With government and other groups hounding teachers about being accountable, I’d like to focus on what goes in to a day in the life of a teacher. Keep an open mind, please, as you read this. It is based on my own personal experience as an elementary teacher.
A typical day for a fourth grade teacher goes something like this:
The teacher starts her day between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. She gives herself enough time to get ready and to get to school – unless she got up earlier in order to grade some papers first. She’ll get to school between 7:00 and 7:30. She has enough time to run some copies, prepare for the day’s lesson, maybe grade more papers before having to go out to morning recess duty at 7:35. At 7:55, the students are lined up and come in to start the day. If the teacher is lucky, she will get to run to the bathroom before class starts at 8:00. Some days, she’ll already have a parent calling her, e-mailing her or waiting on her at the door.
Class starts with roll call and lunch count, then morning announcements. By 8:20 it’s time to let students go to the bathroom and get a drink from the water fountain. This time is also sustained reading time for the students, so the teacher is watching to make sure they all have a book out and are reading. She also checks to see if homework has been done and progress reports signed by a parent and returned. She sighs because it’s always the same ones that don’t have either. She’ll warn them to get it done, giving them “one more chance”. Some parents refuse to ever sign and return anything, making it much harder on their child.
8:30 arrives and it’s time to start teaching the day’s lessons. All during the lesson, she has to monitor the students to make sure they are listening and understanding. Some students didn’t get sleep last night and are dozing off, while others have growling tummies because they didn’t have dinner or breakfast. Others have a hard time concentrating because of horrors they’ve had to experience in their lives.
As she continues to try to teach the lesson, she gets interrupted by students being called to the office to see the principal or the counselor. Some leave to go to gifted and talented class or to special education classes. She must continue teaching while these students are gone and hopefully she can catch them up when they return.
By 10:30, it’s time to take the class to their 40 minute pull-out. This might be library, music or art. Some days they have a 60 minute pull-out for computer or p.e. During this “break”, she will take a quick bathroom break, take care of more calls or e-mails, grade more papers, enter grades into the computer, or prepare for other lessons coming up. She may also have to use this time for a parent conference, meeting with the principals, counselor , or other administrators. Once a week, she must spend this time meeting with the other teachers and reviewing test scores and analyzing them. In her district, practice benchmark tests are given throughout the year. This is supposed to prepare the students for the real benchmark in April. This is the test that holds all teachers accountable.
By this point, she is beginning to feel overwhelmed. She is afraid to slow down enough to take a break for fear of
being accused of being lazy. So, after her “break”, she picks up the students, gives them bathroom breaks and then attempts to settle them back down into the classroom. But now, it’s around 11:30 and the students are restless and hungry. It’s hard to keep their attention. One girl starts to cry, so the teacher has to speak with her in the hall in order to calm her down. She instructs the class to work on the assignment while she’s talking to the girl. Come to find out, the girl has been bullied by several other students. This means that more students get called out and eventually the principal gets involved. About 20 minutes of teaching time is lost.
At 12:10 it’s time for lunch. She takes her students to lunch, then heads to her classroom to eat while she grades more papers. If she has time she might go join some of the other teachers in the lounge to relax.
12:50 arrives and it’s time to bring the students in from recess and finish out the day. She has to finish up the lessons, hopefully without anymore interruptions. She also wants the students to have time in class to work on homework, that way she is there if they have questions. Usually, only certain ones ask for help. With others, she has to watch and step in to help because they won’t ask for help. Many of them have a hard time staying on task and concentrating, so the teacher struggles to keep them focused.
Finally, 3:00 rolls around. It’s time to get them home. Some days, there are students that don’t know what bus to ride. They don’t know if they are going to Mom’s, Dad’s, their grandparent’s home or maybe even to daycare, gymnastics or the YMCA. So, maybe by 3:30 all of her students are gone and she is free to leave. But, she won’t. She’ll stay to work or have meetings until 4:30 or 5:00. Some days she even has to stay late for a workshop until 6:30 or 7:00. Then there are those parent-teacher conference days once a semester. She gets to stay until 8:30 or 9:00 on those days.
Somewhere in the day, if she has children of her own, she has to carve time out to take care of them. Her children may also be in athletics, band or theater, so that makes for a longer day. (Most teacher’s children are very involved in after-school activities.)
The teacher is lucky at the end of the day to be in bed by 10:00 or 11:00. She collapses from exhaustion, not able to give her poor husband the attention he deserves. Soon, the next day rolls around and it all starts over again.
Considering that the average elementary teacher salary is $40,432, which is about $1.11 per student per hour, it’s not worth it. But if a teacher is passionate about teaching, the salary doesn’t matter. It’s reaching the child that matters. Trying to save at least one. A lot of people say that teachers have it made with short work days and summers off. Hopefully, if you paid attention to what I wrote, you won’t think the work day is short. Also, don’t forget that teachers must get 60 professional development hours per school year. 30 of these are required to be earned during the summer while the other 30 is earned during the school year. The summer professional development hours are not paid hours to the teacher. Teachers are giving up their own time to do it.
Here I’ve broken down the salary a little more: $40,432 for 190 days. Figure on an 8 hour work day plus add in the 60 hours of professional development which is usually done over a period of ten days, 6 hours each. So, this salary is $212.80 per day for 190 days = $26.60 per hour divided by the average of 25 students gives me the $1.06 per student per hour figure. Or we can look at $202.16 per day for a 200 day contract which equals $25.27 per hour divided by 25 students equals $1.01 per student per hour. That’s also with 178 of those days with students. Each district is different, but hopefully this gives you an idea. Think about babysitting. Would you watch one child for about a dollar an hour?
Also, teachers must pay more than average for health insurance. It’s about $125 a month for just the teacher or around $400 per month for the whole family. You can also add in money that goes to retirement, unions or additional insurance.
It takes special people to be teachers. I know some are not that dedicated, but the majority are. So, before you go bad-mouthing teachers, stop and think about whether you would be willing to do the job.
