re: 2/3 of teachers surveyed in Texas considering going peace out

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During the school year is a different matter. I find to do a good job it is necessary to do planning and grading on off hours. The 'planning' time provided during school is just not sufficient and they often interfere with it with meetings, covering for absent teachers, and other 'duties'. I'm kind of weird in that I don't much mind doing the prep. With technology it is kind of like playing on the computer. A little reading. A little research. A little typing. Almost like being on TigerDroppings.

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I know you said you don’t mind doing the prep so not directing this specifically at you, but in general what salaried positions don’t require some planning, communicating, and even some actual work off scheduled hours to be successful?



Below is only just our local experience and more anecdotal to our specific experience:

District my kids went to was pretty standardized across district with lesson planning, school, and tests. Years ago for one in middle school I couldn’t even be sent some questions to see my kid’s work on a test question to figure out what issue was as it would be reused across district. Same with review work for tests as if we thought one was wrong another teacher could answer. Some teachers would take off review day or test day as they could not adjust test dates (for a few with Monday tests they really just wanted 3 day weekend) leaving a substitute to go over review or answer last minute questions right before test. By middle school They also had already moved to doing some quizzes/tests online in classroom along with some other assignments using devices in classrooms and/or at home. In high school this kept increasing even before Wuhan. I think a big part of standardization and online use before Wuhan was fast growth and needing to hire certain number relatively new teachers and teachers outside of district for new schools (or to fill spots in existing schools from moving some teachers to new school).

With Wuhan it seemed to be done for almost everything and for most part tried to be paperless (kids could still use paper but would take a picture of anything student either decided to handwrite or just needed to show work like for a math question input online). They had to make at home and in person as close to possible with actual assignments performed. Also in person students having to quarantine needed to easily transition into at home learning and back. Greater than 90% of those quarantined never tested positive or got sick during their quarantine from the contact that caused quarantine in first place, and some had this happen multiple times forcing standardization top down to teachers and using same online program in class and at home. Learning in class was better than viewing it on a screen, but outside of scheduled times for tutoring availability for additional help or what was required to retest i would see a lot of teachers pulling in while in line dropping kid off and pulling away while in line to pick up then drive by 3 other schools on way home to see parking lots mostly empty for schools with final bell just an hour or just half an hour earlier than my kid’s school. For elementary schools any cars still in lot would be hard to distinguish between teachers working late or teachers or other staffing used for after school daycare programs, but even with those programs parking lots still mostly empty (not completely empty but mostly compared to driving by during school hours including elementary and middle school without student parking).

I could generally count of them to respond before end of night to a clarifying question if needed (some did answer on way out the door to take kid to school next morning), but I struggle to label that as abnormal for salaried work. If anything answering something sent by student or parent usually made things easier for them the next day as in many cases that same clarification needed to be send out to all students. I am sure they would do more than answer and send a few emails at home, but I still don’t think that’s abnormal for salary work as some days they could get in and out of school building in under 8 hours.

I understand that teaching can be hard even with supportive parents and good kids, but in our experience the time spent doing work during the day doesn’t seem remotely extreme for salaried workers.