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.

I think it SOMETIMES depends on where you work and how you manage your workload.

I have some teacher friends who seem to do loads of additional hours and others that don't.

And again, emphasis on SOMETIMES there are those who lay it on a bit. I'm a nurse and have worked on busy acute wards in the past and yes, sometimes you had busy shifts where you didn't stop but most of the time everyone had their breaks etc. But some colleagues would claim not to ever have time to eat, sit down or urinate on a shift and it simply wasn't true.

Hi, this is what I know just from watching my husband be a teacher

• an hour of English, Maths and Science for the kids each day could mean 90 books to mark. They are expected to be marked according to "marking policy" and marked the same day. Even his hand writing is supposed to be in the school style.
• planning. My husband and colleagues are usually moved into different year groups for "professional development" aka have to do all your work again. His lessons need to be planned with 5 levels of differentiation I believe. When the class isn't changing the curriculum is.

Lesson evaluation - at some points in my husbands career he (and his colleagues) have been asked to do written evaluations of every lesson. Sometimes totalling several thousand words a week. I kid you not. Tests/levelling/progress of the kids /parents evenings and reports/school trips and risk assessments/ school plays/discos and fetes that are out of hours. Extra work - could you just knock up a safeguarding policy/website/ run an after school football club/ plan things that I wouldn't know exist to be honest I'm sure the teacher's will say far more detail but as a teachers partner I'm thankful every day he's part time as full time was hell that made my husband ill and family life dreadful.

As dc are only in school for 35 hours that's a hell of a lot of planning and marking

Yes, it is. A set of 32 books takes me about 7 minutes a book. Most years I teach 6 classes. I am expected to do some kind of constructive feedback where students feedback on the feedback at least once a fortnight. I then have to feedback on the feedback that was fed back....(!) My managers will look for that in books/folders.

And as pointed out up thread, children are not robots. Even if you take the very top or the very bottom set each year, they are all different and the different personalities bounce off each other in different ways. So you have to tweak your activities - some classes can be trusted to wander about and mingle and get information from each other and peer mark in a constructive way. Other classes you can't give an inch or you'll lose about 3 million miles so no turning round or moving unless you're told to and even then you don't tell them to. Then there's curriculum changes (constant) and the ideology of the year - flipped learning, metacognition, project based learning, solo taxonomy.....so you have to shift what you're doing to fit into whatever the latest teaching fad is because if you don't you'll be hauled over the coals. And you learn as you go along what works and what doesn't - nothing like opening a PowerPoint and thinking 'no fucking way am I doing that again'!

It's called being a good teacher. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do you get it now, OP?

I’m not a teacher but dsis is. When she qualified and got her first job I had no idea of the amount of work she’d have to do.

It’s insane. I help her out when I can making resources (she sometimes leaves a bag of cutting out and laminating for me to do on our doorstep or I go to her place on a lunch break from work and do something like that for her --and watch her tv and eat her snacks- -)

She’s in work from 7 until about 6 usually. Then working from home. And puts aside weekend afternoons usually to do prep.

She teaches year 1.

It's called differentiation. You've got different children in every class and year group all of whom need planning for.

that's a hell of a lot of planning and marking

I work in HE where my students are in a lot less than school and I still work 50+ hours a week.
Teaching is the easy bit.

I'm not a teacher.
When the lockdown happened we had core subjects supported by the school but I planned some topics to keep the DCs busy.
Oh my God, it was so much work. I spent hours choosing topics, thinking up activities, linking them into the guidelines we had from the school, gathering materials, tailoring it to each of the DCs' abilities and interests. The DC then motored through the tasks in about half an hour Hats off to the teachers, each week, each term, each year with millions of the wee buggers to contend with. I managed 6 weeks, with 2 and I was knackered.

“I’m not teaching bashing but...” is the equivalent of “I’m nit racist but...” or “No offence but...” you are doing exactly that. Teacher bashing
no they're not.
They're asking a perfectly valid and polite question so get that massive frigging chip off your shoulder

Why are we still having to explain ourselves. It’s driving me mad! It’s not bloody rocket science. To plan a presentation and work/resources for 30 students takes around about 1 hour per lesson (averaged out as some lessons are shorter and require less, others are longer/ require more) That’s that’s around 30 hours just planning. Then imagine that each one of those lessons produces 30 pieces of work. Some days I try to do self marking but on average I’d say I have 90 a 120 pieces of marking a day - English, Maths, a subject such as science and then something like reading comprehension or etc. 1 decent piece of primary English can take maybe 15 minutes to mark if it’s a piece of long writing. Some pieces take less.then there’s the replanning based on the days results and the tweaks to the next days planning. Then data entry, spreadsheets each half term, time spent analysing the data and which children aren’t on track. Finding out why then planning intervention. Time spent making displays. Time spent updating paperwork and doing applications for SEN students. Time spent running and planning extra curricular activities. Time spent reading the latest updated research that you thought you just caught up with. Dealing with bullying/personal issues/ all of the pastoral issues that come in on an daily basis.... I could go on.....

