To think that YES, you can have reasonable hours and a good work/life balance as a teacher

[WistfulForTravel]

I'm 22, a 3rd year Primary Education BEd student, I love my degree and every assignment and placement cements the fact that teaching is my vocation and is what I want to do as a career.

However, I've been getting a lot of negative comments from my aunties and neighbors about how I'll never have a life again, how most of my waking hours will be consumed with thoughts of work, how I'll never even have one day to truly relax during the 13 weeks off, how it'll be a 7am - 9 pm job, etc.

I know teaching is more full on than some jobs, but is it really this intense? I am friends with a few teachers and they seem to have a healthy work/life balance (time for guys/sports/hobbies, at least one full weekend day off, out 1-3 nights a week) They have no kids though. I imagine it would be very different when you have kids.

Is it possible to practice effective time management + work very hard during the week so you can have the weekend off?

As much as I've enjoyed my course and look forward to my first class in September (eek!) my philosophy is more a 'Work to Live' not 'Live to Work'

I've never said a work life balance is easy! I've said compared to some people on my PGCE course I am finding it OK but I'm sure it's much harder when you get to NQT and beyond. I've also said that I assume primary teaching is harder in an earlier reply. So your post is needlessly confrontational.
I'd never give them a textbook in a million years.
I absolutely believe you that there is that level of bureaucracy in primary schools, I've never said otherwise. I won't be going into a primary school as I don't wish to teach primary.

Someone asked upthread:

"does your DH also do all of the taking and collecting of your kids to childcare? (&therefore limited in when he can go to work and come home). Does he cook meals for your DC and do the ferrying to and from clubs and activities? Does he do lots of the household work as well, you know like day to day making sure uniforms are clean and kit for activities ready as well as usual washing etc?"

Mine does. That's how I'm managing to be a teacher. He fits his working hours in around school, and does a bigger share of housework and child wrangling in term time. I do much more in the holidays. I don't think I could do it otherwise.

Not sure how "double teacher" households cope, there must be a lot of competitive "oh I've got more reports to write than you" going on!

kim, yes, I do need to plan interesting lessons in language and literature. Where are you getting the idea that I don't?
And yes it does take time, but not always the level of time for ME that it seems to take other students. I genuinely have been surprised by the level of shock/outrage as my assertion that I plan a single lesson in 20 minutes. I thought 20 minutes was ample! My university tutor has been happy with my plans. As has my mentor. So perhaps we can conclude that I am just a fast planner rather than completely inadequate. I really didn't realise 20 minutes was quick - now I do, I feel grateful that it doesn't take me 2 hours.

Sorry for typos.

1. I don't always use a PPT.
2. I rarely use worksheets.

I haven't RTFT, but I suggest you pay attention to which comments come from primary teachers and which from secondary. I was a secondary teacher and was able to bring my working hours down to a reasonable level, but I get the impression that primary is very different and more labour intensive.

Oh, and if I do use a PPT, I obviously include images if I need to, but I don't often do colour effects or animations. Just use it as a tool to show students the modelled answer, or learning objectives, etc.
And resources for English can often be quite straightforward - a poem that just needs to be photocopied, a chapter from a book we're already studying, etc.

I'd never give them a textbook in a million years.

Nor a card sort. So what do you give them apart from extended writing while you crack on with marking?

I don't get the apparent horror at the use of a textbook, btw. I'm a maths teacher, textbooks are a good source of questions for kids to practise methods on.

Sue I think you are right, and as I said further up the thread, my friends who are primary teachers or my friend on a primary PGCE seem to work longer hours than my secondary friends.

I'm in primary and use textbooks for maths, spelling and grammar. I don't use them exclusively but they are useful.

I would fall about laughing if I was asked to hand in actual lesson plans for individual lessons.

No horror - but why would I use a textbook for English?
OK here are some brief outlines of the main tasks in lessons I'm teaching next week, as an example:
-A drama-oriented lesson on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' beginning with hotseating of students in role, followed by writing 'in role', followed by sequencing the plot in the form of freeze frames
-A Year 10 Media lesson - jigsaw activity based around the analysis of magazine front covers - guidelines on the PPT, only resource needed is the magazines I'll bring in and big paper and pens
-A Year 7 lesson on Jabberwocky - resources are the poem, PPT with pictures of different versions of the Jabberwock creature, main part of the lesson will revolve around categorising words in the poem as nouns/verbs/adverbs etc as I'm using the poem as a tool to teach/recap grammar

All these lessons took about 10 mins to write the plans, 10 mins to sort resources.

It's all down to subject and ability of learners, too. Higher-ability learners will write more, but the time taken to mark 15 A2 essays from students who shouldn't really be doing A2 History is ridiculous. Sometimes there is more 'growing green' on the page than there is original work. I long for the ones where Historiography isn't just a funny word miss keeps mentioning.

I think most History departments would grind to a halt without card sorts. I might use a textbook for background information but the tasks are without fail crap so I would need to make my own activities. Plus my classroom is approx 1/4 of a mile from the stockroom, so unless I'm feeling strong it is a bit of a pain to carry 17 books up the hill.

Some lessons WILL take me up to an hour to prepare - but a lesson with a lot of drama or embodied learning could take minutes.

Yes, my friends who teach History all seem to do card sorts all the time too.

Le PM, I think you might be teaching at DD's (& DH's) school in September. English is her best subject so I'll be watching closely.

Weekly plans have to be detailed with learning intention and main resource, couple of bullet points for clarification where required.

Takes me about 40 minutes to write it and then whatever time is required to find resources.

However I do think it is very hard to get a good balance. Some periods of time are more intense than others too.

kim... I'm not the OP. And it's not a matter of just saying 'let's do drama' - of course I'd think about how the drama is enhancing the learning.

And no, I don't think most teachers necessarily have a good W/L balance. Some do.