My wife is a teacher, so just a few comments on some things that have come up in this thread:
- Attrition is fairly high in the first 5 years for teachers. A big part of it is because it's so bloody difficult lately to get a permanent job (next year will be year 5 for my wife, but there's a chance she might get a continuous contract this year). Every year around this time is stressful as we don't know if she'll have a job in September or not. This year (year 4) was the first year she had a class from the first day of school til the last. Previous to this, it was Mat leaves, short term contracts, and subbing. Some people just get frustrated and go back to school/find a different job because they can't find something secure. And no, it's not the same as other professionals switching companies. It's switching careers.
- Time put in is always more than the classroom time. My wife drops me off at work at 7:30 and she's in her room by 7:45. Classes don't start til 9. Usually she picks me up around 5, meaning she worked til about 4:45. I can't remember how long the lunch break is, but half the time she's supervising the kids so she still puts in a solid 8 hours or so.
- Around report card time, she's usually working 3-4 hours per night on report cards. She currently has about 45 kids, so that's a lot of report cards, especially since the report card comments are pretty thorough, not like the "Good Job" I got growing up. In addition, she's required to write a weekly newsletter to send home to parents along with folders containing the kids' work they did that week.
- From what I can tell, teaching elementary is more work than high school. The youngest kids aren't capable of much if you don't provide them with a plan/support. The older kids are more capable of working independently. In addition, teaching is no longer just providing worksheets and assignments. If that's all it was, we could put a robot at the front of the class to hand out and mark assignments. Education now is more about personalized learning. Before, they would follow the curriculim precisely and if a handful of students didn't get the lesson, the teacher moved on and those who didn't get it fell behind. I think now it's more about teaching a lesson in more than one way as kids learn in different ways.
- There's quite a few challenges and extra work involved with things like IPPs, extra-curricular activities (yes, in elementary too), ESL (85% of my wife's school is ESL), etc.
- For the record, my wife was supportive of the review process. She's been reviewed lots in the last 4 years so it wouldn't be a big change for her. Because it's so hard to remove bad teachers, she didn't think it would get bad teachers out of the system, but she thought it would force bad teachers to put more effort in.
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