Bob Shepherd, a frequent commentator (I love his writing and wish he would write more often for the blog) had this to say about teaching:
For many years, I held various jobs as a publishing executive (in later years at very high levels). I thought that I worked very, very hard.
Then I returned to teaching.
Everything I did before was a vacation by comparison.
Teaching is relentless in its demands on one’s time and energy. I came to school this year and found that I had 190 students, 3 minutes between classes, no prep period on half my days, car line duty in the morning, 20 minutes for lunch, two extracurricular activities to coach (including plays to produce), administrative meetings one day a week after school, 20 detailed lesson plans to prepare each week (specifying the class, period, standards covered, lesson objectives, assessments used, bellwork, vocabulary covered, and ESOL strategies and 504 and IEP accommodations employed), a requirement that I post 16 grades per quarter per student (for 190 students for 4 quarters, that’s 12,160 grades in the school year, or 67.56 grades per day), enormous amounts of paperwork (filing, photocopying, keeping a parent/teacher log, filling out reports of many kinds, preparing class handouts and tests, keeping attendance logs, posting grades), many, many special meetings (parent-teacher conferences being among the most frequent), and classes and tests to take to maintain my certification.
If I assigned a five-paragraph theme to each of my students, I would have 950 paragraphs to read–roughly the equivalent of a short novel.
Basically, there isn’t enough time for ANYONE–even the greatest of teachers–to do the job at all adequately. This is the great unspoken truth about teaching. This is the real elephant in the room. If you want to improve teaching and learning, you have to give teachers more time–MUCH, MUCH MORE TIME.
And somehow, with all those demands, you are supposed to give each student the individual attention that he or she deserves. Anything short of one-on-one tutorial is a compromise, of course. And that’s that the job boils down to. A great compromise.
And the attitude of administrators is typically, “Well, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you just do x? Why didn’t you just do y? Any good teacher would be doing z every day.” As though teachers were people of leisure with all the time in the world. I have noticed that administrators label practically every email that they send out IMPORTANT and use exclamation marks ALL THE TIME: “Due today! Must be completed by Thursday! Mandatory attendance!” I have sometimes wondered whether they shouldn’t be issued, at the beginning of the year, a maximum number of quotation marks that they can use. Of course, they are just responding to the similar insane demands that are placed upon them by the central office and my regulatory requirements.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My son teaches in Thailand. Besides being held up as an honorable and respected “ajahn”, he teaches four periods a day and the rest are for teacher prep time. In 37 years, I have never had fewer than six periods per day, and in the last 18 of those, I have not felt respected. I have just felt sad.
Absolutely right about Bob Shepherd, Diane. He’s one of the people I look forward to seeing on here.
And, Bob is right on the money about the completely unrealistic demands that the “system” puts on teachers’ time in this country..
Every time I see an article about the amount of time teachers in other nations around the world have to plan and meet and actually talk one-on-one to people, I cut the article out. Teachers in the U.S. are working REALLY hard -but you’d never know it listening to people like NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and the corporate masters who pull his strings.
Luckily, I started working many years ago in a small,rural K-12 school district where the teaching load was quite small and we could really get to know the kids. Even now, in the merged district that incorporated that small school with two others, our class sizes are still usually good, the students wonderful. And, I’m still pressed for time.
190 students per day? That is crazy. That’ s the truth. And, if the discussion is not starting there, then we’re not really talking about improving our schools.
This post is so on point. I think even most teachers do not realize all that they do because they haven’t taken the time to write it down. Thank you, Bob.
I would also add that a teacher is expected to do all the things listed with a smile and a good attitude.
I would like to see the “deformers” do the same for just a week.
