OneAndOneIs2

After six weeks of biking in on fairly quiet roads, today was absolutely manic. Why? Because school's in again. The holidays are over and the roads are packed.

And naturally enough, that's meant a bunch of people complaining online and in the media about how easy teachers have it with their long holidays and big paychecks and hardly any actual work.

So I thought, having done the teaching thing, and still knowing a fair few, I might take this time to put one or two things into perspective. This is, obviously, going to be based upon my own experiences as a science teacher in one of the rougher areas of the country, and those of a few people I know - i.e. everything is first or second hand.

"Teachers only work five hours a day." So say people who base their entire view of teachers on their time at school. i.e. they remember having five hour-long lessons and then going home, and assume teachers did the same.

If only it were that easy.

For starters, teachers don't just walk into a classroom and wing it. Every lesson has to be planned. Resources have to be booked and/or found - media downloaded, material printed, slides prepared, etc. etc. As a student teacher, I spent more time planning lessons than I did teaching them. But full-time teachers, let's call it half an hour per lesson. So that's 2.5 hours a day.

Then there's the post-class activities - marking the work. Typical class size is 30 pupils. Let's say that you only give two in five classes work that requires marking. Even if you spend a miserly two minutes on each piece of homework, that's two solid hours of marking per day. (There's no chance that you can do it that quickly in reality - you have to check every piece to make sure it wasn't copied from Wikipedia, for starters. But let's ignore that fact and carry on anyway)

Then there's the out-of-lesson time, when you're being a form tutor - add another half hour.

Then there's out-of-lesson time when you're dealing with fallout from bad behaviour in classes - i.e. detentions. Average this at half an hour a day, too.

By my count, that takes us up to ten and a half hours a day. Suddenly not looking like such an easy work day?

Now let's throw in all the parents evenings when your "easy, five hour day" suddenly lasts for twelve hours. And the after-school activities you're supposed to run because kids need something to do in the evenings. And the regular curriculum changes that require you to throw out all your lesson plans and rewrite them. And the need to constantly stay current with new developments in your subject. And the meetings. Oh, the meetings.

I think that'd take us up to, averaged out, a good 12 hours a day.

Now let's factor in stress.

Teachers don't get to spend their days sitting down like office workers - you're either standing & talking to the class, or walking around making sure they're doing what they should be and not daydreaming; doing some other teacher's homework; or playing with their mobile phone. I'd say that makes a teaching hour at least 25% harder than an office hour.

Teachers also don't get to stop to eat, drink, and answer calls of nature when they like. Class blends into class with very little free time - most teachers I know are resigned to being permanently hungry & dehydrated. I think that makes for a good 25% difficulty again.

Teachers also have to spend their lives trying to keep large groups of children, with attention spans so short they find Xbox game load times a trial, focused and on-task for an entire hour; faced with kids who have zero interest in the subject, no interest in doing well in it, and have every intention of either working in their family business for which they need no school qualifications, or living off benefits for their entire life. (Yes, really.) They don't care about doing well in anything at school, frequently their parents don't either, and threats of detentions (that they won't show up to) aren't going to get you very far either. I'd say that that makes an hour in a classroom easily twice as hard as one sitting in an office, and that's being unmercifully restrained - and if you think it's not that hard, then you've never stood in front of a large hostile audience that considers you 'the enemy' and has no interest in anything you might say or do.

Then there's the emotional battering you take in the other out-of-class matters. Like kids coming in on a Monday who haven't eaten since their school lunch on Friday. Or having to keep spare uniforms around for the kids who can't get theirs washed at home. Or being told that one of your pupils won't be in because they'll be in court testifying in an abuse case. And the kids who are violent and have parents whose response to this is "There's two teachers in the room, they should be able to restrain him easily, what's the problem?"

And no, none of that's made up. Nor is it all, nor the worst, by any stretch. I think that's worth another 50% or so, don't you? Compared to sitting in an office forwarding funny emails around?

So.. we had 12 hours a day of actual work. Then we add another 200% of stress and we'd be up to the equivalent of 36 hours of work in a day.

...

I work eight hours a day in an office. I spend the best part of two hours a day commuting to & from it in heavy traffic on a small motorcycle.

I live with a teacher who takes five classes a day in a school that's a five minute drive up the road. We leave home at the same time in the morning and I get back anywhere between one and three hours later.

It is very, very rare that I'm the one who looks the most tired, worn-out, or drained.

There is a reason for this.

If you think teaching is such an easy, over-paid job, why not put your money where your mouth is and become one - there's always plenty of space on the courses, especially at the end of the year when half the students have dropped out because they were unable to cope. And salaries in schools can go into six digits.

But until you know what it *really* means to be a teacher in today's schools, do the world a favour and keep any "I'm sure it's really easy" opinions to yourself. Because, quite simply, you're wrong.