Bingo - if you aren’t going to grade it (and grade it with SOME promptness - it doesn’t need to be 24 hour turnaround, but within a week), don’t assign it. My kids are both bright enough - and lazy enough - to figure out how to rig that game. And as parents, we don’t have any visibility into whether they do, so you can’t look to us to police it - unless you give us the feedback and expectations.
The other one I don’t get is reading logs. Hey, they are easy to grade. My daughter reads well. She’s one of those kids we have to pull OUT of her book and her room so she gets some vitamin D from sunlight once in a while. Her reading comprehension in seventh grade is college level. But she doesn’t log. She’s too busy reading to log. We’ve been fighting logs for six years now. They aren’t doing her any good - and since the school is graded on test scores - which she aces - they aren’t doing the school any good. This year the district has decided that reading logs are MANDATORY in all English classes. Far as I can tell, you get three types of reading logs, a small percentage of the kids who log as they read every day, for whom you get good data - a percentage of kids like my daughter, who fudge together a log when its due by reviewing what they read and distributing it over the days of the month - and a percentage of kids who just make shit up. But hey, logs!
Are you asked to work 250 days? You have a Full Time Professional Job where you are required to work on site 180 days. Other people have FTPJs where they are asked to work 250 (or so) days, depending on holiday and vacation allowances. It’s no different than if you had a FTPJ where you worked 4 days a week instead of 5. People do that, you work 4x10 hour days instead of 5x8 hour days.
What you don’t have is a regular 9x5 job where you only need to work 180 days a year.
8x180= 1,440 hours
1,440/50wks = 29hrs/wk
In exchange for only having to show up at the office 8hrs per day 180 days a year, I would expect that a professional worker with full health care and pension would perform some off site work to bring their total annual work hours to a level comparable to other full time professionals.
Playing the “I’m off the clock, bitches!” game just means you actually work LESS time than that poor bastard at WalMart who is begging for more work so he can qualify for benefits.
Edited to add: this does NOT mean that a teacher should have to work all night to give immediate turnaround on a test, it just means that I do expect a measure of off site work as the norm for the profession.
The paid-all-year thing is not about working late to grade papers during the year. It’s about whether or not those 8-10 weeks off each year are paid vacation. If my salary is an annual salary, with 10 weeks of paid vacation, then when I miss time I should be docked as a percentage of a year, not a percentage of the 9-months.
But if I cannot attend during my assigned hours, they are quick to decide that those assigned hours are the only ones that “count” and dock my paycheck by a percentage that reflects that. It’s not consistent to then turn around and say “You get paid for the whole year, with a bunch of paid time off.” If that summer time were “paid”, then it would be part of my salary, and missing one day wouldn’t cost me 1.2 days pay.
My mother’s district actually gave them the choice of 18 paychecks during the year, and an unpaid summer, or 26 paychecks over the course of the entire year.
They got the same salary either way.
Another thing is that the summer vacation for teachers isn’t nearly as large as for students- there are several weeks worth of in-service and training time in there that most people don’t know about because they base their idea of teachers’ work time on the time that the students are actually there.
3 days to grade 2 classes worth is a pretty decent turnaround. That parent needs to stick their all-nighter crap up their ass. Some of our stuff in middle school or high school wasn’t graded for a week.
I have two kids - one in 2nd grade and one in 6th. The school day for both kids is 6.25 hours long. My 2nd grader is out of the classroom for an hour every day for lunch and recess, plus another 45 minutes for a “special” (music, art, PE, library, computer lab, etc.). This means that her homeroom teacher has kids in the classroom for 4.5 hours each day. Assuming an 8 hour day, this leaves 3.5 hours for grading and prep work. In many cases, I think that’s probably adequate, but on days when it’s not, then yes, I do think teachers ought to take work home. My 6th grader’s schedule is a little different - no recess, but daily PE - but I think the end result is about the same. I’m not familiar with teacher workloads at the HS level around here, where grading becomes more intensive.
Dangerosa - I share your antipathy for ungraded homework and reading logs. Bunch of BS.
They’re not. They are non-workdays, like Saturdays and Sundays.
Vacation days are inherently workdays. Paid vacation is when you do not go to work on a day you would normally go to work, and the company pays you anyway.
If a office worker’s unpaid day off is 1/250 instead of 1/365 of their annual salary, the company is not counting Saturdays and Sundays (and holidays) because they are not work days. For a teacher, there are 180 work days, so your rate is 1/180.
I particularly hate it coming from teachers who expect kids to do work at home - my kids are in class (well, my daughter still is) for seven hours a day - just like you. She doesn’t get a prep hour. And she has activities and a life too, just like you - if you are going to assign her homework that she has to do at home, you can grade it at home. If making up a test is more important than drama club, then you need to make it more important than coaching football and make time for her to retake it. I know you have 200 kids, but it takes her longer to write the English essay than it takes you to grade it. If you are going to make her spend her Saturdays at the library researching it, and type it at home, and do drafts at home, then you can do her the favor of grading it promptly. And she’s a middle schooler - it isn’t just her time teachers are investing - I take her to the library - and until last year I worked full time plus and had another child - I proof her drafts - I give her guidance on evaluating a web site. And teachers are quite clear when we have conferences that they have those expectations of parents by middle and high school - “well, we gave her one day in the library, but she was supposed to go to the library outside of class”- “oh, and how was she going to GET to the library?” “Yes, well, she did a draft and she should have shown it to you to review last week.” “oh, last week, when my husband was traveling and I worked 50 hours and my kids were home making themselves mac n cheese and I got home at seven and hassled them to do their homework while I paid bills, did laundry, washed dishes - That last week?”
