Non-teachers: do you expect teachers to work during off-hours?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My own position as a teacher is pretty complicated.

If the question is “Do parents have a right to demand 24-hour turnaround on grades?” the answer is double-fuck-no.

The first fuck-no goes to “Is 24-hour turn around on grades a reasonable expectation for anyone to have of a teacher?” and the second fuck-no goes to “Do the parents get to make demands on me?” Teaching is already kind of weird where my work-obligations go to my boss and my ethical-obligations go to my students, but parents are certainly not in there at all.

As far as working after work hours goes, I think it really comes down to who is doing the expecting.

For me, I feel like there is a difference between what I expect from myself, what my students are owed, and what my boss can reasonably expect from me given the terms of my employment.

The terms of my employment thing is frustrating. There is a trend toward cutting teacher-prep time, increasing teaching loads, and increasing paperwork loads (things like item-profiling every kid on every skill tested, which requires ridiculous amounts of hand-tabulating, writing lesson plans detailed past imagining, watching 12 hours of compliance videos, etc.) There is also a trend AWAY from any sort of teaching that allows any of this to be done while kids are in the room. When I was in school, a couple decades ago, it was very normal to watch a movie over three days once a six weeks. That NEVER happens anymore. There is also a strong trend toward being available for tutoring a good chunk of the week in the morning and afternoon. We have posted tutoring hours at my school, and kids very much come by for extra help. That was, again, not my experience in high school twenty years ago. So given that, it seems . . .problematic . . . that my employer can increase my workload so dramatically and assume that my time is infinite, and they can mandate all this new stuff and trust me to take home all the stuff I used to do at school.

On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that I do have professional ambitions, and part of being the sort of teacher I want to be is to out perform expectations. I can’t do that if I limit myself to only what work I can get done between 8:00-4:15. To do my job the way I do it–which I consider kind of the basement of “solid work”–I work a real 65 hours each week. I tend to think of that as 40 hours paid, 25 as hobby/charity. I do enjoy the hell out of it, even the grading. But I find it hard to characterize teachers who aren’t willing to put in 65 hours a week as somehow not being “professional”. On the other hand, when their careers stall and they don’t have a lot of leverage, I sort of feel like it’s a predictable result and that any bitterness about that is misplaced.

The last question, of course, is what sort of ethical responsibility does one have to one’s students and how does one find that line? That’s really difficult. I mean, if I know having accurate and timely feedback helps education (and it does) but I am under the gun to get 12 hours of compliance videos watched (which I am), how do I balance that? I do feel, absolutely, that a teacher who is working a solid 40 hour a week is living up to their professional obligations, but how much past that is one ethically obligated to go to give kids a better education? And, of course, there’s no limit to this: I could easily find another ten hours of stuff I could do that would help kids, but my limit is 65. Am I to look down on someone who’s limit is 60? 55? 50? 45? Ought someone who puts in 70 or 80 hours a week (theater teachers, band teachers . . .) look down on me?

In terms of timely feedback, I do believe that there are times when significantly delayed feedback really hurts kids, and a teacher that is habitually grading things WEEKS after they have been collected is doing a disservice to their kids and is not living up to their responsibilities. Kids can’t learn if they don’t know where they are. In that sense, I think the old way of throwing on a movie sometimes when you had to was better than what we have now, when we have to be actively collecting things to be graded, tabulated, profiled and filed every minute. I do think it’s appropriate for a principal to work with a teacher to find a way to get things back more quickly than week and weeks. But overnight? Fuck that.

22

Yes, this. My mom was a sixth grade teacher, and my ex-husband a college teacher. Both of them spent many many hours of “their time” at home grading, lesson planning, calling parents/students, and mom spent many more hours, often with me tagging along, at school making bulletin boards, running copies, prepping for projects and organizing her classroom. Neither one was/is paid hourly for the time they work. She was on salary based on her education level and length of service. He’s paid per course.

But also this:

And a one day turn around on any test that isn’t Scantron (or equivalent) is not a realistic expectation, I don’t think. I’d hope all but the very biggest projects would be returned within a week, but not a day.

23

I don’t expect to micromanage my child’s teacher. I wouldn’t want to if I could. Show up, be competent, don’t just show movies all day Friday, and be flexible on parent-teacher conferences. I greatly respect the profession, but my expectations set a very low bar.

In this day and age of constant information I get an email every Friday and if it says my child is missing 11 assignments and failing every subject the teacher should expect a call to see if all 11 assignments are waiting to be graded or if a few are actually missing. I’m not being a control freak, I’m being an acceptable parent. I understand its probably pretty annoying getting calls from every acceptable parent in the class every week, but your current system says my kid is always failing the hell out of everything and I’m ultimately responsible for my own child’s education so I have to call.