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.

@mostwonderfultime - yes it is an awful lot of extra work. Yes you are teacher bashing with that headline in block caps. So sick of this. No, I'm not a teacher.

My gosh, imagine sitting down in your NQT year, planning every single lesson for every single year group, including the GCSE syllabus, over the course of that year, and then being like, “Finished! Now I have planned every lesson for the remainder of my career in teaching!”

Oh dear, OP, what a daft question.

my husband used to be a teacher ( and a very good one) and spent very little time on planning.
he would "tweak" lesson plans but certainly not put in 12 hour days planning.

Where did the OP go?

Are they satisfied with the answers?

Teaching is essentially two jobs in one - or perhaps three or four, really!

You show up each day for the time with the children in class, but every minute of that needs to be planned and resourced. Teachers don't just make stuff up on the spur of the moment, thought they have to be ready to respond to learners and take a different approach if something isn't working, so there's that, too

And then the work that's been done needs to be "marked" - or rather assessed - which isn't a case of putting ticks on exercise books. Primary teachers get half a day a week for PPA (planning preparation and assessment) which is never enough for all there is to do.

I won't start on behaviour management, parental emails and meetings, changes to policies, professional development etc etc.

It's just not the sort of job you leave behind when the day finishes, and of you're a perfectionist it can grind you into the dust because there's always more you could do!

Sadly, when all this is explained to people there are some who will never understand and some who will call it grumbling. Like many careers, it's a bit hard to understand what's involved from the outside, but unlike most other jobs, everyone feels they are an expert because they went to school themselves back in the day.

I've been in hospital a few times, but it doesn't make me competent to tell a surgeon or a nurse how to do their job. It's the same with teaching. If you haven't done the job or lived with someone who does, you only see the tip of the iceberg.

Whenever people I met socially knew that I taught, there'd be someone smirking about long holidays, job security and knocking off at 3pm.

I used to grin at them and say, "You're so right, it's great - I can't understand why you aren't switching careers. Would you like me to send you details of teacher training providers in the area? Would you love to teach teenagers or four year olds more?"

Cue a hasty retreat with cries of "Oh, I could never do that!" So leave it to those who can and do and respect them for it.

Result.

Are they satisfied with the answers
I doubt it.
Probably just confused as to why a valid question about a job she doesn't do has been met with such vitriol

@mostwonderfultime

OK it was just after reading on another thread that a Primary teacher already works 60 hours a week and secondary teacher 55 hours a week. As dc are only in school for 35 hours that's a hell of a lot of planning and marking.

Indeed.

Op, you said that you were not teacher bashing and I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, I cannot understand the need to ‘ ‘investigate’ every aspect of a teacher’s role; their holidays, their pay, their work.
It’s a though people feel that teachers have to justify their actions. It’s bloody annoying

Btw - I am not a teacher.

I’m a teacher and I don’t mind people asking questions like this because it helps people realise what teachers do. If you don’t work in a school it’s fair enough to not realise.
I find it’s the marking that takes ages with junior school. The preparation of resources takes a long time, more so with infants. And subject responsibility means a lot of work too, depending on the subject.

@hashtagbollocks

Are they satisfied with the answers I doubt it. Probably just confused as to why a valid question about a job she doesn't do has been met with such vitriol

Vitriol? Where? I see a few instances of impatience and frustration. Lots of explanations. Vitriol is a strong word.

I teach Economics. Do you think I should reuse last year's material ?

Teachers, like all other professionals only meet their pupils/patients/ clients/prisoners face to face for a small number of their working hours. Like doctors, lawyers and policeofficers they spent an inordinate amount of time before and after the face to face in planning, preparation, information gathering, reviewing, evaluating and recording what happened.

Lawyers of course are not expected to ensure that as part of their duties their offices are welcoming and stimulating places to be, reflecting the interests and diversity of their clients, setting out clearly the ethos and expectations of the practice and displaying the successful outcomes of their trials.

Nor are police officers are not expected to keep detailed records (on which their pay grades are assessed) of how the people they have arrested and prosecuted show that they have learned from the error of their ways and have made measurable progress in improving their moral standing in the community by not re offending.

Doctors are fortunate indeed in knowing that from month to month the basic anatomy of the human body will remain the same and that radical changes, say for example the position of the appendix in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen being moved to below the left knee cap, will not occur due to the personal whim of a 24 year old Oxbridge graduate with political ambitions who is a member of an advisory think tank group chaired by a bitter doctor hater who was once given a painful injection and an unpleasant tonic which soured their view of medicine for ever.

But as the song goes, " it all makes work for the working man (or woman) to do "

RIP Flanders and Swann.

"This is 100% one of these threads where an OP claims they don't understand, throws a grenade, waits for teachers to respond and then the OP and the usual teacher bashing posters show up saying 'see see teachers think they work harder than anyone else... Other people work hard too'