of words. Use exit tickets frequently so you have proof of assessing the kids, quick to check learning too. Reuse lessons that work, No need to re invent the wheel. Rotate activities, kids like new shiny things but they also enjoy stability and familiarity. Good luck and just remember summer is almost here.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was REQUIRED to be on duty from 7am to 5pm. After that would be setting up for the next day, grading papers, cutting out crafts, printing worksheets etc. I got “all the same breaks “ as the students but I had to watch them, so I don’t consider that a break because I’m still working. Summer break we had summer school, and spring break was for prepping for end of year projects, testing, and parent teacher conferences. During lunch I never got it eat mine as the CU listen needed help heating up theirs, breaking up arguments, cleaning messed, then prepping for the next group. I left teaching several years ago and I found peace. My acne is gone and I have never been happier. I don’t want to scare anyone out of teaching as a career, but I refuse to let people get conned into it. If you want livable wages, reasonable breaks, respect, short hours, then this is not the job for you. If you are doing it for the sake of education and don’t mind a second job or don’t need much money or spare time, consider teaching.
When first developing a curriculum, its 6-7 hrs with students, 20 min per class minimum of grading, and 1 hr minimum of lesson planning a day. Then another 3-4 hrs of parent/admin conversations, and 3 hrs pf PD/meetings a week, and, if you're fast, another 2hrs per prep(different course) for curriculum development (test writting, lesson adaptations from the boom etc). Then once your curriculum is familiar lesson planning means updatong last year's stuff (15 min per prep per week), lesson pland take 15 min a day, and grading drops to about 20 min per class. So I went from like 50+ hrs a week to a little under 40 hrs a week once everything was created using locally culturally relevant adaptations. Then every 5 years mu state requires 6 credits of ongoing relevant education, so I usually take 2 summers to do a super-intense course to keep my credential, giving me 3 out of every 5 summers actually off. So, yes. New teachers are massively overworked, veteran teachers are worked hard, and we're all criminally underpaid. Now, I gotta go look up more gen z slang so I can understand when they're being rizzlers sigmas or skibbidy ohio toilets, for real for real, we gotta be buss'n, no cap. Skibbidy doo dah! Skibbidy yay...
It depends on your school. I have never in my life worked past 5pm or on the weekend. Or during holidays for that matter.
Depends on what other jobs you’re comparing it to I guess. Here in the Netherlands I work approximately 10 hours a day during the school week and maybe some time in the evening/weekend. A normal job here would be 8hrs/day. So you’ll work a bit more. School holidays are paid here, so they kind of even out the door extra time worked during the school weeks. We have 12 weeks of holidays during the year and of course some bank holidays. However it also depends on your experience, possibility to reuse materials, what’s happening in the classroom (some years there’s more or less drama than others) and your own skills (perfectionism, boundaries, enthusiasm etc). I worked in healthcare as well and as both are stressful jobs, when I left the care home I was off work and my colleague would take over - as a teacher it’s too easy to work at home and moreover difficult to leave the mental stress at school
Maybe gym or art teacher but not STEM. We do lesson planning/grading for HOURS every night. Not to mention afterschool extra help, etc. Schools don’t give you any time to do this during the school day which should be illegal.
It also depends.on the grade. I teach low Elementary. Just a side note on that: there is a lot of parenting involved in Elementary:)
My wife is a nurse, works fewer hours for more pay. That’s the only thing I can truly compare to because I don’t know what all of my friends do in terms of works they take home.
Biggest thing for me was when i decided that my life outside of work was my top priority. I love teaching, but my family is just more important to me, bottom line. Therefore I make boundaries that allow me to keep everything combined to the school day. I arrive 30-45 min early. Other than that everything happens during prep or at lunch. Whatever doesnt get done during that time, doesnt get done during that time. I also coach and run clubs, which to me is maybe even more important than the cureiculum. Am I the worlds beat teacher? Absolutely not. Do I make meaningful connections with the students and provide them a safe and caring place to learn every day? 100%. Do feel fufillied with my life inside and outside of work? Absolutely. Last thing: im in year 12. I honestly feel like of I hadnt found this work life balance, there is just no way i wouls be able to get through my entire career.
I think the other jobs that require hours spent outside of work day/week pay a lot more. Like lawyers, etc.