Great description! And then there are the “additionals” like self assessment write ups and goal write ups done at the start of year and then again at year’s ends… and do not forget the Student Learning Objectives which require “hard data” pre test and post assessments along with completion of necessary documentation at beginning, middle and end of process. Then there are the parent meetings. Oh yes and the class website to develop along with “search and find yourself” PD’s to assist in doing this. There are weekend PD’s and weekday evening PD’s along with school day PD’s. And then there is the “monkey wrench”… you have your units all planned out and WHAM… there is a snow day, a sudden field trip, a practice test for PARCC, an last minute-announced assembly and do not forget to plan the sub plans… etc… There are actually tons of “monkey wrenches” not mentioned.. among them – no xerox paper, copy machines not working, supply ordering issues, non-working technology in room and it goes on…
Bob tells the story of how teachers are caught in the middle of mass hysteria and “chicken little” thinking. His workload is unrealistic. I taught ESL in suburban New York City, and my register never exceeded 75 students. By the way, I always had the highest number of ELL students in the district. When I first started teaching ESL in the early ’70s, all I had was one grammar book for my high school students. Nobody really understood what I was doing so they left me alone. I spent hours creating materials from newspapers, catalogs, charts, maps, etc. It was a challenge, but I enjoyed total autonomy. Slowly, over the years more and more testing, rules, bureaucracy and a lot more standardization crept in. What Bob is describing is an oppressive environment where he has a bureaucratic ball and chain around his neck, and everything is “urgent.” Why should a teacher in New York City have 190 students on his register while teachers in suburban districts carry a much lighter load? How can they both expect to do their best work with such a discrepancy?
“Nobody really understood what I was doing so they left me alone. I spent hours creating materials from newspapers, catalogs, charts, maps, etc. It was a challenge, but I enjoyed total autonomy.”
Many of us old folks remember things this way. I just wrote on the post:
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/05/why-we-are-losing-so-many-dedicated-experienced-teachers/#comments
When I started teaching, you got handed a schedule of classes, maybe a room of your own to teach in, and were expected to show up for lunchroom duty at one time of the day or another. The rest was mostly up to you. This was hard, but you were surrounded by colleagues who had managed to endure and who – because they were teachers – were willing to teach you, too.
The secret is, we were left alone to do what we were prepared to do – teach in a way that matched our “teacher’s voice” with effective instruction for the kids to whom we were responsible. I remember my college practicum supervisor’s words of high praise were that I was “not afraid” to follow my students’ lead in the classroom and adapt the planned lesson. Now, this trait would give coniption fits to the adherents of scripted lessons with all on the same page!
Taking away teachers’ autonomy inside their classes is the last straw. What other group of professionals is micro-managed in this way, yet expected to do so much with so little?
You are so right. By losing a certain level of autonomy, they are losing opportunities to be creative and build relationships while exploring the journey of teaching Now teachers are in a vice grip by design. All teachers should reflect on your last sentence. “What other group of professionals is micro-managed in this way, yet expected to do so much with so little?”
Oh, and in case any corporate person is considering teaching there are room conditions. How about no heat in winter and no working AC in excessively hot weather despite a principal whose office miraculously has both working and doesn’t fight for his/her teacher’s conditions. How about lack of toilet paper and paper towels in bathrooms. How about buying your own tissue for students. Need to make copies? Make sure to always have a few extra reams (on your dime) at the ready. Need a bathroom break? Good luck with that. Better practice those Kegel exercises! Just a few consideration points…
What Bob describes is exactly what it is like to teach high school English here in Las Vegas, except those of us with block scheduling often have over 200 students, with six classes of 35-40 students. I volunteered as department chair simply so I could teach only five classes, but sometimes the headaches of that responsibility are not worth it. Class size and the paperwork load is overwhelming.
This of course expands on “why teachers are leaving the ‘profession’ “.
I personally know of several GREAT teachers who cannot wait to be able to retire.
This is the real world of teaching. Not the crap from the Common Core crowd of greedy, power hungry, corrupt traitors, liars, cheats and frauds—-the RheeFormers!
Now that I’m retired from teaching, if I was told I had to go back to work, I’d rather be back in the Marines and in combat. In combat zones, the troops get a lot of downtime between battles, and it is a fact that more people die in traffic accidents in the U.S. on an annual basis then in a war zone like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. During the 19 years the U.S. fought in Vietnam, America lost 53,307 troops while about 760,000 Americans died in traffic accidents back home.
