Discouraged Teacher Seeks Advice

December 1, 2007 9:30 AM

My wife is a talented second grade teacher in public school; well-educated and well-read in her field. Problem: She spends ten hours a day at work. This does not include the time for her commute. Please read on --

She must spend this amount of time in order to complete the day's work and prepare for the next. She often brings home papers to correct. She says, "I never get done. This is nuts! Its second grade!" Today, as she is preparing grade cards, she is disappointed in what she's accomplished. She's losing heart. Is there any way she can be more effective without spending more time? (Or, spending less time for her husband's sake.) Words of encouragement are also welcome.

posted by partner to work & money (22 comments total)

When was the last time she took an honest inventory of where her time is spent? She might benefit from keeping a time sheet for a week, to see what her time sinks are, and try to improve in those areas.
posted by kellyblah at 9:39 AM on December 1, 2007

Is this her first year? It gets much, much easier. If she's creating curriculum and planning new lessons every day, that takes up a tremendous amount of time. Next year she'll be able to reuse and build upon the lessons she used this year. I've heard a lot of people say that the fifth year of teaching is when you finally "get it" and life gets a lot easier.
posted by bonheur at 9:40 AM on December 1, 2007

How long has she been a teacher? I wonder if some of the time problem comes from time management issues, like having to prepare lesson plans for each day? Most of my friends who are teachers had a rough 1-2 years at the beginning, but then they had 2 years of lesson plans for their grade perfected, and just needed to tweak as necessary each year - no need to redesign the wheel every year. if she has lesson plans already, it might be worth it for her to start logging everything she does every day, to see exactly what she is doing that takes 10 hours, every day - obviously, around report card/science fair/sport coaching times, hours get longer, but consistently 10 hours a week needs some time management examination.

If she is a fairly new teacher (<5 years), is there a more experienced teacher she can pair up with for some mentoring on how to cut the time down? 10 hours a day is a crazy amount of time on 2nd grade classroom teaching.
posted by kristin at 9:41 AM on December 1, 2007

My wife was a fifth grade teacher for a year, took a year off for our second child, and then went to a different school for her second year. It was very, very draining for her for those reasons exactly, and she decided to go another direction rather than keep teaching. Not to say your wife should stop teaching, but to let you know it's not uncommon to be overwhelmed by it all.

A mentor teacher should help quite a bit, and the right relationship there can provide immense help in managing projects, grading, etc. I'll third the suggestion of examining where her time is spent currently.
posted by shinynewnick at 9:51 AM on December 1, 2007

Does she take things from websites? The teachers I know (and me, as a speech pathologist) use educational websites shamelessly. If she's making her own materials it takes up a tremendous amount of time. Just have her Google "second grade printables" and a bunch of stuff will come up.

Also, some teachers I know grade papers while the kids do some independent work, like drawing or silent reading. I know it sounds like a cop-out, in a way, and I'm not suggesting plying the kids with busy work so she can go home as soon as the bell rings. But finding a few minutes here and there to quickly grade papers might lighten her load at the end of the day.

Good luck!
posted by christinetheslp at 9:57 AM on December 1, 2007

As a teacher-in-training, I would suggest that she focus on making one good lesson plan each day rather than making several good lesson plans each day. The Internet is teeming with free lesson plans (e.g. lessonplanspage.com, edhelper.com). Have her ask a more experienced teacher for lesson plans--most teachers like helping each other. She should be selective with what she grades. She can check students off for completing an assignment, but she doesn't have to read and comment on everything they turn in.
posted by HotPatatta at 9:58 AM on December 1, 2007

It does get much better after year 1. On the other hand my wife was an amazing high school teacher for five years and it never did drop under 50-60 hours a week. She finally had to quit so we could have our marriage back.

There are effective teachers who work fewer hours--can she find one to serve as her mentor?
posted by LarryC at 10:24 AM on December 1, 2007

Thanks for all the good responses. Keep 'em coming.

To bonheur and kristen: My wife has many years experience in education, with the past five in the classroom -- three in the current school. But she's been jerked around -- first year teaching second grade, second year teaching third grade, and this year, back to second. So, you're right, she hasn't had a chance to settle in. Also, she has a particularly difficult group of students this year. The good thing is that the whole school knows this.
posted by partner at 10:58 AM on December 1, 2007

I, too, would like some clarification on where her time is actually spent. Hours per night grading second grade papers doesn't sound quite right.

If this is the problem, maybe she could try sometimes giving work where going over the answers is also part of class time (at a later grade, I had teachers who had us exchange vocab tests and we'd go over the answers and note the grade at the top--stuff like that).
posted by Riverine at 11:01 AM on December 1, 2007

Time saving ideas for me all start with goal Number One: Don't do it all yourself!

Have the kids make the majority of your bulletin boards.

Pick at least one assignment a day where you call out the answers and the kids grade each others work. Don't worry about wasting time: call it reinforcement of the concept.