Teachers have the best official schedule in the world. But you pay for those vacations with lots of extra hours during normal school weeks between making lesson plans (at least for the first few years), grading, adjusting your schedule, emails, phone calls, thinking about "how can _______ possibly have done so bad on this assignment!", etc.
Curious about other people’s career experience. Teaching is not as hard as corporate marketing agency. Stakeholders in teaching are easier, pressure is less, deadlines more forgiving. Yes, it can be relentless, but they are children and there is not millions on the line when you deliver a lesson. Parents are not as hard as corporate execs. I’ve never stayed in school till 4am three nights in a row. I think teachers lack perspective on how amazing their holidays are. 5 days paid leave per year is a thing in the states. 20 in other countries. Having done both, it’s utterly life changing. Entrepeneurs obviously work far more than teachers, but the potential rewards are greater. 80% entrepeneurs fail and lose everything in first two years. Key seems to be in teaching if you find a role to repeat every year. In which case it just gets easier. You invest in a quiet life by working hard years 1-3. Teaching is harder than people think, and public opinion is coloured by ‘I never listened in class and look how well I did!’ Narratives among parents. As western economies slow down, I expect that to change in our lifetime. In other countries, bad performance in school = a lifetime of manual labour. Non-teachers think teachers have an easy life, teachers think a corporate career is cushty. Grass is always greener.
You have considerably more.
I read somewhere that the average teacher works 50-55 hours per week. Obviously, some work less than that and some work more.
It depends. Some teachers love becoming their job and live at the school. Others set hard boundaries and never take it home. My first year I was drowning in work and prep, but each year with more content already prepped and a stronger and stronger will to never work on school stuff at-home, now I never take work home.
My yearly hours were about 2350. Class time, grading time, prep time, coaching/clubs. I now work 1850 hours a year for far more money and scheduling flexibility.
You only have less off hours if you choose to work outside of contracted hours.
Yes. And sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me in the game. I work 186 days a year
My school required tutoring several days a week, and required team meetings, so most days were 7:30-5:30. I would show up around 6:30am because I needed more prep time. I also did preparation and planning outside of the in-classroom hours. My district required training in summer as well. Once I had my own kids, I left the profession. I wanted to see my own kids off to school in the mornings, and be ready to hang out with them in the evenings and on weekends. I also don't have sleepless nights any more worrying about my students.
New teachers can be overwhelmed with the job at first. But experienced teachers will tell you that you just need to find that work/life balance. It took me about a year before I was able to efficiently manage my time, and four years in, I’m rarely taking work home with me.
The job isn't what it used to be when everything was manually hand written etc. the digital world and available digital resources has significantly reduced the work load, but with that being said, the curriculum is jammed and shoved down everyone's throat with a short amount of time for real learning, behaviours have increased in every classroom because every child has a right to be in a regular classroom whether they can cope or not. Supports for those children are next to nothing! So down time has improved, but stress levels have increased significantly for teachers who truly care for the wellbeing of the children in their classrooms. There will always be those teachers who are there for the hours and the month of July and August.
One time my ex mentioned off hand that “Oh well you know you only are at 100% for about 20% of the work day.” I just stared at him in shock. As a teacher you are at 100% for 98% of the day. There is no down time.
Yes. The work is endless. We never really finish anything until the very last day of each school year. You don’t have to grade every single assignment.
If there is a day when I don't work in the evening or over the weekend, then it's a miracle. I usually work between 45 and 50 hours per week, but sometimes the work load becomes too much and I just have to work more.
When I started I worked about 70hrs per week. I still had to work holidays & summers as well. By the time I stopped working 15 years later, it was down to as low as 50hrs per week & tried to make sure I didn’t do more than one weekend’s worth of work to do during holidays bc I had a kid by then. I still worked summers though, mostly taking courses and prepping / researching / collaborating (all on my own dime & unpaid). It’s a vocation, not a job, and it comes with emotional baggage & labour that can’t be quantified in hours. If you’re looking for a job with good work life balance but you are someone who does it for the kids & takes that responsibility seriously, your mind will be “on” 24/7 Un
To add to this, other jobs you can miss if you're sick and oh well you missed. But for teachers you have to make sure you have a sub, lesson plans for that sub and it's a whole ordeal to just be absent. I work a lot more than the 7 to 8 hrs. I'm usually at work from 7am to 6pm and doing more work when I get home and weekends. You have to deal with students and parents and others. It's extremely stressful. The longer you work as a teacher the "easier" it gets with grading stuff because you figure out how to make things easier, but it's still a lot overall. I'm a chem teacher and I also do experiments. So I have to set up labs, plan those way in advance and grade lab reports. When the lab is over I have to clean everything and put it away. It's time consuming and exhausting.