The U.S. treats its troops, who fight the endless foreign wars, much better than the U.S. treats its teachers. If the U.S. commanders didn’t treat the troops better, then there’s this thing little thing called friendly fire that usually takes care of the problem really fast.
Thanks, Lloyd. I am with you. And thanks for serving this country in so many positive ways.
This summer, our school being a priority school is Pearson controlled in reading and math. All the other kids get to go outside and explore science in the Camp Invention program. Are our kids losing out? How much can we pound into their heads or ours before we all explode?
Yes, more Bob!
Bob rules!
My favorite is district mandated turnarounds for 100+ student essays that require a: 1. grading with comments 2. an individual one on one conference with the student complete with rubric and paperwork that you both need to fill out 3. a rewrite that is then regraded with comments and a new rubric attached 4. and then input of the before and after grades into an Excel spreadsheet to send to district. Turnaround of…three weeks and “don’t stop teaching the curriculum for the conferences, just lean over their desk and fill out the paperwork while conferencing.” This was stated by our coach who had two years teaching experience before she became a facilitator. So absurd!
I’m there with you Titleonetexasteacher. I too teach writing and people forget, I can do the job quickly or I can do it correctly. We just need a coffee I.V and a battery recharge, after all, we don’t need sleep or a family life right? I actually got one of these wonders to come in my class and try it when I went to a board meeting and had my lawyer present them with an overtime bill since they break down my per by the hour….they weren’t amused and wanted to show me they were not asking the impossible…..Wondertrainer didn’t get the job done and suddenly had business to attend to. I was reprimanded for minor insubordination. The reprimand will be removed from my jacket this fall. It was the most fun I’ve had being insubordinate in a long time.
🙂 hah! My dream ” Could you demo how to do that? I need your superior knowledge…”
Wow. I have no other words.
When people tell me I’m just a high paid babysitter I tell them they couldn’t afford me as a babysitter. I am still a licensed paramedic, I think that is worth about $5.00 per hour per student, I was also involved in diplomatic protection and translation, that should be another $5.00 per hour per student, and then there is the day care aspect of I’ll say $5.00 per hour per student. At my bargain price, times 32 students for the eight hours of class time we have in my rural school that would be $480 per day! I could retire comfortably in a few years, I would be debt free, and I would be about as cheap as any day care…..Babysitter indeed. We are actually quite a bargain considering all we do.
Oh, and for the elementary grades — room environment — putting contact paper and borders up to cover the blackboards, using scotch tape; putting contact paper and borders on the old wood doors — all of these areas covered with student work (with contact paper behind it to create a frame) that had standards attached and post-its with 4 point rubrics for each student. Each post-it was addressed to the student. And woe to you if the post-it fell off. And if the principal didn’t like the color coordination of the borders/contact paper, she’d make you rip it off. And woe to you if the principal changed your room and grade assignment the day before school started, requiring new paper and border. And this is all on your dime! How about the “observation conference notes” that were modeled in PD the day before classes started. We were given Bloomberg-issued 3 inch heavy loose-leaf binders (81/2 x 11 size) and told that during teaching, you were to carry the binder and write notes about various students. How about the Everyday Math curriculum where you graded quizzes and tests as “emerging, developing” etc. which took hours. Not to mention the countless manipulatives and games attached to the kits. And my all-time favorite, leveling books. Each teacher was given a small stack of children’s’ literature to label after a PD in how to label books. You had to put different colored stickers on each book and handwrite a letter. Then you had to design a colorful library with laminated cards with the levels, including separate cards for genres. Why not just give out the books pre-labeled? How about a report card that had 10 separate entries for Math, ELA, Science, Social Studies, etc. all imputed with bubbles? And the principal checked them and questioned your assessments! How about the E-Clas reading assessments that you administered during class time, without coverage? You had to do each assessment and later re-enter with a bubble graph. And, I didn’t even mention Reading and Writing workshops (Lucy Calkins) and Fundamentals phonics. Oh, I forgot to mention writing up IEPs…and the constant interruptions, taking 3/4 of my students out in October and replacing them with problem children because the principal decided on creating classes by tracking. The redundant lesson plans, and the principal’s idea to write three lesson plans for each lesson, based on differentiation. And you couldn’t use the blackboard, but you had chart paper where you wrote the lesson out with Sharpies. Easel NOT provided. And you used laundry pins to hang these lessons on a rope you put up around the room. No air conditioning (Bloomberg didn’t have air conditioning when he went to school, yet Eva Moskowitz has it in every classroom she uses in the old public school buildings she acquired).