Enlist kids in older grades (or parent volunteers!) to help grade, read, teach, mentor, etc.

Grade major projects as the kids are working on them. Example: posters or dioramas anything long term can be checked off on the gradebook as being completed while the kids are working rather than graded later at home.
posted by aetg at 11:20 AM on December 1, 2007

The first two years in a new grade is always hard, from what my mother tells me. The first year is absolutely impossible and the second is just hard. The third year is when you know what lesson plans and assignments really work, and they've been refined by two years of tough critics :)

Is there another second grade teacher at the school? This year, she might want to ask for some tips on lesson plans. My mom actually went to the woman who taught both my sisters and me third grade when she began teaching at that level, to ask, "This is what my kids really remember as being things they liked in your class. Are there any materials you can give me?" Seasoned old teachers are likely to be more helpful since it's been so long since those tough first years.

Also, if there's another second grade teacher there, she might want to discuss whether they want to start team teaching. This is a huge timesaver because rather than having to prepare a language arts lesson and a math lesson, she just has to prepare two math lessons, one for the high group before recess and the other for the low group after recess. The standards are still the same, she'll just pace them differently and go into different amounts of depth.

Finally, if she thinks some of these hours may be generated by district busywork that isn't necessary, I advise that she go to her union rep if she's in a district where that even means anything. It's the union's job to make sure teachers are compensated adequately for their work and I daresay her salary isn't calibrated at the "person working ten hour days" mark. The union rep may be able to give her some advice or get her some help.
posted by crinklebat at 12:31 PM on December 1, 2007

Ask your (her) students' parents for in-classroom volunteers.

I do a lot of volunteer work for my son's school and I'm not alone spending several hours/week helping my son's teacher in and out of the classroom. Over the years, teachers have had me grade papers, prepare the weekly homework packets, or just work 1:1 with students or small groups of students while the teacher attends to other classroom tasks.

The easy way is to send a volunteer signup sheet home with the students outlining tasks you'd like to offload. Offer an incentive to your students for every form returned to ensure that the form is read at home. Talk up the joys of parental volunteering with your students: a little pressure from the kids on the parents never hurts. Another way would be to approach parents about volunteering when they show up to Back to School night, parent/teacher conference meetings and school events.

Also, ask the school's PTA/PTO for help: those orgs keep rosters of parent volunteers and more likely than not can quickly name a potential parent volunteer of a student in your classroom. If you don't have a PTA/PTO, the school's front office receptionist is almost always the person who knows everything about everyone and should be able to help link you up with someone. While you're in the front office, ask what the district procedures are to have parents help in class: district by district it ranges from anything as trivial as proof of a negative TB test to a full-on fingerprinting and background check. Knowing what the requirements are makes it that more easy for parents to navigate the system to reach your classroom.

I've noticed not all teachers are equally good at asking for help from their parent pool even when there's willing volunteers just waiting to be assigned a task. Oddly, while I hear some teachers complain that there's not enough parental support, I also have observed an equal number of parents whose offer of help at the start of the year is never taken advantage of.
posted by jamaro at 1:30 PM on December 1, 2007

Most teachers work about 7-8 hours a day, where they are required to be on campus. 1-2 hours for planning and a lunch period are included in this time. Teaching unfortunately is not a time-clock profession. Can you imagine the much-deserved overtime pay we would get if it we did get paid by the hour! But the truth is that most of the teachers I know, including me, have to put in around 1-2 hours per day, extra just to break even everyday.

I usually rationalize that if I can get everything finished at school, I can keep my "home time" as mine. I also remember that most careers put in hours like this year round, but I get two and half months off every summer, a week or two for Christmas break, Spring Break, Fall Break, and most federal holidays. Oh yeah, weekends don't hurt either. The extra two hours usually means I can go home with peace of mind, knowing that I have done my best. Knowing that I will get my time off in other places. Real stress comes for conscientious folk when they don't do the best job possible. Or when they fall behind at work. That is a miserable feeling.

No offense to non-teachers, but no one really understands the emotional drain of a school day on a teacher. But it sounds as if this teacher has a spouse who understands her need to be a good teacher, even if it means a couple of more hours of work per day. Maybe you could help her by taking over dinner duty every night, or making sure the house was clean. I know that this is worth its weight in gold.
posted by boots77 at 2:14 PM on December 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

I arrive at work between 6:30 and 7:00 each day and I leave between 5:00 and 6:30. So I am spending anywhere from 10 to 12 hours at school. I'd say I average 11 hours per day. Very little of this time is spent grading papers. Granted, we do have an extended school day, but I spend at least 2 hours a day outside of the time kids are there.

This time is spent prepping for the day, meeting with other staff to plan, meeting with administrators to deal with various issues, cleaning up and organizing the classroom, doing paperwork, calling parents. . .

On the other hand I spent probably 3-4 hours per day outside of the school day working last year, so it has gotten easier.

