NOT TEACHER BASHING but do why do teachers have to do hours of planning every day?

[mostwonderfultime]

If the syllabus is the same every year which it is, do you not just use planning from previous years?
I'm sure I'm being naive but just read this on another thread.

That's good to hear spaniel
i think that's what I'm trying to say ( in an obviously cack handed way due to being in a foul mood). i think everybody needs to recognise there is good and bad in every profession in terms of employee satisfaction and also "customer" satisfaction.
yes, there is questioning of whether some teachers are putting in all they can but that's because on this forum a lot of us have daily interaction with what teachers do.
Let's look at estate agents; slagged off something rotten and most people only deal with them 3 or 4 times in a lifetime.
Compare that to dealing with the teaching profession almost daily for 14 years or so ( for each child) and it's going to bring up a fair amount of complaints.
it doesn't mean everyone is out to slate teachers all the time and they have to feel every comment is teacher bashing.

who, what, where said you were lying?

@ultrablue where will we all be if in a few years down the line no one wants to teach? Almost no one wants to teach now - that's why teachers are working crazy hours. For subjects like Physics (that my husband teaches) there were only 43 teachers hired for every 100 places last year.

It takes me 6-7 minutes to read an exercise book and mark it. So that times 30 = 3.5 hours. I'm expected to mark books every 4 lessons (about once a week). I have around 6 different classes so I'm always behind in marking!! And I get spot checked and in trouble if I don't. I love teaching and hate the marking load.
The pp are right. If I just used the same lessons of the system without adapting them to the class I would be a really crap teacher and would fail my performance management appraisal. It's eye opening the difference of ability in a year group some years 7s have reading ages of 5 or 6 years old and you have to spend a lot of time adapting things for them; the same at the most able end too. You may teach the same book but the lesson will be entirely different. The planning takes ages when you are first teaching (it used to take me 2 hours to plan a 1 hour lesson!). Now I have a library of resources that I can tweak so it's quicker. I still get up at 4.30am to plan tho! It takes me about an hour and a half every day to change them for the groups I have. I leave the house at 7am and get to work at 8am and then turn on my computer and print stuff out for my classes. I'm normally just finished in time for the bell at 8.40. I teach all day and then sort my classroom for about 20 minutes and try and get my marking done but I won't and will take the majority home to do after tea, clean up and the kids in bed. For me planning is quite enjoyable it's the marking that breaks me and takes the majority of the time. I think of the time at school being on stage you are constantly performing and I don't think most parents how much time it takes to mark. It sounds completely reasonable to have a teacher spend 6 minutes a week looking at your child's work and giving comments and targets. If that teacher has 6 classes of thirty that's 18 hours a week! It's the marking that takes the most time. I'm only detailing it to give an idea of how the work adds up to give a really long working week. I love my job and the tough term times are worth it for the holidays with my kids off school but It's a real feast and famine profession.

@hashtagbollocks Estate Agents are generally utterly shit at their jobs though. Dealt with them multiple times and very rarely found a good one. My mum was one and just by being a competent human being (not that bright, not that hard working but just literally not shit, she was adored).

Well, not read the full thread but I don't just use the same old stuff each year because the children and cohorts are different, and the work needs tailoring to them.
Most years I move year group anyway, only stayed in place for 3 of my 17 years. Most years the topics need refreshing. Some (lots of) years the syllabus changes. At first I thought I'd reuse plans - now I'm just pleased if I can get away with re using some of my backing paper (ha ha!)

Seriously though, I enjoy the planning and tailoring - it's part of the job and I like it. I reuse what I can but I enjoy making it better and more honed as I go. I think it has become a more valued part of the teaching process as time goes on, and rightly so.

It will all change again next year as we continue to teach without collaboration or contact between the children too. It's part of what we do and very necessary.