The above is a true story. The academic year was 2004-2005, the first year of the Bloomberg takeover of public schools in New York City. The principal had just graduated from the Principals Academy and took every initiative literally. The teacher turnover was about 70%.
Where was the UFT (Randi) with any of this? Why wasn’t there a budget for teachers’ aides? Why are elementary school teachers, who are predominately women, treated like nineteenth century factory workers?
I entered the profession as a career-changer, as a NYC Teaching Fellow, and we all quit after five years, because the work was undoable.
I am sorry your union leadership was so feckless, but there was still a contract, right? People sometimes have to stand up for themselves.
We had a wunderkind principal come in who got on board this train that everyone “had to” behave, do, document and submit a laundry list of everything under the sun. In a meeting the building reps – respectfully and professionally – informed the admin that these things could not be required, because there was nothing in the contract requiring them.
He responded that he had the right to run “his” school as he saw fit, regardless. We answered that a district-wide contract then would be a useless item and why we would have negotiated one (it was recently concluded)? We informed him that he could ask people for the laundry list and there was nothing preventing staff from performing those tasks – if they choose to do so, but the tasks could not be made obligatory, nor could teachers be sanctioned if they did not do so choose.
Out of fear, of course, weaker staff complied. As they had drawn targets on their own backs, they were picked off, one by one, over the course of the wunderkind’s remaining (short) tenure.
The UFT person from the district did very little, but when the rep did hold a meeting, 3 teachers, who were obvious spies for the administration, were present taking very detailed and obvious notes. These three would stand up and very pointedly defend the principal. The teaching staff was very weak-willed; they were terrified. Anyone with a backbone found a way to leave the school, and that wasn’t easy. They now have had the same UFT rep in the school who has been there for 10 years! The principal and assistant principal count the votes. Is that even legal? When the UFT sent additional reps to visit, this UFT school rep took down their notices.The last three teachers who ran in opposition lost their elections and left the school. I know one fine teacher who left the position in good graces, applied to another school, and was given a cutting reference from this principal when the new school telephoned. With such huge teacher turnover, I wonder why the district superintendent doesn’t investigate this principal. I know a couple of teachers did sue her, and agreements were met.
The only description for this is bullying. The admins were bullies, the spies were bullies and the reps were the bullies’ enforcers. I don’t understand why grown-up professionals put up with that, and unfortunately in my experience many times it happens at the elementary level, where teachers are already way over-burdened. What’s to be terrified of? What can be worse?
As I said, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. In the situation I mentioned, my principal took his cue from those who were willing to prostrate themselves to accede to his mandates, which violated their working conditions. He pursued them and made no move whatsoever against people who just said, “No”. That would have been too hard – he preferred the low-hanging fruit.
One other thing – if teachers can’t advocate for themselves, how in the world can they advocate for their students?
“Anything short of one-on-one tutorial is a compromise” A great point for small class size and genuine feedback and help. Real human interaction.
Well said Bob, this is the elephant in the room, or at least one of them.
