WEEK 7 - Energy (Part 2): Duty that extends beyond the classroom

Remember last week when I likened teaching to being in a 5 hour meeting every day? Well, this past week, I actually had quite a few meetings on top of my daily 5 hour "meeting" with students. On Tuesday, we had an open house for parents to come in and meet the teachers and see what it is we do in our classes day in and day out. I always enjoy meeting parents, so this was good fun. It went from 6:00-7:30, and then after that, the Spanish teachers hosted a meeting for the parents of students who want to go on the Argentina trip. Because of these two things, I left work at 8:45pm, having logged 13.25 hours straight at Washburn. When I got home, I still had more planning and grading to do, so I ended up putting in 15.25 hours in 1 day. That took a ton of energy.

The next morning, because I had a meeting at 7:30am, I had to get to school at 7am. It was an IB (International Baccalaureate) meeting for students in the highest levels of each content area. Then I spent the day not in my classroom, but in my colleague's classroom talking about what it means to be an IB Spanish student. After school, we had a 90 minute department meeting that went until about 4:45pm. Keep in mind that during all of these meetings, we have no time to create our lessons or do grading. All of this happens after hours. If you look at my hours for only Tuesday and Wednesday, in 2 days I logged 27.25 hours of work.

Additionally, nearly every day I have at least 1 student who comes in before school and at least 1 student who comes in after school for help. Most of the time, it's more than 1. In fact, during the week of September 24th, I had over 20 students come in either for help or to make up a quiz or a test. When I have students coming in so frequently, I have to get to school earlier than normal, or I stay later than normal, just to get my normal duties completed.

Again, if we only had to teach, and we only had to teach within school hours, it would be a cakewalk.

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	9/30/2012	7:30 PM	9:30 PM	2
M	10/1/2012	7:30 AM	6:00 PM	10.5
		8:30 PM	9:30 PM	1
T	10/2/2012	7:30 AM	8:45 PM	13.25
		9:45 PM	11:45 PM	2
W	10/3/2012	7:00 AM	5:30 PM	10.5
		9:00 PM	10:30 PM	1.5
Th	10/4/2012	7:45 AM	6:00 PM	10.25
F	10/5/2012	8:00 AM	5:30 PM	9.5
Sat	10/6/2012	8:45 PM	9:30 PM	0.75
	Total			61.25