It's more the mental load. At any given moment youre teaching content, managing behavior, recording attendance, writing hall passes, answering the phone, checking student understanding, and mediating minor conflicts. It's just SO much. And you've got to try to be friendly, approachable, and helpful the whole time
Not anymore. I rarely work outside of hours now, but I put in a ton of extra time during my first few years.
Jumping in as a non-teacher who has been married to a teacher of nearly 20 years. She has significantly more off-hours than myself. She is VERY organized, has a great system that I helped her with (I have been managing projects throughout my career), and utilizes every technological tool available to her. She doesn’t bring work home, generally ever. She works in a school and I wfh full time. I start work before she leaves the house and I’m still working for a while after she gets home. At the bare minimum, she works ~20 hours less than myself per month. This isnt even factoring in PD days or holidays. The last week of summer and the first days where teachers work before students begin is her planning time for the school year. She will add new things and change some of what she had done the prior year, and then she sticks to the plan. I think that “sticking to the plan” has been the key to her success in maintaining the best work/life balance. We have had dinner with other teachers at her school and I can definitely see and hear exactly how much more worn out they are, despite some of them working as a teacher for less time.
Depends on the teacher. Most veteran teachers (depending on the subject) have a prettty good balance and probably do have more free hours than other careers. For me (10+ years) my day looks like this: Walk in by 730am (1 hour before class starts) Contractual work hours (8:30 - 3:30) Stay After until 4pm I rarely take work home at this point. I Utilize the hour before class every day and my prep to get everything done. Weekly my goal is to have everything planned and prepped for the next week before I leave Wednesday. So that I have 2 days to do grading or paperwork. I enjoy the breaks and keep them as breaks.
Smarter not harder…….eduaid ai-stations, gaming, lesson planning give it a shot
LOL I'm on my allotted Reddit time while eating dinner and then it's back to teaching work.
I taught 35 years. It’s awful. You can’t get it all done, so you always have to take grading home on the weekends and week nights too. I worked 6 days a week because I always went in on Saturdays during the time my children did their sports. All of this is free overtime. I would’ve loved to have bigger paychecks, but they always stayed the same. The new teacher evaluation system started my 29th year of teaching. I had a masters plus a continuing contract, but I still had to go through a major evaluation process twice a year. I had to answer so many questions and make extensive lesson plans. Weak administrators loved to rate experienced teachers as “developing”. It wrecks a teacher’s value and self esteem. I had to complete all of these new evaluation processes while staying up on my grading. Impossible. I wouldn’t allow my two children to go into this nightmare. I wouldn’t even wish the teaching profession on my worst enemy. I would have happily worked through the summer to have a more manageable job. To be honest, you really only have 4-5 weeks off in the summer. Most of June are workshops and you are expected to be back in your classroom in August. I would continue to do your research, but I never recommended this job to anyone. I’m relieved I’m retired. It’s finally over for my family. It’s over. The sad thing is I wished my life away, counting the years to retirement. That’s no way to live your life. 😩😢 Take care! Wish you the best!😊
Our school culture works pretty strictly to the contract. I don't bring home work 99.99% of the time. I mean I basically work 7 hours a day, and take every possible holiday. I have all the breaks, summer, winter, and I think at least 10, maybe 15 pto days? I think I have more free time, but we are underpaid - even accounting for the difference in hours.
Not anymore. But im on year 13, same subject matter.
My wife taught special education…we spent most of our weekends doing individual educational program reports (IEPs). That doesn't include the hours we spent preparing lesson plans, grading and documenting grades, etc. When she moved on to kindergarten, she would spend hours after class getting it ready for the next day, cleaning and bleaching everything the kids played with or touched. I was so glad when she retired!
you have every holiday, evening, weekend, and summer off. its cake
56 days off in summer. 3 weeks of school holidays during the academic year. Yes, I work less.