There is a definite disconnect in understanding between the number of man-hours it takes to teach and the amount of tasks a teacher is asked to do. This is just one indication of the level of incompetence that exists at the administrative, and policy making levels of education. When a contractor bids on a job, he better be able to calculate the number and cost of man-hours it takes to do the job right, or he wont be in business for long. In K-12 education there’s no apparent organizational awareness of this. And while policy makers and school leaders rant about the concepts of fidelity and best practices, they are unable to support either one. It’s not a problem with bloated public school bueraucracy because charters (no union) over task their teachers even more.
There is a stupidness to this, at the leadership level, that stems from a lack of will, or valuation to do the job right. Which of course will cost more money, since doing the job right always does.
whoops, I do know how to spell bureaucracy
I see a few big differences between the contractor and the administrator.
(1) The contractor has to pay his workers for every hour they work, so he has to think about the consequences every time he asks them to do something more. The administrator can just pile on the duties and the teachers have to take the hours from their personal lives.
(2) The contractor has to be a leader, to be successful. He has to establish priorities and stay focused. The administrator can come home from a different conference every month with a 3-ring binder full of new ideas and foist them on her staff with no thought of when the work will all get done and how the new ideas conflict with last month’s directives du jour.
(3) Everyone on the jobsite knows where the buck stops. The contractor can whine about the workers all he wants, but in the end, he’s responsible, so he has to provide a work environment where his people can actually get the work done. Teaching is the only professional environment I can think of where it’s socially acceptable for the leaders to blame their failure on the workers, and incompetent admins. do this all day long.
(4) Nobody establishes a personal connection with beams and concrete. If the contractor is too big of a jerk, the workers will either quit or begin doing sloppy work. The administrator can count on teachers doing the extra mile to work around her incompetence and crappy leadership because we care about kids.
Excellent points!! As a veteran teacher, I have noticed that the one commodity that I need the most but is never given to me or even proposed, is more TIME. I know what I have to do, I know what works and what doesn’t, but I don’t have the planning and preparation time to plan and prepare as I would like to. Every day is an exercise in compromise among the dozens of tasks that are before be. True reform would be my leaders getting and staying OUT OF MY WAY!!
“The Hardly Work of Teaching”
(from Campbell Brown’s perspective)
Teachers lack the time
To do what should be done
Cuz summers on the Rhine
Are simply too much fun
I think it boils down to people outside the profession not having any empathy because the workload is truly unimaginable. For those in administration who were at one time, long ago in the classroom, the forget. An analogy can be made to childbirth. You forget the hard part.
And people like Duncan, Coleman, Gates and Obama never even experienced the hard part — of anything (certainly not child birth!).
These are folks who had virtually everything in life (college, career, high office, etc) handed to them on a silver platter.
They have no idea what it means to actually do work.
“For those in administration who were at one time, long ago in the classroom, [they] forget.”
I remember when I was in my pre-service teacher education program, my counselor advised me that if I had ambitions to ever be an administrator, I should immediately gain an administrator’s license and get into administration as soon as possible. His advice was based on his experience with others who had taught for 10 years or more and then tried to get into administration. They couldn’t get hired because they were viewed as too “teacher-friendly”, since their experience would have caused them to develop empathy for the workload.
Bravo for last line. Who is making what demands on central office? Anyone devoted to pedagogy? And of requirements that rely on discussions with learners about- of learning processes?
Teachers must speak out!
Excellent article and comments. It’s the “everyone pretend this is working” mindset. My district has mandated minutes per subject that actually exceed the number of minutes in a school day. My solution is that every administrator, in school and at headquarters, needs to go back to the classroom for at least a semester, every five years. Let them see the practical application of their policies, and see if they can do it. Wouldn’t that be a great policy???
Yes, I believe you are right– only an administrator who keeps a hand in instruction as a team member can be viscerally connected to the policies he or she promulgates. I know: it has kept me real.
Just know that the pressures felt by teachers are also felt by administrators. I offer an explanation, not an excuse. The memes out there–“broken system”, “incompetent teachers”–destroy faith in the public school system. Administrators are not the enemy, either. Keep the focus on the politicos and conservative big business interests who are trying to destroy our public school system.
