Loose Lips

I have been reading a lot of uninformed (mis)information lately about how teachers in general, and local high school teachers in specific, only work from 3-5 hours a day.  Sadly, these misinformed sources have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.  Well, here it is, from the horse's mouth, so to speak... the figures below represent a normal day of a local high school teacher:

Activity                        Times               Minutes

Early prep                    6:30-7:20           50
Homeroom                  7:20-7:41            21
Periods 1 & 2              7:46-9:05            79
Periods 3 & 4             9:10-10:29           79
Periods 5 & 6            10:34-11:11          37
Periods 7 & 8            11:58-1:17            79
Periods 9 & 10          1:22-2:41              79
After school              2:41-3:05              24
Misc Evening            6:30-8:00              90

Normal Daily total                                538min. (9 hrs.)

That makes 45 hours a week.  Now throw in the (gratis) time spent moderating clubs.  The weekend hours spent on things like lesson planning, grading, and general prep add up to 4 hours (conservative), bringing the grand total up to 50 hours per week.

Some people would have you erroneously believe that total (using the 3-5-hour-a-day formula) would be in the neighborhood of 15-25 hours a week.

Over the past few years teachers have become lightning rods for all that is wrong with public education in America, and have been slandered as a profession in every publication and at every level in every corner of this country.

For the most part, you usually don't hear the teacher's point of view.  Why?  Because they are told (read:threatened) by their administrators that if they say anything that could be in any way construed as derogatory by way of rebuttal (and btw, anything you say can be construed in any way they see fit) teachers can and will be disciplined for it, up to and including dismissal.

"They" try to silence the teachers, because teachers know what is really going on, and in this day and age when everyone is scrambling to try to find a lifeboat as the floodwaters of a failed education system rise up to engulf anyone Left Behind, loose lips sink ships.

Sometimes, however, those ships are rotten to the keel, and to sink them would be a mercy.

© Mike Thurmond