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.

Excellent post, @CaCaCaCaffeineBomb. Your mum sounds like a wonderful mother and teacher, both.

Seeing all those teacher-bashing posters during lockdown (not including this OP, I don’t think they are teacher bashing, just a bit daft) has got me to wondering, every single time they post... what are they going to do one day when one of their own children grows up and becomes a teacher? I mean, it’s hardly a rare field of work to go into.

Presumably, they’ll go on to tell their own child that they’re lazy and lying about the amount of work they do.

@hashtagbollocks but we don’t think we’re the ONLY profession who works hard. We are one of the professions that’s works hard and we actually do just get on with it. We kick up a fuss because we get questioned about our worth, value, impact, attitude ALL of the time. We state how hard we work in RESPONSE to the CONSTANT chorus of “What do teachers actually do?”
We get frustrated as you probably would if someone questioned you all the live long bloody day. If the government would just let us do our jobs instead of giving us layers of unnecessary crap to do and stopped moving the goalposts then it would be SO different. If people just left us alone to do our jobs then you probably wouldn’t hear from us.

There I’ve bitten. I’ve taken your bait. That’s what you’re in this post for. Enjoy your smugness from behind the safety of your keyboard.

It is this again... why do I engage?

What do teachers do? (Asks the totally genuinely curious OP)

Teachers explain. Give examples. Talk through an average day.

'Oh my God. You people think you work soooo much harder than everyone else in the world'

And the OP has disappeared into the mist...

Just copy and paste this thread next time. It will be exactly the same again.

See you next time, folks

(I'm not even a classroom teacher anymore!)

Such a shame common sense can't be on curriculum and taught...

@FuckThisWind

Why do people constantly question the role of teachers?

I have never, ever seen a thread 'why do accountants / barristers / taxidermists do / not do xyz' Yet with teachers, it's like they are public property. More so right now. Which makes it even more fucking shit.

I'm not a teacher, but I do always ask people how they would like it if it was themselves and their professions being questioned and undermined all the goddamn time.

Why do you think this might be? I’m assuming the scrutiny comes from the fact that teachers spend so much time with their children on a daily basis, they are depended upon to teach their children and safeguard them on a daily basis. The way they teach and their input in to a childs’ life can inspire and enthuse to go on to realise so much potential. You just don’t tend to have that kind of link to Taxidermist ( don’t think I’ve ever spoken to one) nor an accountant actually. If I did however it wouldn’t likely be a daily link.

Teaching is progressive, and the frameworks for exams, lessons change. I've been teaching for 16 years and renewed them every single year. Each lesson takes me about two hours to complete. It is time consuming but worth it to ensure students get the best and most up to date educational experiences. Also it's not a simple case of sending out lessons in lockdown they need to be tailored to the individual child's ability and to ensure they can access it at home catering for all technology or limited technology availability. On top of that each half term needs schemes of learning which all have been updated taking me five hours on each. If you don't like planning teaching is not for you!

I would have had no reason at all to justify my working life if I hadn't spent my whole career being publicly criticised and having people make snide comments about my holidays and my working day being the same is my pupils'.
Believe me, I'd rather not have to discuss my job outside work, AT ALL.
I have friends who work in business and IT. It never occurs to me to question what they do/their worth/how they do their job, nor should it. I wish people would have the same attitude to me and my job.

For me it's not so much the planning. It's the preparation of resources - printing, finding the appropriate work, making resources, looking for interactive games/songs to make a lesson lively & engaging, displaying work, making my classroom attractive & displaying the children's work, marking work, staff meetings, cluster meetings, professional reading, sharpening pencils, chipping paper, buying science resources (everything is bought by me from jigsaws to toys to pencils & rubbers!), preparing art lessons & everything involved.

An analogy for non teaching parents is to think about organising a child's party for 30. It only lasts 2 hours but many, many hours of preparation went in to make it run smoothly. This is how a classroom & teaching works. If there's not a mountain of prep it won't go well!!

I'm really glad you wanted to know and that you have asked. Hope the range of explanations given here answers your question.

@SachaStark

Whilst the curriculum changes how much does it change for GCSE? I must admit I really can't see how it is in any way a good use of time and resources to have each individual teachers creating resources. Why isn't there a central database of resources for each element e.g. standard schemes of work around each topic with differentiation to 3 levels included

Now this is a brilliantly asked question, and absolutely no teacher bashing at all.

