I have been keeping track of my hours this year.
Not just the hours I am supposed to be on the clock and in the classroom, though of course those are included.
The hours I spend grading, planning, and at professional development opportunities are also included.
The hours I spend answering student e-mails, working on education-related side projects, reading and writing educational blogs and listservs, and generally researching my profession are not included.
Which means that I am only including hours that directly affect my practices inside my classroom on a day-to-day basis. The hours I put in to succeed as a teacher. The necessary hours. The required hours.
I have been doing this for exactly six months now. It's a good time to check in.
Average Worker | |||
I have been using a pretty simple system. I record my activities (generalized) on an Excel spreadsheet. I record my start and stop times, then calculate the hours those times included. At the end of each month, I use the amazing "sum" ability from Excel to calculate how many hours I have worked in total.
To calculate the hours an "Average Worker" would be putting in--and by that I mean an average salaried worker, not someone who makes money when he or she works overtime--I total the days in the month during which a salaried worker would be expected to work (i.e. no holidays) and multiply that number by the generalized 8 hour work day.
As you can see, I usually work more than my fair share of hours. In total, including November, when I had a week off for Thanksgiving, and including December, when I had two weeks off for winter break, I have worked 317.73 hours more than the average salaried worker. That averages to 7.94 weeks (if work weeks are 40 hours long) extra. Almost two months of time.
Which basically means in six months' time, I have worked enough hours to fill eight months. With three weeks off, I still have managed to work an extra two months.
Amazing.
That's crazy and yet so true....I should do that too... :) Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement! It can be really upsetting sometimes to realize the kind of time I am putting in--because it means time I'm definitely not spending with my family.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I really am better at managing my time now than I was four or more years ago. Then I really never stopped working :)
Rachel, I just hit seven weeks...I like your comparison chart here...may steal. I'm glad we're doing this, because I am proud of the work I do, and I know it takes more time if I'm going to do the job the way I know it needs to be done for the kids. I would guess our totals are pretty typical. We need to make sure our legislators know this...I think what's most impressive (horrifying?) is the concentrated time span we do this work in...No wonder teachers are so tired. Thanks for sharing this.
ReplyDeletePlease steal any and all of this idea! The more of us who record our hours, the less someone can point to me as an atypical example. I'm not--I'm pretty typical of all of the teachers I know and spend time with. Please let me know when/if you post your hours--I'd be glad to share them as well!
ReplyDeleteTo calculate the hours an "Average Worker" would be putting in--and by that I mean an average salaried worker, not someone who makes money when he or she works overtime--I total the days in the month during which a salaried worker would be expected to work (i.e. no holidays) and multiply that number by the generalized 8 hour work day.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great idea, except where you're comparing yourself to what you're calling an 'average worker'. You should call it 'standard hours', instead, because there's neither an average nor actual workers involved in your calculations of their time. (Salaried workers frequently work more than forty hours per week and hourly workers frequently work off of the clock, so assuming 8 hours a way and every holiday off is pretty inaccurate.)
Even better, you should compare what you actually work to what you're being paid to work, because that would drive your point home.
I appreciate the advice. I will most definitely rethink my wording here.
ReplyDelete