5:25 am I woke up. Not quite bright eyed and bushy tailed, but at least I was out of bed. Frankly I rise like most zombies do crawling out of the sheets groaning at how early it is and my need for brains.
6:15 am I am picking my friend up that needs a ride as he and his wife only have one car, sipping on coffee trying to wake myself up. (Not a morning person)
6:25 am I arrive at work and head up to my room. From roughly 6:25 to 7:00 I spend on getting my grades done because today is progress report day. Usually this time is spent getting ready for the day. Putting on the war paint, arming myself with knowledge.
7:00 I work on getting what I am teaching for the day done because at 7:30 it is time to start.
From 7:30 to 11:45 I do not take a break, or stop until I take lunch. This means that I do not even check email. What I do is teach (a rather broad term) Today I taught my astronomy classes what is a Neutron Star, Pulsar, and we defined some properties for each. In Physics we starting talking about electricity (creating simple circuits and introducing them to the wonderful world of Van der Graaf generators and the Mrs Frankenstein hairdo.
11:45 to 12:45 Lunch. Finally a break that I use to check email, look into my afternoon schedule as I have AP Physics and that requires some serious brainpower.
12:45 to 2:45 Finish teaching my classes and at 2:45 take a deep breath (one more day down)
2:45 to 4:00 Check email, look into tomorrow's plan, and see how I stack up with my lesson plan that I had to file last week.
So you look at this and you do the math (this was actually an eary day for me as most days I stay until 4:30 or 5. I started work at 6:30 and worked until 4 that is 9 and a half hours subtract the hour for lunch and that is 8 and a half hours.
I often think about this job as it compares to my last one (a product manager for a pertrochemical company). What I come up with is that I work twice as hard, there are no 1 or 2 hour meetings (no breaks to go get a soda, and definately no lunch time trips to cheesecake factory. I am just saying that when people make rash generilizations about how long someone works they need to do their homework. The only teachers that I know that go home at 2:45 are those that have an appointment, or those that have not changed their class in years and do the same thing over and over again.
And now for something completely different:......
Did they really say that?
Any person that has ever walked the earth knows that you are often unwilling to start work after a break, imagine for a second 6 classes of at least 25 people that do not want to start or for that matter even continue working on Science. This combined with the conversations that I heard all day about how kid's spring breaks went really start to wear you down. Perhaps I was sheltered, or was just nieve, but I do not remember talking with my friends about getting wasted over the weekend in high school within earshot of the teacher. I like to remind them sometimes that I do in fact have ears. A few notable things that I heard today "got wasted" was a popular one, as well as "got high," and what I really loved was "I have not had to work today so far so I am looking to keep up the streak." These kids enjoy parting and who can blame them, but when it comes to education there is really not much emphasis. Often I was met with resistance because I wanted them to work. I teach seniors that all say they are college bound, but their work ethic is just not there. My question to everyone is what have we done wrong, and what can we do to fix it?Until tomorrow let me leave you with this quote:
"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their concerns are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. "
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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