I’m fine if you don’t want to work overtime, trust me, I know the feeling - but hey, don’t push your work on me without me agreeing to do the work (which is what happened with my son - we eventually had no choice but to do all the work - I spend less time homeschooling him than I did working with his teachers (right now, he’s doing Algebra - and I’ve stopped typing this a few times to give him direction). I’d be happy to support more staff, but if you don’t have it, the administration has to find some way to pass those tests without making me the teacher. And, my kids are entitled to an education.
I have a friend who is an overworked teacher with a son in the same school where she teaches. Its hilarious to listen to her - there is NO WAY to make this work. Her son’s teachers can’t manage to communicate with her, and she is in the same building with them eight hours a day supposedly teaching some sort of coordinated curriculum. If she does the things her son’s teachers expect of her, there is no way she has time to grade the work of her own students because she is investing hours in coaching her own kids.
I raised two daughters and helped them with homework and studying for tests. I never questioned how long it took for the teacher to hand back graded tests. They are professionals and get the job done when theres time.
I’d guess they can grade a lot of the papers during their time at school. Maybe come in 45 minutes early to catch up on lesson plans and paperwork. But how they schedule their time is up to them.
Neither of my kids are in K-12 anymore, but I voted “work until the job is done”. That doesn’t mean you have to meet unreasonable expectations, but you have to complete your responsibilities in a timely manner. This is no different from any other salaried professional.
It’s a little tiresome to hear teachers complain about working more than 40 hours during the school year, and then try to claim that the 10 weeks of summer don’t count.
I do understand what you are talking about; it is very easy to use other’s people’s time and money. That said, the times when I have had kid complain about workload it is always a kid who is in a couple major extracurriculars and all advanced classes, and considers anything but straight high A’s in every class to be completely unacceptable. They sign up for a schedule we tell them is very, very difficult to do at all, and then they expect for it to be possible for them to not only manage it, but to thrive. What a teacher or school “expects” is what it takes to get a B (or even a C) in a regular class: anything else is what a student volunteers for to improve their future prospects.
First, parents don’t get to dictate grading schedules, though fast feedback is important.
What hours do people work at school? The OP said 7 - 3, but I live across the street from a school and no one is there at 7 am. Most people I know work at least 8 hours a day not counting lunch. I know damn well from my teacher friends that the time not spent at school is spent at home grading and preparing. These days lots of people who work 9 - 6 also spend time at home working.
I’m a teacher but with a completely different workload than what you would expect in the US.
My salary (like it’s done for basically 99% of the jobs here in Perú), is a monthly sum. All vacation/off time/leave payment are calculated with a theoretical per-hour pay. I say theoretical because my basic pay is the same regardless of the hours I teach.
At my school there are eight 45-minute periods a day, plus a 15-minute break and a 40-minute lunch. Most teacher have 24 periods of class, 1 coordination period, and 2 periods for parents’ meetings. We also have one or two playground duties periods. Homeroom teachers get extra pay because they have a 15-minute period at the beginning of the day, another extra period a week and another coordination hour with the other 3 HRTs in their grade.
We have 36-student “sections”, four to a year. I teach three different years, that’s 12 sections. So if I take a test for my three years, that’s 432 tests to check. Even the simplest test takes time to check. That’s why we have a one-week rule at school.
In thery, we are supposed to do all your work at school, in reality you have to put a couple of extra hours a day at home.
I voted with “do your job until it’s done” but I see some middle ground here. Taking three days to grade tests is perfectly reasonable. Taking a week would be OK with me. I don’t expect teachers to be doing 60-hour weeks every week… but yeah, there’s gonna be the occasional week when that’s just what you have to do.
Just went to my high school daughter’s open house virtually every teacher said they were there by 7 am for extra help, no appointment needed. The school day starts at 8. They also rotate through the after school drop in tutoring which runs from 3-4.
That isn’t the case for my daughter - who is still in middle school and while in “advanced” English and Math is not in AP English or Math since they aren’t offered. She is in the simple college prep path - because they is what is offered. Same for my friends son - still in middle school. We don’t have kids who we think should get into Harvard, nor are our kids expectations set anywhere near there - we have kids who we think should get into the University of Minnesota.
I get what you are saying though - I see high school kids registered for AP English, AP Science, AP Math and AP Social Studies - in college that alone is a full load of four classes (in college its a semester worth - high school you spread it out over a year). Then they stack band on top (looks good on a college application), plus the foreign language that you need three years of to get into a good school. And you still need to get in a full year worth of Fine Arts during four years of high school for college acceptance. Then there is a sport after school, because that, too, is necessary on a college app. At the same time they are under a ton of pressure - their parents can’t afford college, they need to take these classes to get scholarships, and they need to take AP courses so they start college as Sophomores. For kids like that, we need more counseling between the parent and the child and the counseling staff so that everyone in the equation understands what the commitment being made is by everyone and what the likely payoff really is (because most of them aren’t going to Harvard either). I’ve talked to so many neighbors and parents of my kids friends with kids in high school now and they all talk about having “no choice.” THIS is what they believe is required for college.
By the way, this is an interesting piece on the “homework parents” vs. the “non homework parents” It was linked by the friend who is a teacher who can’t keep up with her son’s homework. He is one of those “98% test score” kids who fails classes by not doing the homework, which means she needs to sit on him to get him to do the homework - even though from his test scores, he has mastery of the material.