Time Crunch

Check out this interesting article. Article on planning time

Many teachers gripe about lack of time to do this or to do that, but when you try something new, time can make or break the implementation. Recently our administration has been "encouraging" us to not use class time to accomplish some of the clerical tasks involved in teaching such as planning, grading, professional communication and such. As any teacher knows, there are those times when you must give the students some independent practice of some sort to accomplish these things. For the nay-sayers, here's a break-down of my schedule. I might also add that I have never had a schedule much different from this one.

• 7:45 School day starts with tutorials (often I arrive at 7:15 to find students waiting at my door)
• 8:15 First period starts. (I am completely occupied with students until lunchtime)
• 12:05-12:35 Lunchtime. (often students com in during my lunch...I'm not too nice about telling them it's lunchtime, but I spend this short time grading or planning... Oh yeah did I mention it's the first opportunity of the day to take a bathroom break?)
• 12:35-1:30 Class
• 1:30-2:25 Planning and Prep (I work feverishly to plan for the next day, make copies, communicate, grade, etc.)
• 2:25-3:20 Class
• 3:20-3:45 Tutorials (Again, occupied with students this entire time) 
• 3:45 The official end of our duty hours.

 If you do the math, this leaves 55 minutes of the work day to plan, grade, and do anything else related to the facilitation of my class. If I divide this 55 minutes by the number of my students it leave approximately 42 second of prep time for each student. So if I grade papers, it better not take more than 42 seconds per paper!

Since I made a conscious choice to be a teacher, I really don't mind putting in a few hours outside of class. So if I come in early an leave late (6:45-4:45) this will give me about 2.1 minutes per student for grading, planning, lab setup, lab breakdown and cleaning, parent correspondence and other duties associated with conducting the class. (for <40K per year and only 3 hours a day to spend with my own children!)

As I said before, I have chosen my job, so I am prepared to deal with the difficulties of teaching. However, my goal is to do the best job possible and ensure my students timely feedback and well prepared lessons. I feel that policy and decision makers do not understand the time outside of instruction that goes into excellent teaching. On top of this, there are other duties that are mandated (differentiation for special ed and ESL, prep lessons for AEP, ISS, and homebound) by the state which take up even more time. I think it is time to send a message to policy makers and let them know that they have given us the time equivalent to an unfunded mandate. If we want excellent education and implementation of technology and cutting edge methods, it is imperative that they give us the time to do these things.

Education will be behind until teachers are given the necessary time to do an excellent job.