24

I have a kid in school and voted that you do your job until it’s done. If you’re hourly, you clock in and clock out. If you’re salaried, you don’t. That said, you shouldn’t have to be your work’s bitch, so it should be within reason. I’m not sure what that means for those in education, but I’m assuming that being required to grade 30 paper or tests in a few days is fairly unreasonable.

25

If you don’t want to work additional hours, structure your classes such that you don’t have to - AND don’t expect your students to put in any more time than what they put in in the classroom either - i.e. no homework. Because if you aren’t going to work any hours outside of school, it isn’t exactly fair to have them do so either. Nothing like spending the weekends working on a paper to not get a grade on it for three weeks.

And I have the same issue as Emtar - “its on the web” says the school, “you should be tracking your child’s performance.” That only works if the information is current. Each quarter or tri is not very long and if you don’t grade your papers promptly, I can’t tell if work is missing or if my kid isn’t understanding the material.

26

By the way, to Manda JOs point, I’m homeschooling my ninth grader. And the fact that he does his Algebra, and ten minutes later I hand him the corrected paper, and if there was anything that he just didn’t get we immediately continue our Algebra lesson - moving Geography aside - has meant that he is starting to GET Algebra. Same with English - having someone tell him how to compose an essay (even if I’m not the best mathematician or writer myself), doing several immediate edits on the draft, and working it through over four days instead of two weeks in a constant feedback cycle is helpful. Teachers obviously CAN’T do that. But what is strange to me is how little they apparently try and MODEL that - he’s never seen graded homework in math, they never reviewed it once it was done - it was forward - turn it in, get credit for doing it (right or wrong), no expectations on corrections (I make him correct any homework where he hasn’t gotten 80% of it right or where he missed how to do an entire sort of problem). Then take the test and see how you did.

And don’t get me started on assignments that are significant parts of a grade that you haven’t communicated what it is or how it is to be done to the parents - in a format where it isn’t crumpled in the bottom of the backpack - post the darn thing to the web. Or if you haven’t, then when I come in for conferences, don’t look at me like I’m supposed to be fixing problems I don’t know we had. Because I’m on the bad end of a game of telephone where my kids are pretty certain you told them they only needed to do X. If you told them to do X+Y, they didn’t understand it or forgot about it.

27

I’ve always assumed that of course good teachers put in a whole lot of time on evenings and weekends, since I can’t imagine how anybody could possibly do all of the prep work and grading for four or five classes during their planning period. I guess it might be doable if you’ve been teaching the same lessons for years AND your sole method of assessment was multiple-choice tests, but that just plain won’t work in some subjects, and is pretty far from ideal in any subject.

That said, parents calling up to demand that the teacher drop everything until their kid’s test is graded? No, no, and HELL NO. (In my book, you don’t even get to ASK when you’re getting the test back until at least a week has gone by.)

28

You have no ethical obligations to the parents of your students? Surely you don’t mean that.

29

I do. I am responsible for the kid, and make decisions based on the kid. Sometimes that involves the parents–like calling home because a kid is struggling and we need to work something out–but I am doing it because of what I owe the kid, not what I owe the parent.

In practice this looks a lot like “ethical responsibility to the parent”, but it’s always very clear in my head that my professional relationship is with the kid, not the parent.

30

FWIW - I find this perfectly clear and reasonable, and agree with it.

Your ethical obligation is to help the kids do as well as they can - if that means engaging the parents then you need to do it, but for the kids’ benefit, not for the parents.

31

Teachers are fairly slack. I have friends who are teachers and they just don’t like working. They are often also on holidays while others are working and then post while on holidays about how hard they work.

If it were me I wouldn’t have graded the papers, made up some lie about it and then laughed in her face and marked them when I was damned well ready.

You’re a teacher, not a servant. Tell her to jump.

32

I’d suggest that you ask him to do his Algebra, and while he does it, pretend you’ve got two other kids arguing over whose pencil it is, and a third kid who is asking you for a bathroom break even though you’ve explained procedures for bathroom breaks two dozen times already and they don’t need to ask, and a fourth kid who’s crying for some mysterious reason, and a fifth and sixth kid who are raising their hand because they “don’t get it,” not having attempted the assignment yet. Then when he turns in his paper, make 20 copies of it and grade each one of them while the crier continues crying and won’t tell you what’s going on, and the pencil-arguers are now hissing insults at each other, and the bathroom kid hasn’t come back yet, and oh yeah, fourteen other kids have finished the assignment and are waiting on your feedback.