Yet one poster on this thread has said that EVERY primary teacher who has posted here is lying, what is that if not teacher bashing?

who said that spaniel
i also wouldn't get too upset by one post out of 300 making a sweeping statement, i think you need to be a bit more resilient

I teach Religious Studies and change the syllabus every year.
Most jobs you do the same thing day in day out, I can't. The society we live in changes all the time and I have to be able to respond to that; allowing my students a space to discuss their ideas and concerns and to educate and guide so they develop their own informed opinions.
Last year I had 4 hours of back to back Year 7 lessons, same framework very different content. Most weeks I went away and re-wrote parts of the next lesson to meet the needs of a specific class. Multiply that across 4 year 7 classes, 4 year 8 classes, 3 Year 9 classes, 2 Year 10 sets, 1 Year 11 set, one year 12 set and a year 13 set. Oh and I was the only specialist...
This year my 13's were amazing at Philosophy and less so in Ethics; the Year 12's are the complete reverse. Lessons therefore have to be changed to meet their needs to ensure they are all fully prepped for exams.
Now add in absence, lessons missed due to school events, bank holidays, a student having an epileptic fit and then needing to calm the class. Teaching is like having a million browser tabs open whilst spinning about 50 plates, so no, it really really isn't the same every year.

whereas I know an awful lot about primary.

No, you know the VISIBLE parts of YOUR primary schools. Which, if what you are saying is entirely accurate, is by no means sufficient and by no means acceptable. I am saddened that you and your children have had experiences to make you feel like this and hope that you held them accountable at the time.

Also, by no means representative. In March 2019 84% of primary schools were rated Good or Outstanding by OFSTED. Presumably your experiences were in the 16%. Or else you think you know more about education than they do.

What we are all trying to tell you is that teachers and schools are like swans - much going on underneath that you can't see. Do we really need to pull out exact minute to minute breakdowns? Does it matter if staff work at home or at school as long as it is effective for the children? Does it matter if someone finishes at 11:00pm one night but has one evening off, or if they work to midnight every night?

As I said previously, teachers work bloody hard and very long weeks - but we have the holidays (which we also partially work through) to recuperate and to catch up. We get that that is a perk ...but it's also the only way for it to be sustainable without burning out. If you tot up and average out hours over a year it's probably about right for the wages we earn. If we did that all year round we should be earning much more.

Noone is saying we work harder than others - just that we DO work hard. Not sure why people seem to either disbelieve us or deliberately twist what we are saying.

I am thinking about going into primary teaching.

There is a huge difference between having to work 50 hours a week and 60. 60 hours a week sounds completely overwhelming.

ultrablue
I appreciate your worry, but I do have to say that I am very glad my own kids are through the education system now (and neither has any inclination to become a teacher, thank goodness).
Threads like these on MN do a huge amount of damage. I expect the posters who hide behind their keyboards and give a kicking to the profession (possibly as some kind of imagined payback for some slight 20 years ago in their own schooldays) get some sort of temporary thrill from it, but it's their kids who will suffer in future, when they're taught by a procession of unqualified people or a succession of supply teachers.
Yay. Well done those posters.

I'm as resilient as you can get, pretty much every primary Head I know has developed a thick skin, you have to in our job!

I teach, but not in an education setting. I am a learning and development manager and a huge job at the minute for me, is re-writing all the leadership training, I have previously designed.

Teaching face to face is different to remote or virtual learning and it has to be designed in a different way.

For example, I use a monitor to track someone's heart rate for an exercise around flight/fight. I can't use this exercise now, as I would have to post the monitor and disc with the software on to a delegates house before the course. We also do an exercise which involves teams using plastic building blocks and working together on a structure. You can't do this virtually.

The whole programme has to be re-designed.

No different to teachers, as a lot of their lesson plans will have to be re-designed to suit a totally different style of delivery.

Unless you have designed lesson plans or workshops, you have no idea of the work/time that goes into it.

For each hour of learning delivery, on average it takes 7 hours to design (CIPD figures).

that's good spaniel then you won't let one poster accusing every teacher of lying upset you ( still can't see the post, but a very sweeping statement obviously).
we can all get on with our days knowing we all work hard and have good and shit bits about our jobs and good and shit members of our profession

Lucy
that seems quite a disparate range of stuff.
Are you by any chance some sort of "motivational" leader?
or someone who does courses on how to teach to the latest fad?
apologies if not

hashtagbollocks
Their job title and professional body are both in their post, and she said she doesn’t work in education. If you’re in too much of a bad mood to read posts properly then maybe step back and have a nice soothing cup of tea.

sorry tax whose job title?

