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  • Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

    Teachers in Hawai'i...bless 'em all...now spend an average of 15.5 hours every day doing tasks related to their profession, and a good percentage of that time is unpaid, according to a study released by the BOE.

    The extra duties — mostly administrative — also are leaving teachers less time to respond to the non-academic needs of their students at a time when students have more needs than ever, members of the committee said.

    "We've taken over a lot of responsibilities that were once done by the family and the churches," Shindo said.

    In presenting its findings to a Board of Education committee yesterday, the Time Committee said if teachers were paid for all their extra hours, they'd be earning an extra $63,000 a year, based on the average salary paid the state's public school teachers.

    For many, that would far exceed what they're actually paid. Starting pay for a teacher right out of college is around $40,000 annually.
    You know that teachers are doing it for the love of teaching and not for the pay, and the extra administrative burdens being placed on them are probably one of the root causes of teacher burnout.

    Hopefully the BOE can come up with some creative solutions to ease some of the administrative burdens, since coming up with extra pay would be difficult.

    Miulang
    "Americans believe in three freedoms. Freedom of speech; freedom of religion; and the freedom to deny the other two to folks they don`t like.” --Mark Twain

  • #2
    Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

    I have a suggestion how the teachers might recoup some of their time:
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG0FLHNM21.DTL
    “First we fought the preliminary round for the k***s and now we’re gonna fight the main event for the n*****s."
    http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/review...=416&printer=1

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    • #3
      Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

      Two books that have come out recently discuss the homework issue. Alfie Kohn's is the higher-profile (and better researched, if you ask me), but I think educators are its primary audience. For a more parent-child-centered look, take a look at the work of Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish.

      I instituted an "almost no homework" policy in my math classes, and the jury's still out. I need to make better use of my class time in order to make this work, and I'm still figuring out how to do it.

      However, it remains that even with less grading, the prepping time remains. With no real time during the school day to handle administrative stuff, we're still going to be stuck going well over eight hours per day. I thank my lucky stars I'm not a public-school teacher; the layers of administrative paperwork placed upon teachers today is ridiculous. We've all got paperwork to do in our jobs, I know, but most of us are given time during the working day to do it. Teachers, not so much.
      But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
      GrouchyTeacher.com

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      • #4
        Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

        All I can say is hats off to you teachers. You picked this thankless career, and you live with it. just curious to the teachers, if you didn't teach what would you have done?
        I asked because my father, a retired CPA, once told me he was either going to be a teacher or CPA.
        Listen to KEITH AND THE GIRLsigpic

        Stupid people come in all flavors-buzz1941
        Flickr

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        • #5
          Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

          The Alpha Female from Kane`ohe hails from a family made primarily up of teachers, for several generations. She thinks her parents would have disowned her if she went into teaching as a career. (She chose law instead.)

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          • #6
            Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

            Teachers and coaches are the best. Seriously.

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            • #7
              Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

              Well it's nice, I think , to see that it isn't just here in Japan that teachers go the extra marathon at school.

              I know too many teachers that not only put that kind of work in daily but on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays as well.
              ウチナむく

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              • #8
                Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                Originally posted by sinjin View Post
                I have a suggestion how the teachers might recoup some of their time:
                http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG0FLHNM21.DTL
                I'd agree

                My 11th grade Hawaiian history teacher at Castle High never assigned homework. He taught the class like a college course... daily lecture followed by a quaterly exam. I learned more in this class than I did in any other class I had in High School.

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                • #9
                  Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                  Originally posted by Keanu View Post
                  My 11th grade Hawaiian history teacher at Castle High never assigned homework. He taught the class like a college course... daily lecture followed by a quaterly exam. I learned more in this class than I did in any other class I had in High School.
                  I think that's great, but not everyone learns well that way. If most of my current students were in classes like that, they'd all fail, even if they knew the material.
                  But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
                  GrouchyTeacher.com

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                  • #10
                    Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                    Originally posted by scrivener View Post
                    I think that's great, but not everyone learns well that way. If most of my current students were in classes like that, they'd all fail, even if they knew the material.