One thing I've noticed is that I feel much better when I don't bring work home. Even a 12 hour day at work is doable if I can come home and just relax.

I've also found that sometimes it pays to take step back and get organized, and plan ahead to save time in the long run. For example if you buy nicer bulliten board paper (the fade-proof stuff) you can leave it up and just rotate the student work that you post. Planning gets easier if you build some easy routines into the day - for example last year we had five activities we did for vocabulary and we rotated them by days of the week. All I had to do was choose the word list.

I will also second other people's suggestion of sharing ideas and collaborating. I co-plan with the other sixth grade math teacher, and it cuts our workload significantly - one of us makes up the worksheet for Tuesday, the other prepares the manipulatives for Wednesday, etc.
posted by mai at 2:42 PM on December 1, 2007

One last suggestion similar to what others have said -
institute classroom jobs and get kids to help you with everything. They can organize papers, clean up, straighten desks. They love to do it and it makes them more responsible.
posted by mai at 2:44 PM on December 1, 2007

I am not a teacher, but work in the education field. A principle shared a great idea for cutting down on grading time that apparently does wonders. Tell the kids that you are going to grade five of each quiz/homework/ etc. Then, the next day, go over the problems that are re-occurring in the five that you graded. If everyone basically got it, great, and if there were problems you need to go over, you fix them the next day with the kids. I wish the two of you good luck.
posted by history is a weapon at 3:03 PM on December 1, 2007

Just a word of warning - where I went to elementary school, the teacher regularly had us exchange papers and grade each others' work. At the school I work at now, that's considered "a violation of the confidentiality of student records." Having the kids do the grading is an awesome idea, but just double-check your school's policy first.
posted by christinetheslp at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2007

I'd like to reinforce what others have said about having kids mark their own work and finding a teacher to 'borrow' lessons from. Teaching second grade must be tough as there would be very little non-kid time to do planning/marking. I guess the way that I justify my 10 hour days is that I do a full year's work in 10 months. That sure feels good in July!

Your wife doesn't need to do everything perfectly. As long as she is passionate about her students and their well being, it really won't matter if she gives them some time for silent reading now and then so she can tick off some items from her to-do list. I'm sure she is creative and talented and puts all of her energy into her job: make sure she is keeping a folder with all the kind notes and emails she receives from parents, students, and administrators. When she is full of despair, have her go through her feel-good file.

A few other quick tips: Keep any die-cut letters and shapes from bulletin boards in gallon zip-lock bags. Next year, when it is time to put the bulletin board up she won't be searching for the individual letters. Also, having incredibly organized materials and resources will save your wife time and mental anguish. It has taken me five years to find a system for organizing marking and handouts that works for me. Also, the more organized my binders are, the more time I save the following year as I can re-use lessons more effectively.

She sounds like an amazing woman with a wonderful husband. Be sure to plan a vacation together to take advantage of her time off!!
posted by ms.v. at 3:54 PM on December 1, 2007

Both my parents were teachers, but by the time I came around they had been doing their jobs, and teaching the same (or similar) classes, for many many years. They would arrive in time for their morning staff meetings and leave maybe half an hour after classes were done for the day. The only time they ever brought stuff back home was when computerized report cards were introduced at my mom's school and my mom had me do all the entry for her.

Once your wife has had her lesson plans go through a couple of iterations of use and revision her time spent working outside of class should decrease significantly.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:00 PM on December 1, 2007

I feel for you, my wife had to quit teaching because she got jerked around into different grades for 6 years.
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:56 PM on December 1, 2007

She shouldn't feel that she has to grade everything. They can do some papers together as a class and everybody gets a nice star at the top for completing the assignment. Any teacher working that many hours won't last very long in the profession and that's a shame because we lose some great teachers that way.

Also, plan in some "catch up" time both for the students and for herself. I usually saved Thursday afternoon for this. The students who were finished with all of their work could choose from some educational games, the ones who needed to catch up kept working, and I had a chance to catch up on grading or work with those students who needed a little extra help. We were able to go into Friday all caught up and finish out the week on a positive note.

And even though I was alway tempted to leave as soon as possible on Friday afternoon, I always made sure that I never left until I had everything ready for the next week: all lesson plans written, papers copied, etc. That way I was prepared for the coming week. If I needed to make vocabulary cards or sentence strips I made those before I left too. While it made staying late on Friday a hastle, the next week went a lot smoother.
posted by tamitang at 8:18 PM on December 1, 2007

Thanks again to everyone! Today, 100 MPH wind gusts are forecasted for the south Oregon coast. So, school is canceled. "Hooray!" sez the discouraged teacher. Now, she'll have time to read your responses, be encouraged, and pick her faves. I work at home, so I do clean the house and cook quite a bit. More meals at restaurants is a good suggestion, as is the scheme for planned vacations (We like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Columbia Hotel in Ashland)
posted by partner at 1:16 PM on December 3, 2007