Think of it like this. If you were presenting at a seminar to 30.people and you knew your slot was 45 minutes long including questions and discussion time, you'd make sure you prepared properly for it, because you're the expert in thst subject so you'd need to be prepared for any questions that might come up. Now imagine having to do that 5 times a day to people all at different levels. That's where the prep hours come in.

In Lucyccfc68 ‘s post, hashtag

If the syllabus is the same every year which it is

I think this piece of fiction means your post is not really worth taking seriously.

I don't see why this is offensive to anyone really. I have two boys a year apart and from yr7 to yr9 they pretty much mirrored each other's work. DS2 got lazy and used an essay his brother had written thinking the teacher wouldn't notice. She did.

So it's perfectly reasonable for a non teacher to think that the same resources could be used.

I know plenty of teachers so I know this isn't the case but it's not a stretch for people to think it is.

sorry tax i think I meant what does she ACTUALLY do, as if it's organising "courses" for education then these are a great source of bullshittery and waste of time and money
hence why i apologised in advance if that wasn't their role

I'm a teacher...in Ireland. Our contact hours are 9.00-2.40 (40 mins of that is breaks)

Teaching in Ireland is pretty much half (if not less) of the workload that U.K. teachers have.

We don't work through breaks.
School isn't open before 8.
Car parks are empty by 4.

I don't take work home on weekdays. And I'm usually home by 4. I take a little bit of planning home on the weekend to do in the evening. We write our daily plans in bullet points. We have monthly plans that we submit every month (they are tweaked each year!)

Most schools use workbooks so there's no creating your own resources.

We have staff meetings once a month. And they finish at 4:00/4:15

No after school clubs are expected if you (unless you want to, they are mostly supervised by staff with no dc)

No breakfast club either (and my school is in a deprived area!)

Our pay increases regardless every year- it is not performance based and not a part of the school funding. We are paid directly from the department of education. Pay starts at over 36k and goes up to 69k (no extra responsibilities)

English secondary here. The curriculum changes every few years. Every student needs to be taught so individual needs need addressing which cannot happen if using previous plans.
About 100 pieces of work to mark a week anything from a few paragraphs to A Level essays or GCSE coursework drafts. Every piece requires diagnostic comments and targets.
Having lesson plans to hand for frequent observations or learning walks. Having up dated and detailed scheme of works for each touch as well as lesson plans, each one according to the latest curriculum changes. Report writing. Making sure each topic adheres to the latest government requirements regarding statutory changes.
Form class, contact with, social services parents and homecompletion teams. Writing detailed reports on any safeguarding issues such as bullying. Writing new modules for online safety which changes rapidly. Inputting assessment and homework mark's. Keeping professional file updated. Extra curricular, completing safe guarding forms for trips including full medical details of each students. Full records of any clubs I run including the school magazine. Replying emails to parents and other staff. Reading individual learning plans for SEN students and evidencing their implication.

I work 60 hours a week minimum.
Hope this answers your question.

@nowaitaminute

I'm a teacher...in Ireland. Our contact hours are 9.00-2.40 (40 mins of that is breaks)

Teaching in Ireland is pretty much half (if not less) of the workload that U.K. teachers have.

We don't work through breaks.
School isn't open before 8.
Car parks are empty by 4.

I don't take work home on weekdays. And I'm usually home by 4. I take a little bit of planning home on the weekend to do in the evening. We write our daily plans in bullet points. We have monthly plans that we submit every month (they are tweaked each year!)

Most schools use workbooks so there's no creating your own resources.

We have staff meetings once a month. And they finish at 4:00/4:15

No after school clubs are expected if you (unless you want to, they are mostly supervised by staff with no dc)

No breakfast club either (and my school is in a deprived area!)

Our pay increases regardless every year- it is not performance based and not a part of the school funding. We are paid directly from the department of education. Pay starts at over 36k and goes up to 69k (no extra responsibilities)

Anyone else want to move to Ireland?