[thedillio]

That essay is garbage in my opinion. My wife and many of our friends are teachers and it doesn't take into account things like lesson plans and grading papers - both Of which are typically done on the teachers personal time (at least in Florida and with elementary aged kids).

In other words, although other professions are as likely to work from home or other places, it fails to mention the amount of hours that teachers DO work outside the office - at least the good ones that actually care. In the same breath there are many teachers who just skate by because they know they won't get fired.

The essay also doesn't take into account the length of a teachers workday nor the nature of the work. When my wife taught she had to arrive at 6:30am and often didn't get home until 4:30 or 5:00pm on a good day. Have you ever tryed to entertain twenty 7-year-olds for 10 hours? It's pretty exhausting - not to mention the fact that they also have to deal with the administration requirements, parents, standardized testing, other bad teachers that never will lose their jobs, etc. All for 34k per year before taxes.

Say it's 11:23am and you need to use the restroom. Sorry, you can't exactly just walk out of class to run down the hall. You have to wait until your 20 minute lunch break which includes walking the kids to and from the lunchroom.

Just to give some perspective, this is such a problem where we live that that I know or know of nearly a dozen teachers no longer in the classroom or looking for other employment.

For those teachers who feel they are living the life, I'd love to know where they live because from where I sit summers odd is about the best thing going for teachers.

[yummyfajitas]

That essay is garbage in my opinion...it doesn't take into account things like lesson plans and grading papers - both Of which are typically done on the teachers personal time...

It helps to read a report all the way to paragraph 2 before determining it is garbage.

"Because of the way in which the data are collected, it is possible to identify and quantify the work that teachers do at home, at a workplace, and at other locations and to examine the data by day of the week and time of day"

It's possible you work more than average, in which case there are others who who work less than average. Or perhaps you just overestimate the work you put in (same as most people do).

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/06/art3full.pdf

[teach]

Okay, so I read the entire report. I'd love to see the standard deviation for the "minutes worked per day" figure. I'd bet that it is high.

I've worked in public education for fifteen years, and I know almost no teachers who work as little as the "average" quoted in the BLS results.

But then I work for a "good" school (top 100 in my State, nearly top 1000 in the US). I suspect the difference between the data (which I'm sure is accurate) and my experience boils down to "Good teachers work a lot of hours. Many (most?) of the teachers in America are not good."

[thedillio]

I guess I missed that when viewing on my phone. I went straight to the meat and potatoes. Touche to that. From my first and second hand experiences, I still feel that it is not accurate.