Quote:
Originally Posted by TurdFerguson
I don't know if my wife is in the majority or minority but before going on mat-leave she was working 70 hour weeks as a grade 1/2 teacher. The amount of time she spends/spent researching and planning lessons that would be interesting and engaging for her grade 1/2 was crazy, not to mention the hundreds of dollars that she spends monthly at the dollar store making up for funding shortcomings - i kid you not, its a budgetary item in our household.
Counting only instructional time as working time probably isn't fair for most teachers, although I'm sure some work bell-to-bell. To me, that would be like saying that only your client facing time (meetings) was work. I'm sure there is a lot more that goes into your job then just what your client sees.
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I don't think she's in the minority - my wife is an elementary teacher and regularly works ~60 hour weeks and it seems pretty common with other teachers I know. The marking and prep actually seems to be a relatively small part of it; a lot of time is spent on things like individualized plans for students, administrative reports, organizing field trips and external programs, dealing with parents, etc. During report card season she's usually still working when I go to bed. Getting 6-7 weeks off in the summer (teachers are back a week or two before students) and 2 weeks at Christmas is nice, though in some respects I'm not sure I'd trade the extra time off for the ability to choose when I take my holidays.