I can only speak for my own secondary subject (English), but we are indeed still in the early stages after the GCSE 1-9 was introduced only a few years ago, so yes, the content of the curriculum and its mark schemes has all changed very recently.

In terms of having a central database of resources, I think it’s a nice idea in theory (a very good school I have previously worked in had a single teacher each plan a unit of work, then everybody shared all of their resources together, so you had every single unit of work for the price of creating one), but would be very hard to implement practically.

This is largely because EVERY class is so different, and definitely not to only three levels of differentiation (I’m assuming you’re referring to a kind of top, middle and bottom idea?). Then, you need to add in the availability of resources in each school (some can’t afford to buy new books for KS3, or can’t afford to print loads of additional worksheets, etc), students who have English as a second language, students who have vision issues, and the list goes on and on.

I think even if there was the creation of some amazing central lesson database, you’d still need to spend ages tweaking it to suit your classes.

That was the stage when I bowed out. The school was on a mission to get from Special Measures to Good and the amount of bureaucracy involved while on constant amber alert for OFSTED was horrific.

The GCSE specifications were released in July for chosing and being ready to teach in September.
The NC levels that were around for about 20 years and were decently understood were scrapped, yet we still had to show measurable progress every lesson and devise our own system based on the forthcoming GCSE grades. Marking and planning done with constant cross referencing.

Double marking with feedback.

Team planning drove me around the bend. It's 3x slower than knocking out your lesson yourself and then you still inevitably have to tweak it to the class combinations you have.

My computer is filled with powerpoints I created over the years that were never completely reused and only sometimes elements picked out and rebuilt as it is just quicker to start again than hunt and adapt.

My workload highlight was 2008, 5 years of experience and before Gove was Education Secretary with all his not-so-bright ideas.

My final year was 6am to 7.30am (then deal with my kids, get to work) 3pm-5:35 pm (mainly meetings, phoning parents, bureaucracy and if I was lucky, marking) Pick DCs up at 5:55pm vegetate, make dinner, bedtime routine then back to work 9pm-12am (planning and marking). Plus more catching up on marking in the holidays as there simply weren't enough hours in the day to keep up with marking policy.

I think parents who have had bad experiences of school engagement and home learning during lockdown should see the problems now.

The Government have moved the goalposts on expectations so many times that school leaderships have had to wade through guidelines that would make the Complete Works of Shakespeare look like a mere pamphlet.

It is not a situation that is unique to the pandemic. It's a pretty good indication of what happens in schools all the time with changing curricula, Ofsted priorities, changing guidelines...etc. Parents rarely see it happening in real time, because teachers and get on with it behind their classroom doors.

That should be what parents realise.

It won't be, though. Some parents - due to Government fuck-ups and a lack of individual school accountability (thanks to the rolling back of Local Authorities) have found this experience a massive let down.

They will blame the teachers.

"And seriously, trotting out what time they leave? You know that many do their planning and assessment at home, surely?"

Not when they half a day planning factored into their working week, no. Or did you think most parents done know this?

That seemed apropos of nothing. I think I'm just saying that teachers are being questioned like this because children have been failed in the last few months and teachers - usually wrongly - are being held accountable.

People don't like teachers much at the moment.

@TabbyMumz That time doesn’t even touch the sides.

"Tabbywhen I left school by 4 it was to pick my kids up but I’d then work at home"
And you are incredibly lucky to be able to do that.working in non school jobs, you often cant leave till 5pm, then travel and pick up kids, then make meals, then do extra work at home.

You may be teaching an entirely new syllabus so starting from scratch, you may be teaching a different set or a different text, you will definitely be teaching new pupils so differentiation/ adaptation needs to take place (even 2 top sets won't be the same), some classes respond better to certain tasks so I often adapt what I have to suit those interests to engage them, we often get told we are now incorporating X so make sure that's in every lesson/exercise book ready for observation/book scrutinies, you learn what does and doesn't work so adapt resources accordingly, marking may throw up things you need to re-cover etc. Then there's printing/photocopying/ cutting/sorting resources, updating power points or board works and so on. Yes you can keep and re-use resources but only very general ones - anything specific to the topic/text/task you teach needs to be bespoke. It is very time-consuming. Marking takes forever - much much longer than planning! I can spend a couple of hours a day planning. Marking a set of books takes roughly 2 hours and I need to mark every book every 2 weeks. That's maybe 180ish books roughly. Plus A level essays and coursework. It takes entire weekends and half terms / end of term holidays.

Not when they half a day planning factored into their working week, no. Or did you think most parents done know this

I can’t make out whether you mean “have half a day” or “have a day” for planning factored into their working week?

Anyway, yes, PPA time is representative of 10% of classroom hours per week. So between 2 and 3 hours if you are a full-time teacher.

... And if you’re going to sit there and say that all of your planning and marking for a week can be done in 2-3 hours, then I think you might be really quite unintelligent.

I taught 250 students per week in secondary. That would equate to under a minute per student to mark each exercise book if I only used my PPA time 😂 and that’s without adding in planning lessons, also!

I used to teach across five secondary year groups. Those were the days of getting up at 6am, being in school at 7.15, leaving at 3pm and working until 11pm.

What takes up the non-teaching time? Marking books/tests/projects (and sometimes essays for external prizes), planning schemes of work, photocopying, recording results, identifying weaknesses, planning an emergency lesson to reinforce a particular concept, differentiating work, writing reports, department/school/smt meetings, finding new resources, researching how to deliver a lesson about a slightly different concept, pastoral care meetings, parents evenings ...

It is more than one full time job. In fact, it's a bloody joke. I actually started drinking during those years.

How to put it in a different way?

Imagine you are an actor who has to perform a three different two hour plays a day, plus also monitor the audience during intervals. And you also have to build the stage set, and plan the lights and sound. And write the plays. And write reports on audience participation and interest. And hold meetings with the theatre owners to ensure ticket sales are high and you are performing the right plays for the right people. And you also have to write and print the programmes to go with each individual play. And the plays need to change every day. And you have to assess the audiences understanding of your plays by interviewing or testing them. And people's lives depend on you performing the right play to them at the right time.

And then on top of all that, yourare then supposed to infuse key messages about personal health, diet, exercise, citizenship, values etc into said plays. And turn up in the right costume at the right time in the right frame of mind. And you are also subject to theatre critics who appear in your audience and mark you on a range of things you have very little control over.

It's bonkers. It's utterly undoable. And it really is about time someone with some serious power and authority said this out loud.

I left teaching, despite adoring my pupils. I have no idea how teachers today deal with it.

Oh and assessments, which are counted separately to book marking.

@TabbyMumz

I think it depends what years you are teaching. I should imagine primary is easier than High school. I also imagine that after a few years, they are pretty fine tuned and able to change their tactic depending on the children. I cant imagine its hours and hours worth of planning. Teachers at our primary would arrive 8.30 ish and leave mostly by 4.

There is a lot of 'imagining' going on in this post.

People who do the job without imagining are telling you what they do.

"Teachers at our primary would arrive 8.30 ish and leave mostly by 4."

"I have never worked in a school where teachers arrived at 8.30!

Most teachers are in by 7.45 (many by 7) and don’t leave till the caretaker kicks them out at 6."

Well I was often at my school at 8 and there was noone there. Nobody at all except breakfast club staff. No teachers anywhere, carpark empty too, so they definately werent there. I live nearby so often saw them arriving at 8.30. Car park started emptying at 4. I went one night at 5 to my childs classroom and one teacher was left in the whole school. Trust me, they are gone.

@Tabbymumz retrain then. Be a teacher then you can have all of our family friendly perks that go with the job that you hear so much about. They’re crying out for teachers at the minute for some reason...

"There is a lot of 'imagining' going on in this post.

People who do the job without imagining are telling you what they do."

A lot of people on this post have said they are in High Schools. And a lot of people embellish the hard work to make out they work harder than us mere mortals who arent teachers. So I can imagine all I like. I've also had teacher friends who have told me that actually it's not very often all the hours some people make it out to be. Newly qualified teachers will spend more time on planning, but once established and very well experienced, I'm sure they can get through planning a lot quicker.

@tabbymumz

They might be gone, but that categorically does not mean they are not working. Says the angry lady who is up marking until midnight most nights!

I think you’ll find that accountants and lawyers are constantly being scrutinised about how they spend their time, by their clients. They want to know exactly what they are paying for and how that translates into value for money.

It’s not the same at all but teachers do have clients of sorts. It’s the students and the parents. So of course parents have an interest in what teachers do.

I think the other aspect is that from what I can tell teaching, like many professions, has changed significantly over the years. If I think back to when I was at school, all my friends with teacher parents would head off to France or somewhere for the 6 week holiday. Yet now many teachers end up spending a good few weeks of their summer holidays planning. I don’t think it was like that 30 years ago.