If you’re like my brother you don’t want to hear any more teachers talking about their paychecks. Every year around tax time he used to tease about how little we work and how much we make. He never took me up on any of my numerous invitations to come and spend a day at school, but was sure he knew what he was talking about because, after all, he was a student once. I would argue my case about the trials of going all summer without a paycheck and he would make that annoyingly condescending charade of a restaurant violin player.
I now realize the professional angst educators feel is not related to money nearly as much as it is to something else…time. Teachers never have enough. Speakers, professors, administrators always refer to this lack of time the way a mother talks about the pain of childbirth. Yeah, it hurts like hell but that’s just part of the glorious experience. While it is true of the delivery room it is not so true of the classroom. The issue of time and teaching is usually sloughed off, like we’re making it up or it is just one of those great uniters like dogs to mail carriers, cheap tippers to waiters and non-flossers to dental hygienists. We have just found something we can all complain to one another about.
It’s really not funny, though, if you’re a teacher who is serious about the profession. We have too many demands for the amount of time we are compensated for. There are often meetings before school and definitely after school and during lunch hours. There is homework to correct which cannot be done at school if children are too young to do it themselves. There are long pieces to be read and corrected by those who work with the older kids, pieces and reports that can go on for pages. I think most lay people believe we have time to do this at work. We do not. You can’t just tell a class to do something for a couple hours while you check over their papers, score and record their grades. Early childhood teachers (K-3) spend hour after hour preparing art materials every time seasons and holidays change. Project materials not easily found in school are purchased by teachers. Oh yes, really. Proper channels have pretty much killed reimbursement initiative. It's easier to do it yourself. After teachers have shopped and had dinner with their families, they mix up clay, count out pieces, nail boards, staple books, make nametags, type poems, measure yarn and then box it all up to haul over to school the following day. Just for fun, try making enough play dough for 20-40 people in three or four different colors before you go to bed. It takes hours, and no we don’t have to. We could do everything with pencils, paper and crayons if we wanted to make life easier. But those experiences are often as flat as the paper they are done on. Good teaching is hands on, and hands on means lots of stuff that teachers have to get, organize, store, distribute, collect and clean. No time to do this during class time, either. Did you know it takes a teacher about 45 minutes to put up an interesting bulletin board and then half an hour to take it down? Few teachers will take teaching time to do that.
The “prep time” we are given turns out to be return calls time, discuss a child with another teacher time, clean out the coatroom or cabinet time, try to get the computer to work time, track down a new ink cartridge time, look in the lost and found for the clothes a kid lost and his mother is mad time, scrub off the tables because kids are starting to get colds time, or fix the zipper or necklace or buckle that broke on one of the children’s clothes time. The prep time quickly becomes the I’ve run out of time time.
The extra time we take to work at or for school is time taken from our own families, lives and obligations. Without exaggeration, teachers volunteer over 500 hours and thousands of dollars a year to the school systems in which they teach. Teachers spend no less than 2 extra hours, seven days a week on school related work. Fourteen hours times 4 weeks times 10 months equals about $14,000 a year at a salary of $25 an hour. During the summer, teachers prepare for the next year. For free. While many of you may think we are paid for the time we put in evenings or weekends or in summer before school begins, we aren’t. It’s volunteer work that left undone would lower the quality of life in schools everywhere to unacceptable levels. Teaching is not like other professions that charge $50 a phone call or three times that much for an office visit. Because we work with children, people think we do it only because we love children. Pediatricians love children too, but I’ve never known one to spend 5 hours on a Saturday working for free decorating the examination rooms. We do love children, seek to understand their individual needs, and care deeply about their families. We are their staunch and willing advocates, but we are also professional people who are working as hard as we can, as many hours as we can and as well as we can so please understand if we have to say no once in awhile.
