Teacher working hours

[Bobmumof3]

Wow. How do they keep up with marking?

I have 10 classes and each set of books takes at least 2 hours. That's 20 hours a fortnight.

I work in an 'outstanding' school where expectations are high. Book looks every week

Planning and preparing each lesson is also at least an hour.

Maybe it's the subject too. I teach Chemistry.

I certainly in 18 years have never known any teacher to do no work st weekends. Wow that is amazing!

[yoyo123]

Teaching is a job that expands to the time you give it though.

There is a high work load, but many teachers( especially primary) love finding things , planning exciting ways to introduce lessons, making book day costumes for themselves etc. I've spent hours making and planning for an hour's lesson.

[Bobmumof3]

I've been making a rocket this morning for my Year 7s it's Science week next week so I'm excited to launch it tomorrow
You're right I love teaching, it's my life that's for sure.

[Amber]

One reason I left teaching was that I felt I never had enough time to give to it - I used to spend hours planning and trying to think up exciting things to do. I taught 1-1 in the end and planned every single lesson individually for every child. The payback was tremendous and my 'impact reports' (agh!) were all very good but there was nothing of me left for my own children in the end as I was always worrying about other people's. I found it hard not to get emotionally involved with the often tragic lives of the children I taught and found that it was a job which as Yoyo says, expands to fill the hours you have. A vocation for sure but even with that, I felt towards the end that it was dehumanising in the wider sense - too many hoops to jump through and paperwork to do these days. I take my hat off to all teachers who stick with it now to be honest.

[DIY Mum]

Work load is high and seems never ending. A bit like decorating a house from scratch.

Our teachers leave at all sorts of time in school. Our senior management are in at 7.45 and leave at 4.30pm. But most of them have younger dc. Other staff are in at 7.30 am and are kicked out by site managers around 7 pm.

Certainly experienced teachers are much faster at managing their work load and know how to prioritise their 'to do' list.

When I first started my nqt year, I was working ridiculous hours (7.30 - 6pm). I'd then have a couple of hours rest with family at home and start work again at 9pm to 3am, plus working on the weekends. It's not only planning, and marking etc but includes making the resources in all areas: designing IWB flips, sheets, cooking up recipes like play dough, having food and other role play items ready for themed events, classroom displays, costumes, 'hot seating' props and experiments.....etc, etc, etc.

I definitely try to work smarter rather than harder. Dc5 sticks in the LOs for a price. And the girls love doing the baking. But despite not working on Saturdays, I'm still doing well over 60+ hours a week.
Not complaining cos I love really love my class and teaching.

[southbucks3]

've been making a rocket this morning for my Year 7s it's Science week next week so I'm excited to launch it tomorrow

Can you count that as work though? Yes the kids will love it, but so do you, I cannot for one moment think of a pleasurable aspect of my dh' s job, but he did make 20 twig catapult kits for school craft week, and the kids thought they were amazing! My friend wrote an opera for our school as she loves all that stuff, but is on career break and so she volunteered.

Maybe that has something to do with it too...how many parent helpers are ready to put in some hours and don't work? I recently helped devise a biscuit recipe and instructions with maths conversions required and also helped in class with a teacher who wanted to incorporate it into a maths lesson, it wasn't even for a year group I had a child in, but she knew I made biscuits, so asked for help, I was happy to. We all do stuff like making the play dough, and washing the duplo bricks in the younger year groups.

[mystery]

So much depends whether primary, secondary, which subjects and what your school has as resources. I taught three sciences plus maths. It was when children did experiments every lesson. It took a lot of time planning for the science I found as it included safe movement of children and doing the experiment beforehand yourself as well as the usual planning, evaluation, marking etc.

Maths I found far more self contained to plan and teach. Generally, up to gcse you can work through an amount of maths in a short space of time that it takes children several lessons to get through, and you develop ways of teaching certain concepts that you can repeat, adapt, modify etc. Also, even when syllabi change, similar maths tends to be in there somehow - but science syllabi can vary more in terms of topics covered.

So I would recommend secondary maths .... I know a maths teacher who works full time and does private tutoring most evenings from 4 until 8. Still don't know how she does the planning and marking though. Scary.

Waiting to be slaughtered now by maths teachers on here.

O.p. if you are seeing a difference in workload in the last two years that surely has to be just due to looking at a different sample of teachers in a different school with different aims and pressures of some sort? I suppose if they are planning using the new national curriculum this might account for it? That must be a very time consuming change for primary teachers.

[mystery]

Wow. How do they keep up with marking?

I have 10 classes and each set of books takes at least 2 hours. That's 20 hours a fortnight.

I work in an 'outstanding' school where expectations are high. Book looks every week

Planning and preparing each lesson is also at least an hour.

Maybe it's the subject too. I teach Chemistry.

I certainly in 18 years have never known any teacher to do no work st weekends. Wow that is amazing!

Yes - I remember thinking that by A level planning could be hour for hour first time round. How do you manage this with children right now? Feeling ill for you just thinking about it.

[Guest55]

Mystery - your post HAS made me cross!

Is this person regular given 'outstanding'? I very much doubt it if planning takes so little time.

I never teach the same topic the same way - each class is different - just think of the marking too. They do more work in maths than in most subject and to give 'next steps' feedback takes time. I have A level groups of around 20 and they all give in homework; so that's huge amounts.

Preparing for GCSE, AS and A level also means I rarely get an uninterrupted lunch and few non-contacts, if any.

[Bobmumof3]

We still have practical every lesson. The best bit but yes the risk assessments are never ending too!
A level is a killer planning wise. I'm dreading when the new curriculum kicks in goodness knows how we'll be ready in time.
But I'm not moaning really as I love my job, just wish I could spend more time with my 3 children. During the week I'm not a good mummy, lack of patience and snappy