“Administrators are not the enemy, either.”
Oh, yes the vast majority are. Most administrators I’ve dealt with have been less than average thinkers (even with MAs and EdDs), toady, brown nosed ass kissers who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag. GAGAers, through and through they only worship those that butter their bread and to hell with the rest of those actually doing the day in and day out work of public education.
“Keep the focus on the politicos and conservative big business interests who are trying to destroy our public school system.”
Are you an administrator, or administrator wanna be Lisa?? Because that’s the kind of thinking I have seen on a daily basis that exemplifies what comes out of administrators’ pie holes.
I agree with Duane and here’s why: There is a filter in place to get rid of most administrators who don’t blindly do what they are told. The best administrators seldom make it past the post of vice principal because the rational, honest VP’s that support teachers are almost always passed over for promotion or they leave for other school districts because they can’t stand the lies and manipulation form the top, and the turds that float to the top of the RheeFormer toilet water end up getting promoted or hired to eventually become a superintendent who will fall-in-line with the top down mentality of management that dominates most of America.
Make no mistake here. There are EXCEPTIONS, but from what I witnessed as a teacher for thirty years, the few that make it as far as a principal’s position are rare—very rare.
I worked with about nine or ten principals and only one was actually great. Some were okay and others were the Ebola Virus in human form. The ones who climbed to the top are mostly political animals who take their cues from the jackasses above them.
The RheeFormers can’t stand anyone who doesn’t fall in to line and the oligarchs who fund the RheeFormers have demonstrated the ability to spend lavishly to breaks stakes, cities and school districts that don’t fit their master plan.
Anyone who actually is working in a district with a great superintendent and good or great principle is fortunate but beware, that district may be the next domino to fall because when the Pearson salesman reports back to their master that a certain district, state or city isn’t cooperating, then Pearson will contact their pet oligarch to fund elections to get rid of the leaders in those areas and studies have revealed that 91% of elections are won by the candidates who spend the most money.
Things could be worse, Bob.
I am being evaluated by a 1 – 3 rating on a “rubric” that is simply these 9 phrases on a grid: “Team Oriented”, “Enthusiastic”, “Flexible”, “Loves to be around kids”, “Student Achievement”, “Content Knowledge”, “Instructional Strategies”, “Willingness to Improve”, “Understanding Role”. There’s no explanation of what any of that stuff means or any details about how I am supposed to improve my score for next year.
Makes me actually wish I had concrete performance objectives that were used in my evaluation, even if they were as ridiculous as the demands Bob outlines here. I know my principal isn’t ambitious enough to document the performance of all his teachers on that many performance objectives, so I could at least figure out his system and game it. How in the world do I provide evidence that I’m “enthusiastic” or that I “love to be around kids”?
I hope those of you lucky enough to still have union protection recognize how wonderful it is that you at least have some kind of a say in the rules in which the administrator has to function.
I much appreciate the many comments on this thread.
Thank y’all for taking the time to say what needed to be said.
😎
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Supports my theory……………..administrators are teachers who could not handle the classroom, so how do you salvage a career in education? You quickly get an administration certification and start playing the “game.” Do whatever you can to get the administrative position, even if that means having extremely unrealistic expectations of teachers, and expecting things that you know are unrealistic. You do all of this to protect you job, your income, your position.
“You do all of this to protect you job, your income, your position.”
In plain English “They’re brown nosed ass kissers with no cojones.”
Tonight in Kansas City, Missouri, a child with special needs had run away. (“The family said he has autism, bipolar disorder and ADHD, and takes off when he gets angry.”)
Six hours missing, and with officers, police helicopter and K-9 Unit—-AND…at the end of the video report, you’ll hear: “It was actually his school teacher who found him” after she’d learned he was missing and joined the search.
http://www.kmbc.com/news/police-ask-public-to-help-find-missing-12yearold-boy/34062116
Yes, for teachers, it IS all about the kids!