Where is the Teachers' Time Going?

I am Manu the Founder of MonitorExam. As a part of my job I interview teachers,

understand what they love and what irks them. Recently there is a lot of talk about teacher shortage and I investigated the reasons for the same.

Teaching is one of the most satisfying profession after medicine but today teachers are feeling burnt out.

Almost all the teachers love interacting with kids, hate the administrative part of teaching i.e.

• Listing what they have done,
• Planning the classroom activities,
• Taking tests and then worst of all
• Grading them in their personal time.

With the advent of technology and bookkeeping the time for personally interacting with students has reduced to near 50%. Given below is a breakup on the same.

A new, nationally representative survey of teachers found that a typical teacher works a median of 54 hours per week. But just 46 percent of their time in the school building is spent teaching.

Here’s a breakdown of how much time (the median number of hours) teachers report spending on specific tasks throughout their workweeks, according to the survey:

5 hours     grading and providing feedback of student work

5 hours     planning or preparing

3 hours     doing general administrative work

3 hours     on non-teaching student interaction

2 hours     collaborating/planning with colleagues

2 hours     communicating with parents or guardians

2 hours     doing other work activities

1 hour     doing school committee work

1 hour     doing professional-development activities

1 hour     on non-curricular activities (such as sports, clubs, after-school events)

Keeping this list in ming some of the mundane tasks should be automated, handed over or cut-off from teachers’ responsibilities and more fun and fulfilment be added to a teachers’ routine so that classrooms are once again vibrant and happy places.

In our next blog will cover we will also touch upon what parents, students, school administration and EdTech can do to reduce teachers’ burnout.

References:

How Teachers Spend Their Time: A Breakdown (edweek.org)