And for the poll I split it into parents and non-parents.
For those of you that don’t know how teaching contracts work, we are required to be on school ground or on official school business between certain hours so let’s say 7am to 3pm. During that time we get a duty-free lunch where we cannot be required to work (some teachers in some districts have to work supervision during their lunch) and a period (about an hour) to prep, grade papers, meet with collegues, etc. If the district requires me to work after that time (limited staff meeting exempted) then they must pay me my hourly rate. Although districts vary, I’m sure that’s a close approximation for most teachers.
What brought this on was a call from a parent who couldn’t believe that it took me 3 days to grade 2 classes worth of tests. According to her, I should have worked that night until they were all graded. There are two modes of thought. We are like salaried employees and you work until the job is done is one way to look at it. The other is that although considered a salary, I’m really paid for the time I am obliged to be at school. Anytime on school related activities is MY time and I should not feel obligated to prioritize grading papers, calling parents, prepping lessons etc. during that time.
I expect that teachers would sometimes have to spend some time outside of school hours for grading/lesson planning. I would think that this shouldn’t be spending hours every night, but occasionally . I do know that some of my best teachers growing up were seriously overworked.
I also think it depends on the subject. Math homework, for example, can be effectively graded significantly more quickly than English composition.
A few days delay in grading a test is no big deal, and it’s unreasonable to expect next-day turnaround on all assignments.
I thought one of the defenses of teachers’ salaries for working nine months a year is all the hours they’re expected to put in outside of school hours…
I can’t vote, but screw that idea. I promise my kids their papers will be graded before they graduate, or shortly thereafter. I already spend over 300 hours a year outside of school hours with the little darlings. I’m not going to grade papers at home as well.
What do you mean? Teachers get paid for working 9 mos. They don’t get free pay over the summer.
Some evening or weekends is appropriate for any salaried professional of this type. However, how much and when is a professional judgement call and not subject to a parent’s commentary. (Unless its extraordinary circumstances).
I was under the impression that teachers often/frequently/usually worked on marking papers and lesson planning and so forth in their private time. I don’t necessarily believe that’s the way it should be, but I definitely believed that it is what they typically do.
I’m absolutely sure that most of my teachers after about 7th grade couldn’t possibly have graded all the papers and tests for their five classes during their one free hour at school. However, I’d be pissed if I were a teacher and a parent complained to me for not getting tests graded in three days.
No, you get a check year round. You are paid for the time you work. This matters because if you take unpaid leave (because, say, you get cancer), you get docked 1/180 of your annual salary, not the 1/250 of your annual salary you get docked if you have a year-round job.
This means that if you miss six weeks because, again, cancer or something, you don’t get a check for two months. If we were really paid “year round”, if we missed 1/4 of a month, we’d lose 1/4 of a months pay.
I only know what my district is like, but you can choose to get paid year-round but you don’t get paid for the time you don’t work. You don’t get paid for breaks, they just spread your pay out for your convenience.
In response to the OP, my brother is a high school history teacher. I know he works long, long hours past the last bell and I feel for him, but this is the profession he chose and he has known how it works for the past 24 years. As for me as a parent, I expect my daughter’s teacher to do her job in a timely manner. If she can’t get it all done during work hours obviously she’ll have to work later.
They are paid for the time they work. How they spread out the payments is irrelevant. Many districts pay over the course of a full year because it is easier to budget for both parties.
I voted work during work hours only but I know for many that just isn’t possible. For instance my sister puts in much more time than that at home and after school.
I “expect” teachers to work on school stuff at home and on weekends, because I know a lot of teachers (and was a TA myself) and I know that’s how it works most of the time.
On the other hand, I do think that’s really massively unfair, and that having teachers be essentially “on call” 24/7 isn’t fair to them considering how little they already make.
So… common practice but if I encountered a teacher who didn’t play that game, I’d want to stick up for them, rather than bitch and moan about it.
It’s not so much that I expect you to work out of hours but I had always thought that you would have to put in time out of hours to get things done. I had also thought that you would get paid an amount that acknowledges this. My expectation is that the job gets done, how that actually happens is between the teacher and their employer.
Certainly I expect teachers to work outside school hours. I don’t see how it would be possible to do a good or even adequate job otherwise. But I don’t expect teachers to grade papers every night, either.
I come from a very long line of teachers including both of my parents and many of my parents and grandparents so I have some knowledge and sympathy for those engaged in the profession. I voted to work until the job is done. My position is that if you want to be treated like a salaried professional, you have to act like one. There shouldn’t be one set of fixed work hours for any true profession. There are core hours where you do the visible part of your job and then you have flexible hours where you spread the rest of your work around so that it suits both you and the work needed. That is what professionals do.
There is such a thing as a teacher that gets paid buy the hour. They are called tutors. If someone wants that to do that full-time and set whatever schedule they want, I am all for it but otherwise I consider them salaried professionals and the norms of the profession have always been that they graded papers, attended events and did lots of other things school related before or after official class hours.
It is also a semi-myth these days that teachers are underpaid compared to similar professions. The norm for public school teachers in Massachusetts is 60K - the mid 70K range with a few years of experience and it is even higher in my home town in Louisiana where the cost of living is very low. The decent pay was supposed to be because they worked so many hours during the school year that it more than offset the summer and holiday breaks.
Now people are saying it should be considered an hourly job with an unusually short set of hours compared to other professions even during the school year plus summer breaks plus holiday breaks. On top of that, it should include generous benefits and a retirement fund. That equation is way too unbalanced in my view. I know teaching is hard but I don’t think you should get much if your line in the sand is less than 1300 hour work year (180 days * 7 hours a day).
I voted: I have a child in K-12 and yes, do your job until it’s done.
I would have worded it a bit differently though. I expect, due to the way the school day is set up, that they would need to take work home to grade, or do their lesson planning at home or after school hours. I do not expect them to not rest until every last assignment and test from that day has been graded and recorded.
Not a parent, and I expect teachers to work outside of school hours because I know enough teachers to know that that is typical to inevitable–not neccessarily desirable.
I don’t think one day turnaround time on all papers/tests is necessary or desirable.
