Re:work load of school teachers

Phillip Allen White (pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu)
Sun, 25 Jan 1998 14:47:21 -0700 (MST)

Hi, Angel - an interesting question you have here:

On Sun, 25 Jan 1998, Angel Lin wrote:

> A high school teacher typically teaches about 5 lessons (each 40 minutes
> long) a day, 5 days a week. Usually a teacher teaches 3 or more classes,
> each has 38-43 students. The no. of subjects taught can vary from 2 to 5.
> The teacher's duties also include taking care of extra-curricular
> activities, talking to parents, doing individual counselling with students
> who have emotional or academic problems. Also, a language teacher has a
> heavy marking load (Ss are required by the school (a usual practice) to do
> weekly compositions and teachers' marking is also usually monitored by
> school administrative personnel.
> Teachers do not have any assistants; they do everything including
> photocopying worksheets and handouts, registering students' marks on mark
> sheets... etc.

To begin with, it looks as if your high school teacher has a pupil
contact time of three hours and twenty minutes a day.

I contrast this with elementary school teachers here in Colorado
who have pupil contact time of five hours a day. They would also be
responsible for teaching 5/6 subjects, or more, depending on the day;
i.e., math, reading, writing, spelling, social studies, science, health
etc. And of course, they have daily work to assess and grade, as well as
the other routine jobs you describe - plus school committee meetings and
faculty meetings. Essentially, an elementary teacher's job can be a fifty
to sixty hour week, or just forty, depending upon the individual teacher.

phillip

pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu