misconception of teacher

today blasted at a friend... not intentional.

please get these out your head:

1) teachers only work from 7am to 12 noon, it's a half day work
2) teachers' job is very secure, metal rice bowl
3) teachers have 1+4+1+6= 12 weeks of school holidays

let me get this straight:

1) we have to be at the morning assembly at 7.15am. the last lesson ends at 2.10pm. remedials start at 2.30 and ends at 3.30pm. if you have meetings or trainings, for our school, it starts at 4pm and can end at 6.30pm. more important people talk longer, so sometimes their meetings end at 7 plus. that goes to say that we work roughly 12 hours a day.

2) when we get home, we put in another at least 1 hour of marking, 1 hour of lesson preparation. sometimes we try to finish all the lesson preparation for the week, that takes up close to 4 hours of my weekend. if i start late on a sunday nite, that means i only get to sleep at 2 or 3 am and have to wake up at 5.30am the next morning.

3) no doubt, the rice bowl is quite stable... but the effort put in is not small either.
a) you have to be counsellor to your students, parents and sometimes to fellow colleagues.
b) if you are the I/C of any school event, u need to hold rehearsals and much planning is put into such events.
c) meetings
d) attend Learning Circles (something like a WITs group)
e) go for at least 70 hours of training per year
f) give at least 3 suggestions per year
g) mark books
h) set paper
i) do form class administrative work
j) appraisal (self appraisal, work appraisal and School appraisal)
k) CCA
l) do duties for the various school events
m) maintain a staff portfolio
n) lesson observation once
o) prepare lesson
p) teach
q) carry out Project Work where u are doing all the planning for your students
r) adapt to and carry out new initiatives being rolled out.

4) school holidays, no doubt it's the holidays but the 1 week of holiday are usually burnt, because it's a good time to catch up on your paper work. the 4 weeks holidays in june, 2 weeks are gone, because the 1st week is remedials/extra lesson and book checking and work review. the last week must come back for meeting. then the 6 weeks holiday, if there is school event like Open House which is usually in the holidays, then it's burnt as well. the last week after christmas, it's for meetings and workshops.

so if any of your friends still think that teachers' job is very easy, ask them to join the teaching profession. WE WELCOME THEM WITH OPEN ARMS!!!!!!!