Dangerosa, I fully agree with you that immediate feedback is an ideal. I do try to give it to students when I can, but it’s almost always during classtime, when a parent won’t necessarily see it (e.g., I walk around looking at classwork, maybe point out an error to one student, suggest another way of solving a problem to a second student, stop the class and re-explain directions if a bunch of folks seem unclear, or pull a small group aside to help them if I’m seeing a few kids who are confused). But it’s a numbers game: the kind of feedback you give to your son is really, really hard to do when there are a whole bunch of kids who may or may not be behaving appropriately.

33

You don’t get paid for working 9 months. You are a full time salaried employee who gets 3 months of vacation time per year. Over the summer you are not unemployed, you are not paying COBRA, you are not a person who has “no job”. You have a job, you get benefits, you just don’t have to go into the office.

34

No worse sounding than a standard retail job. Perhaps you need more life experience ?

35

Then why, if I take an unpaid day off, do they dock 1/180 of my check, not 1/250? Because if my annual salary is for 250 days, missing one should reduce my check by 1/250.

This is not an academic distinction. When you have to miss a chunk of time due to illness, it is a Big Deal to lose significantly more than a month’s salary for each month you are out.

36

No kid.
Voted “yes”, but then the poll is missing an “I know you shouldn’t have to, but y’all are expected to and you probably know that going in, so there you go” option.

37

He’s not saying it’s terrible. He is explaining why rapid turn around on all grading assignments is not feasible, much as it’s not feasible for a retail clerk to check everyone out the second they want to without anyone ever standing in line.

38

I’m pretty sure Dangerosa understands that teachers can’t do what she does. She doesn’t understand why teachers do something different - assign homework, record it only as completed or not without grading it, and don’t review it in class. I never understood the point of assigning homework when my son could just scrawl random answers and get as much credit for that as he would have for doing the work - and he did that more than once ( I found out years later). Because not handing in a sheet of paper that purported to be homework would have lowered his grade, but handing one in with every answer wrong did not.

39

I know, their is no way a teacher can do what a functionally private tutor can - nor do I expect it. But its been a huge help to my son to have that immediate feedback. And my son has seldom had GOOD math teachers. They don’t correct work - it isn’t that he hasn’t gotten immediate feedback - its that he’s gotten no feedback.

When I was in school, Algebra went like this - you sat down and pulled your homework out. The teacher had everyone pass their paper one back, the person behind you graded the paper. A tally was taken on who got what wrong. If lots of people got #26 wrong, #26 was reworked on the board. The next lesson was reviewed and we got time to work on it in class.

My son’s math classes have worked like this - you sit down. You are responsible for putting your homework into the basket at the front of the room as you walk in. You get five points for turning it in complete, 3 if it isn’t complete. It is never graded nor returned. There is a thirty minute lecture covering the material and the rest of the hour for working on the assignment. Which, if you are my son, you do as fast as you can (because right answers don’t make any difference) and put it in the basket as you leave. Eventually you take the test. Oh, and there aren’t enough books to take home, so you can’t do your homework at home anyway, unless you make arrangements to check out a book. That’s “we’ve given up on providing feedback.”

This isn’t the teachers fault - not enough Algebra books so that homework has to be able to be completed in the forty minutes of classroom time or worksheets - with no examples - are sent home to parents in a district where the majority of families are blue collar and there is a heavy component of immigrants. Which means no time to review the previous days homework. That isn’t the teacher. That’s funding.

My daughter has now been in school five weeks. There have been no gradable events showing up in Science or Band or PE as of today - after five weeks, I don’t know if in PE she is getting dressed and participating or not (I’d guess she is, she is the type). Her Algebra teacher has lost three assignments - that he found when I called him to say “can you check through your pile, she tells me she turned them in” and the Spanish teacher has lost two - both graded to someone else in the gradebook. I’m not worried about her like I am about him, she is flightly - but she is bright.

40

I checked with my sister (highschool english teacher) on this. FWIW, she said that she and her fellow teachers definitely regard the salary they make as a full year’s compensation. And their union absolutely pitches it this way - “You should be paid an annual amount comparable to what equivalent professions pay - you should not have to work a summer job to make ends meet.”

She has the advantage of living and working in an affluent area. With 18 years of experience, she is paid around $95k a year (increases nearly every year, due to COLA and experience provisions), plus excellent healthcare coverage and a very attractive retirement package (the future cost of which looks likely to be a problem even for her upscale town to afford). She puts in significant time outside work hours, and regards this as a normal part of the job.