Deb in Northern California said:
Kate,
How long is the teaching day in the classroom with the
students?
Depends a bit on the type of school... Here James is at the
local primary and they start at 9 and finish at 3:25 or so.
I taught secondary level (11-18), and they usually start
about 8:30 and finish at about 3:45 pm. I used to get in at
8 am and leave at about 7 pm, and do another 2-3 hours
marking and prep after dinner.
Because the out of school and 'holiday' time was infinitely
flexible, and some idle wotzitz did very little while other
eager beavers did way too much, they brought in what they
called 'directed time', which was supposed to cover both
teaching and non-contact time spend on the job in meetings
and in service training. It's something like 12068 hours a
year, which works out as a 31 hour week during term time
only. Prep and marking was on top of this... The year they
brought this in they also introduced the National Curriculum
AND changed the exam system for 16+ radically, requiring a
lot of meetings, in service training on the new exam
systems, and whatever. The department I worked in (a very
efficiently run English dept in a boy's school) had used up
all this directed time by a week before the Easter break!
Our head of department said that as we were not being paid
for any more hours that year, we would not be in school, but
we WOULD do all our preparation and marking at home... It
brought home to the head just how much we were doing! I
remember one particularly awful week when they changed the
paperwork requirements a week before the coursework
deadline, and I spent 25 man hours over the weekend sorting
it out, then worked right through the night and went back
into school to teach TWICE before Friday. Others in the
department were doing the same, and none of us marked
anything that wasn't both urgent and essential in the way of
exercise books that week.
That Directed time thing was a joke: it barely covered us
for teaching time, never mind essential meetings! And when
you think that every hour long lesson you teach takes
another hour at lest in prep and marking, you can see why
teachers got a bit sour when told they were well paid for
working a 5 hour day and a 40 week year! Now things are
different. You need two bodies just to keep up with the
recording and marking! I worked out with another teacher
recently that if teachers had the UK standard 25 days (or 5
weeks, as weekends are not counted as working days)) holiday
per year, they would still need to work a 68 hour working
week to get the job done!
The modified schedule is:
Quoted message said:
8 weeks instruction 2 week break 8 weeks instruction 2
week break (Christmas holidays) 8 weeks instruction 2 week
break (sometimes it coincides with Easter and sometimes it
does not) 8 weeks instruction 8 week Summer Break
Then there is the year round schedule which is:
16 weeks instruction 8 week break 16 weeks instruction 8
week break
This works out as a working year of 32 weeks, which is
shorter than the UK standard of 40. I KNEW we worked our
kids too hard!
Quoted message said:
The year round schedule is what my kids dealt with for all
of their elementary years. The two month breaks rotated
depending on what "Track" you were on. So they could
utilize the facilities year round but only have
2/3 of the students on campus at a given time. My kids had
the months of March/April and September/October off. I
liked going on vacations off season and was able to see
lots of things that you can not see during the regular
summer breaks (autumn colors in the Rocky Mountains).
My daughter who is in high school now (she is 15), Starts
mid August and does not get a break until the Christmas
holidays when she is off for 3 weeks, then she has a week
off for Easter in the spring and then school lets out at
the end of May. But she typically takes summer classes at
the college to get ahead. So she has school all but two
weeks of her summer break too.
Here if you teach summer schools, you get paid extra for
them. A lot of regular classroom teachers cannot spare the
time, as they spend the 5 week summer break preparing for
the next year.
Quoted message said:
My oldest daughter is currently attending university in
order to become a school teacher. I think great teachers
put in the hours you talk about that you did, but I think
there are a lot of very poor and mediocre teachers that
should not be teaching and take advantage of the shorter
work day and all the time off during the year. Just my two
cents (pence) worth.
That's getting less common here in the UK, with all the
requirements one has to fill just to get the job done, and
the introduction of annual assessments for teachers! Lots of
teachers really complained about that when it was brought
in, but I never had a problem with it. They come and observe
you teach, to make sure you do it right, and they look at
the records and paperwork to make sure you are on track. If
there are problems, you SHOULD get help and advice to fix
it, but you can also be asked to help a colleague with
difficulties! Happened to me one time! I had a 'problem
class' (very rowdy!) and needed help sorting out my dealings
with them, while teaching another how I planned lessons,
because she found that incredibly hard! I've never bothered
about being watched teaching: after all, the kids watch you
and asses you all the time, and they know who the good
teachers are, and which ones are idle buggers!
--
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