Tell me if you have heard this one…“I would love to be a teacher so I can only work when the kids are at school and have all of those breaks and summers off!” I have been a teacher for twenty-three years and this sounds great! Has this ever been my reality? No, not ever, not one single year.
The contract hours at our school are 7:00 am – 3:00 pm, officially. On our campus, students come into the classrooms at 7:05 am. They do not have before school morning recess. The instructional day starts at 7:30, but kids are arriving in the classrooms anytime between 7:05 and 7:30, so teachers need to be ready for students to arrive by 7:05. If the official contract time starts at 7:00, then teachers have five minutes before students arrive to check mail, make any last minute copies, use the restroom and have the free breakfast in the classrooms ready to go for students. The school day ends at 2:00, but many teachers have duty until 2:15. This leaves 45 minutes at the end of the day to prepare for the next day.
I don’t know about you, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete the amount of work that is required to be an effective teacher. I arrive at school at about 6:30 am and leave at around 3:30 or 4:00 some days. Teachers should not have to work past their contract time, but I don’t know how I would get it all done if I only came from 7:00 – 3:00. I have worked with several teachers in my career that refuse to work during off-contract hours. I just don’t know how they can get it all done.
It seems that over the past two or three years, the workload for teachers has become more unmanageable. The expectations for teachers, especially those facing the COVID gap, have become so high it can be overwhelming. Many teachers are leaving the classroom because of the current demands on teachers. I read a statistic that said 44% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years as a teacher. I think when I graduated from college back in 1998 the percentage was around 30%. How can we keep teachers in the classroom? I don’t even think it is about salaries anymore. Teachers need more than just reasonable pay.
Teachers need support, guidance, and more than anything a sense of work/life balance. The question is always, how do we make that happen? How do we set boundaries for ourselves and manage all of the responsibilities of being a teacher? One day is never the same as the next. I guess we just need to sit down and prioritize our day. We need to make a schedule and try our best to stick to that schedule. No one wants to take work home, but it is a reality for most teachers. I don’t have the answers to how to create a work/life balance. I am sure there is an online class I could take that could help me, but it’s hard to find time for that. If you have figured out how to make it all happen during contract hours let me know!
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Sarah Kirchoff
Sarah Kirchoff is an instructional coach in Mesa Public Schools. She has over 20 years of experience in early childhood education. She began her teaching career way back in August 1999, when everyone was worried about Y2K. She did not even have computers in her classroom at that time! Since then, she has taught first grade for four years, preschool for three years, second grade for two years and kindergarten for twelve years. She has worked for three different school districts during her teaching career. During this time, she has been able to identify which grade she found to be the most enjoyable. Her greatest teaching passion is for kindergarten. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Arizona State University and a master’s degree in Elementary Education from Northern Arizona University. She was teacher of the year at her school in the 2019-2020 school year. She became a National Board Certified Teacher as an Early Childhood Generalist in December of 2020. She currently serves on numerous committees at her school including school site council, the instructional leadership team, and the culture and climate team. She is a mentor teacher at her school and has mentored numerous interns and student teaching candidates. When she is not busy with school commitments, she spends time with her family. She has a husband who is also a teacher, and four children. Two of which are students at NAU and two that are in high school. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, reading books and spending time with family, friends and her two dogs. Children need a teacher that is always advocating for them, socially, emotionally, and academically. Sarah wants every student she encounters to realize their potential and she is willing to help in any way she can. The impact early childhood educators have on students reaches far beyond their younger years. Sarah wants to leave a positive impact on her students so they can continue to have wonderful educational experiences beyond her classroom and school.
Comments 2
I found that as a middle teacher, I am now closer to working contract hours but when I was teaching 2nd grade, there was just no way to do it. You just don’t get it all done. However, middle school and high school teachers get more planning time so it has definitely made such a huge difference in how much I take home.
The other thing I find is that lesson planning is such a creative process that many times I have mental blocks of how I want to teach the content. But the moment I get up in front of my students, my brain clicks to work and I am able to come up with ideas. But when I should be planning, I don’t know what I want to do. The administrative side of teaching also takes a lot of energy!
Last week I was home early enough on three (!!) days where there was still enough sunlight to take my dog for a walk. It was surprising and honestly pretty delightful. It is definitely not the norm for me, though.
My personal bugaboo is grading; I love planning and spending time with students, but will procrastinate on my stack of papers until the last minute where I’m feverishly scoring at the end of quarter. One strategy that helps me is building time into my schedule with students where they are working independently or in small groups and don’t necessarily need my full attention where I can get some grading done, usually in the last or second to last week when grades are due.
What also helps me on a day-to-day basis is having colleagues to remind me to pack up and leave when it’s time to go. We pop into each other’s rooms on our way out, and it reminds whoever is still working that there’s time to do whatever it is on another day.
Other than that, I wish I had the magic answer for all those extra hours. Please share if you find it!