I just completed a 3-month stint teaching from home. The Adult Day Care that takes care of my disabled son, is still closed due to Covid. During those 3 months, I teamed with a wonderful sub who took care of the classroom management, while I wrote lesson plans and directed things from home. During this time, I worked full-time. And so did my sub! It took two of us working long hours to get it all done.
Classroom Duties
My substitute was responsible for classroom discipline, calling parents, grading paper assignments, tutoring after school, supervision duties and more. He often worked late to get it all done. He also had to handle paperwork sent from the office, collecting permission slips, parent-teacher conferences, and IEP’s. There is no question, it was a full-time job!
Teaching From Home
My duties from home were writing detailed lesson plans my sub could follow, entering digital assignments in Google Classroom, and grading all digital work submitted. And as teachers have learned, grading digital assignments takes an incredibly long time. I worked late into the night adding comments and assisting students struggling with Google Slides, Google Docs, and Google Forms. I also called parents, and spent time online re-learning 8th Grade math curriculum that was added to my workload this school year. My sub and I communicated daily through email and helped each other manage everything related to 7th and 8th grade Math.
Where is my Secretary?
The workload is tremendous. Many teachers have already reached the breaking point. Teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers. Fewer young people are entering the profession. And the pay still does not match the education required. In California, I had to complete a 4-year Bachelor’s Degree program, a one-year Credential Program, and a 2-year Master’s Degree to get the maximum pay. This leaves teachers with student loans that take decades to pay off. Where is my secretary? If I earned enough to hire a secretary, I would certainly do so! Lawyers, Doctors, and other professions that require heavy schooling, commonly have receptionists and secretaries to handle the workload. As our workloads increase each year and our pay stagnates, more and more teachers will reach that breaking point.
Constantly Changing
A study by Scholastic and the Gates Foundation found that the average teacher works 53 hours per week. And 78% of teachers say they don’t have enough planning time to implement all the requirements placed on them. Nearly half of all teachers say the stress of this profession impacts their health and the quality of their teaching. Every year, new requirements come our way. Each year we need to change how we’ve been teaching previously, because a new study or new system is being implemented. Unlike other professions, teachers rarely feel like they’ve finally mastered their craft. A former colleague of mine spent months working late, creating powerpoint presentations for his entire school year. He wanted to create a system that was in place, covering everything he wanted to teach, and would be ready to use. The following year, management required him to scrap his entire system to make way for a new program they expected him to implement. I can’t imagine the anger and frustration he must have felt. All of his hard work had to be shelved to make way for something new. Many teachers may not teach the same subject or grade level from year to year. And we often find out about these changes with little or no advance warning. Even after 20+ years of teaching, I often feel like I’m again a new teacher, starting all over again. After a couple of decades of teaching, I feel I should have mastered my occupation. But unfortunately, I don’t feel like I’ll ever get there.
It’s a Two-Person Job
My 3-months teaching from home with the help of a full-time sub, made it abundantly clear. The amount of work expected is a 2-person job. I wish I had the answers to make this change. In the meantime, I do what many others have to do; I try to minimize my workload by assigning less, not grading everything, and working on my side hustle as I count down to retirement.