Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
Not sure where the confusion lies. It's like a lot of jobs where you have a certain number of hours that are mandatory (i.e. classroom hours) and you have a certain amount of work you're expected to get done outside of those hours in order to be prepared for that face time with the students. That varies between teachers and it doesn't change the number of days or weeks worked in a year, it just means more hours per day. Some will put in 7-8 hour days while others will end up putting in 10+ hours a day depending on how dedicated they are, what kind of extracurricular activities they handle, what subject they teach, etc.
But yes, the government considers the teacher's work week to be 45.5 hours per week on average, hence the 9.1 hours per work day. At 40-41 weeks that's in the 1850 per year range I mentioned.
Yes, they're paid salary. And like many salaried jobs there is some ambiguity in the number of hours that are needed. Even a single teacher will likely vary the number hours worked year to year based on the different circumstances. If you have a good class where the students are all at a similar level then you'll have to work less than if you have a bunch of kids with behavior issues or a huge range in abilities where you need to create and monitor a bunch of individual education plans for each one of them.
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I think there is a bit of misrepresentation here on what the
average teacher is doing. Take a look at teacher parking lots for a decent read on what most of their hours are - the lots are pretty much vacant by 4pm. I suppose some could take their exams home to mark etc, but I suspect that is the minority, nor is it anything unique to any professional career.
I remember back in the day when the teachers were "working to rule". It honestly didn't make a lick of difference other than a lack of fun stuff after school.