I had a teacher in high school once explain to us a side lesson on time management, she says she used moments of "downtime" in the school day to do grading and lesson planning so she almost never brought home work as a result.
I took it to heart. It worked very, very well for me in college. I'd always have homework with me ready to go and when I was waiting for a class to start, or any other short time with nothing to do, I'd do homework. I'd only get a bit done at a time but it really added up and reduced my take home workload considerably.
I've often wondered about those that commuted long ways for school. Was it because the school was better, or because there was no closer school? If it was just a better school, do you think it was more beneficial overall to have that time used on the bus when it could have been put to work on something else, or was the local school unsafe?
I was lucky enough to always live very close to my schools, so hours spent commuting to school is entirely alien to me, and barring safety issues, I'm not sure a directed extracurricular learning program wouldn't be more beneficial (and if the student or parents care enough to commute, I imagine they could work out some program from available sources). Then again, I've never been put in a situation that young where it relied that much on my own motivation.
It was a magnet school that had resources (one of the best performing arts departments in the state; one of the only AP comp sci programs in a 45 mi radius) that my locally assigned high school did not.
The primary reasons the school-bus commute was long was a) meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop and b) a 20 mile trek on the highway at 45mph.
If I had been able to drive (or carpooled), my commute would have been less than 35 minutes.
I guess that makes sense. It's not just "better" in the sense of different schools in an area may be better or worse, but also highly directed in certain areas. I can see the draw of that.
> meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop
Yes, come to think of it, people that rode the bus at my school probably had at least a 40-45 minute ride in the earlier stops just from this. I think I rode the bus once when going to a friend's house after school, so this didn't come to mind. The rest of the time I always walked (High School was literally across the street from my house, Middle School was a 20 minute brisk walk). Like I said, alien.
I was bad at context switching too but if you really put your mind to it and put in the effort it can be learned. It does get easier with time. For people that it doesn't come naturally to (like me) it takes a lot of willpower to work like this but the payoff is huge.
Additionally, no teacher I have ever known has had the summer off. Summer is when they do catch-up work, lesson planning, etc., the technical debt payback of the teaching world.
(source: three parents/step-parents were school teachers)
In all careers, some people are martyrs unnecessarily. Yes, there's a bit of prep work needed right before the next school year depending on what classes they have for the following year, but except that last week, the time's free if they want it to be.
Or if you're in Germany, many teachers are running on temporary contracts that always last for the school year, so they will be receiving unemployment benefits during the summer break, and (hopefully!) get a new contract for the next school year.
It's a great way to shuffle cost from one government budget (education) to another one (unemployment benefits), and also a convenient way to get rid of annoying parts of the staff.
Teachers in my mother's district in Virginia also work on a contractual basis. However, they renew their contracts at the end of the school year even though they aren't actually working and getting paid over the summer. As a result, they are technically employed and ineligible for unemployment.
No, they have 2 months between school years in which they are not at the front of a classroom. For a lot of teachers that's time used for continuing education, for prep for the upcoming school year, etc. - or for a summer job.
(I'm the one who made the original reply about teachers.)
My comment was based on observations of my SO, who is a high school biology teacher. She legitimately does not have to work at all for the great majority of the summer if she doesn't want to. I understand this may vary a lot by school district and location, and of course even if you don't have to work over the summer there are still benefits to doing so.
If I had two months off a year I'd take a summer job at Starbucks or whatever as well yet I don't need the money by any means whatsoever even if I took a prorated pay cut. Hell, I don't need to work at all because my spouse's income is more than enough to live off of very comfortably, but I do. The amount of time I work isn't an indication of the amount of money I need.
The argument in the parent posts is that teachers actually don't have two month off. They just have two month where they don't have to do client (that is pupil) - facing work to do.
Teachers actually need to cram a lot in that time. All the preparation for next year, all self-education they need to do to stay up-to-date, select reading and learning materials. Planning the curriculum etc. The equivalent to all that work that freelancers factor into their daily rate and all the work that employees often do on the job ("I'll need to read the documentation so I know how to properly do that", "I'll google it", ...).
The fact that they still take on summer jobs on top of that can serve as an indicator that they actually don't have too much to do in that time or it can serve as an indicator that they need the money more than their time off.
It's only proof that they desire more money or can find a use for more money. "Need" is an overloaded term. I know developers with six figure salaries who feel like they "need" more money and occasionally do contract work on the side as a result.
There are lots of places where teachers easily make 80k or more. Most states also drive additional salary requirements based on the level of education the teacher has. Also, the number of years teaching (though sometimes tied to the number of years in the specific school system/district) include increases too.
Source: a friend who taught elementary school in the Boston area.
I once had it explained by a teacher in highschool (in CA), that the compensation was based on both years worked and additional education they had completed. IIRC, teaching for 20+ years and taking all the education could net you $65k-$85k ~ 20 years ago. That was the upper range though.
Many are faculty sponsors of extracurricular activities. Band directors, for instance, have to stay late for marching/pep band practices and for football/basketball games. Science and math teachers stay late for the academic competition teams. Team sports have coaches.
Where I went to school, teachers with less than five years of tenure essentially had to sponsor at least one extracurricular activity, just to earn enough extra pay to live on.
And then they still have to do grading and planning when the kids aren't there. That can be done away from the school building, but it still counts as work.
