I got this from John Piazza:
Ben,
On the Latin list recently, members have expressed anger and frustration at those who publicly say that teachers are overpaid and work very few hours. In response, a few of them have been keeping a log of their work hours: all those hours spent grading, planning, designing online activities, attending workshops, extra curricular activities/coaching, etc. As it turns out, these teachers are discovering that they work well over 50-60 hours per week, which more than makes up for getting off work at 3pm (which is not true for most of us) and the 3 months “off” (for which we are not paid).
I want to raise a few points in response to this very understandable reaction, and I think this relates to the issues of burnout, teaching effectiveness, and the mimimalist approach of TCI. This is too delicate an issue for me to treat on a public list, especially since I teach at a wealthy school and am not overworked. But I think these points have some validity regardless of who they are coming from.
1. No amount of hour-logging will change the minds of people who despise schoolteachers and public education and all public services in general. We shouldn’t get caught up in a game we can’t win. It’s not about the hours.
2. Teachers should not play into the martyr role. Suffering for its own sake does not help teachers or their students. Burnout is a serious problem. The benefit of teaching jobs traditionally, and what merits the low pay, is that they allow people to have TIME: lives and families, and time to recharge. This is necessary for a profession that is more intense per hour worked than most. We are “on” all the time. Rather than demonstrating (to whom?) that we work harder than everyone else, and therefore deserve our crappy pay, our energy would perhaps be better spent devising ways to streamline what we do so we can leave our work at work and go home to our families by 4 or 5 pm.
3. Just as homework has been exposed as mostly busywork that at its worst damages families by intruding on the sacred evening which is the only time during the week that families can see each other, this same argument can be applied to the busywork that teachers create for themselves, but which does not necessarily further our learning goals. Being a “language activity facilitator” is exhausting, but let’s not pretend that students wouldn’t learn language without all the activities. It all just keeps everyone busy with the illusion that they are learning something and that we are teaching something.
4. So as we log our many many hours, let’s look with a critical eye at all those hours, and see if we can’t do away with some of the busywork, for our own sakes and for the sake of our students.
John