Teaching is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

A year ago, had someone asked me, I would say that teaching is life-changing, world-shaping, an incredible profession...

I still think all of those things, but they would only come up after these thoughts: IT'S INSANE. LITERALLY INSANE. Men and women with optimistic hopes for shaping the future weathered down by the system. Men and women getting paid for teaching students ~40 hours a week, when they are really teaching, coaching, advising, parenting... ~countless hours a week. A job where the expression "there aren't enough hours in a day!" must have come from. And in the kind of school system I work in, teachers are the parents to children whose parents are in some way unable to "properly" parent their children. You know what I mean - telling them that drugs are bad and school is good; that you need to treat others as you wish to be treated and that sex and having babies is not for middle school (or high school).

Teaching is an important job. Even as I don't feel that I am a "real" teacher, I remind myself of that every day - what I'm doing is important, though challenging.But sometimes I wonder - is this job REALLY possible? Reaching children in urban schools and leading them to become the leaders of tomorrow? Can it REALLY happen? (And without killing yourself over it? And without it being some sort of miracle story turned into a movie?) I would like to say YES, IT CAN. But sometimes, when you're at the bottom of Kilamanjaro looking up, you can't help but say to yourself, "holy shift, this is impossible."

Anyway, I wanted to reflect on what an "ideal" week for me would like (all my responsibilities scheduled and fulfilled):

Class: 37 hrs 30 mins

Morning Meetings: Add'l time required - 60 mins/weekly; 90 mins/biweekly

- SPED Department Meeting

- Math Department Meeting

- Science Department Meeting

Planning Period Meetings: Add'l time required - 50 mins

- SIT Meeting

- Team Meeting

- Coach Meeting

- Collaborative Meeting (one for co-taught math, one for my intensive's math class and one for science)

     - Since there are 5 planning periods in a week and I should be attending 6 meetings, 1 add'l planning period should technically exist....

After School Activities: Add'l time required - 3 hrs (supposedly.)

- Extended Learning Opportunity (planning and tutoring math lessons)

Planning: (My coach has suggested that the lesson should be done (worksheets tried, activities attempted) and all materials need to be created/prepared/gathered before considering lesson planning done. It takes me an hour to two to think of how I would like a lesson to go. Then it takes me to time to create handouts and powerpoints - 1 to 2 hours. Then I have to make copies, gather or make materials, etc. - 1 hour to 2 hours. Each day I teach a "high" intensive math class, a "low" intensive math class and a low intensive science class. Theoretically, I have 3 prep's. About 1/2 of the time, I do different things with my higher class that I don't do in my lower class, so I say that I teach 2.5 different classes.) I'm going to calculate on the low end of planning (3 hrs/lesson), rather than the high end (6 hrs/lesson). I do also acknowledge that I am a slow planner. Also, my principal suggested that I should be only planning and teaching about 3 lessons a week as they overlap on days so that's why I multiplied by 3 instead of 5:


3 hrs/lesson x 2.5 lessons a day x 3 lessons a week = 22.5 hours




So in total, we're up to 65 hours a week. Now throw in some grading in there, IEP management, bulletin board updates.... Did I mention that teachers don't get paid enough?


Truth.