Re:work load of school teachers

Angel Lin (ENANGEL who-is-at cityu.edu.hk)
Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:32:42 +0800

Thanks very much Philip. Just one more question, what's the typical class
size in your district? Thanks!
Angel

At 02:47 PM 1/25/98 -0700, you wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>