How hard is teaching?

[planAplanB]

I'm heading back into full time teaching after a break (stayed in education though). I have two children aged 7 and 9. Also just started divorce proceedings this week. I'm worried that I won't cope. Any teachers here? How much work do you do on top of a regular 8 hour a day?

How long is a piece of string?? Teachers work is never done. I could work 24/7 and I still wouldn't be finished. There's always another lesson to plan, something to mark, something to organise, more training.
So you have to have a cut off point (which is really hard to do). I do around 2 hours extra every evening plus some weekends.

My curriculum has changed every single year. I teach 7 year groups. Never been able to teach the same lesson twice fpr any of them ...

@LaPalmaLlama you can absolutely do this. The problem is, there are often curriculum changes, shifting goalposts, and due to the increasing numbers of children with SEN in mainstream, teachers often have to plan separate work. I teach two children who need an entirely separate curriculum planned for them, as they can't access their year group's work. This obviously takes time. There isn't money in the budget to get them 1:1 support, and both didn't get an EHCP. Also, you need to adapt planning to your class. Good teachers won't just teach straight from a scheme. We have a maths scheme, but I plan something separate to extend the more able, as that's what a good teacher needs to do. I'm fairly quick at it as I'm very experienced, but it must be harder for newer teachers.

In theory 2 hours after work would be enough time in most schools with some shared planning, and decent marking policy. Of course there will be crunch times around mocks/reports, and if you teach something coursework heavy then there may be other crunch points too. It does also depend on your school too, I've worked in schools that expect teaching staff to do the absence phonecalls home, or set cover for a post in the department we can't fill etc, and this tipped a manageable job into an unmanageable one.

The problem is in the average school you'll likely do one meeting a week after school, probably be expected to do after school intervention or a club, maybe something like detention duty etc as well, there will also likely be ad-hoc meetings/phone calls with parents of your tuteees etc. And then around 10 weeks of the year you have to factor in evening events such as parents evening, option evening, open evening etc. So inevitably at busy times, work ends up spilling into the weekend for me.

For me, 0.8 or 0.6 would be the dream, yes you'd end up working on non working days and obviously it's less money, but I'd be able to actually relax on the weekend and have time in the week to go to appointments, do life admin etc. I do think if you could make 0.6 work it would be less of a shock to the system and you could always up your hours if you feel you could cope with more?

Generally we do repeat roughly the same lesson, although it does depend on your school, but in secondary especially you need to adapt it to your class. One year I could have bottom set y9, who struggle with basic literacy and 2 figure additional, and next year I might have top set who would probably get a decent grade on a GCSE if they sat it tomorrow! So although I am teaching them the same topics in the same order, I pitch it very differently and they will do very different tasks. Obviously there are schools where this doesn't apply, but in a true comprehensive, I am teaching a student in the sixth form with an offer for Cambridge, and I'm teaching children in ks3 who genuinely struggle to read and write - we have the full ability spectrum.

In terms of bought in schemes, most schools don't have the money, and often the lessons aren't great either. Generally we share our resources so there is a basic outline and PowerPoint on the system for most lessons, but the planning I do is adapting to my class. It's also stuff like printing resources, ordering my practicals etc, which all takes time, particularly when you have multiple students who need different coloured paper etc.

To be honest though, for me, it's marking that is the real time sink, because I teach a level 3 btec, and the amount of marking it generates is huge, but I don't get any additional time compared to someone who has no coursework to mark!

@LaPalmaLlama also if you teach in primary, teachers are often moved around - so you may have all your planning sorted for Year 1 but after 3 years you're asked to move into Year 4 so you have to start all over again.

I'm teaching 0.8 now after 28 years teaching fulltime. I don't work on a Friday and it's heaven having that extra day off. My monthly pay is about £250 less a month.

And then you arrive into aforementioned new year group, look at last year's planning and think "what the fudge is this tosh?!" although of course you'll never say that aloud, so you quietly grit your teeth and start again. Or you can't even find the previous year's plans because there was never any time to organise the year group online folders on the server so it all saved somewhere you'll never know or got accidentally deleted, and so you start again.

And then somewhere along the way there's a change in government and the curriculum is all wobbled about again so...you have to start planning again.