                    I'll agree. A bunch of my classmates failed. The students that failed to take notes and follow the discussion always ended up failing the exams and there was no extra credit work made available to help them...if they failed the exams, they failed the course. Personally, I think this way this way of teaching forces students to pay attention but otoh, I realize that this may not work for every student.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                      Originally posted by Keanu View Post
                      I'll agree. A bunch of my classmates failed. The students that failed to take notes and follow the discussion always ended up failing the exams and there was no extra credit work made available to help them...if they failed the exams, they failed the course. Personally, I think this way this way of teaching forces students to pay attention but otoh, I realize that this may not work for every student.
                      If they failed it's the students problem. Students at that(high school)level in their lives should know REAL soon that REAL-LIFE is coming up soon. BTW... don't no one bring up cultural and racial excuses for education, because a student failing a course is HIS(or HER) fault.
                      Listen to KEITH AND THE GIRLsigpic

                      Stupid people come in all flavors-buzz1941
                      Flickr

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                      • #12
                        Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                        Originally posted by alohabear View Post
                        If they failed it's the students problem. Students at that(high school)level in their lives should know REAL soon that REAL-LIFE is coming up soon. BTW... don't no one bring up cultural and racial excuses for education, because a student failing a course is HIS(or HER) fault.

                        I' ll agree and disagree. While I agree that a High School student should be responsible enough to complete their assignments, do well on their exams etc.. Teachers have a responsibility to help ensure their students get the most out of their education. I know many classmates who were passed out of classes just because their teachers didn't want to deal with them anymore, and not all of them were disruptive, some were just slow. In cases like these, I don't think it's the students fault if they falter and fail in subsequent classes.

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                        • #13
                          Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                          Originally posted by alohabear View Post
                          If they failed it's the students problem. Students at that(high school)level in their lives should know REAL soon that REAL-LIFE is coming up soon. BTW... don't no one bring up cultural and racial excuses for education, because a student failing a course is HIS(or HER) fault.
                          Okay. What about students with dysgraphia, who can sit and listen but who have extreme difficulty with note-taking. We're not talking "lazy" or "inattentive." We're talking about a physiological difficulty with the motor skills necessary for either operating a pencil or typing on a keyboard. These students CAN learn, but if the burden is on them to take copious notes with no support, they are screwed. If the same teacher would give them--in addition to lectures--handouts and assigned reading, students can compensate for their difficulties in the lecture halls with extra time outside of class.

                          And what about students with auditory processing disorder? It is not these students' faults that they don't process auditorially. If the lecturer doesn't provide visual aides or outlines ahead of time, these students are also doomed.

                          I am not saying it is the professor's responsibility to cater to the needs of every student; I am saying that it's better to have a variety of teaching strategies. For every professor who grades only on exams based on lectures, it makes sense that there should be other professors who grade other ways. To insist that the "real world" doesn't care about people who learn differently is to resign oneself to the degradation of society.

                          Alohabear, I know you have a very sink-or-swim, survival-of-the-fittest approach to things, and I respect that. Just know that some of the great minds in history were not traditional learners. Do you know that an estimated 10% to 15% of the American population has dyslexia? Yet schools have difficulty figuring out how to teach them. What if 10% to 15% of the American population was blind, or confined to a wheelchair? How would school and the rest of our society be different? Because students with learning differences don't have visible differences, we don't do much for them and assume that their problems are any number of (wrong) things: mental retardation, slowness, laziness, or just plain stupidity.

                          To say that failure is the student's fault is partly true, but if we care about educating our students, we have to understand as much as we can about how people learn best.
                          But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
                          GrouchyTeacher.com

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                          • #14
                            Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                            Originally posted by alohabear View Post
                            If they failed it's the students problem. Students at that(high school)level in their lives should know REAL soon that REAL-LIFE is coming up soon. BTW... don't no one bring up cultural and racial excuses for education, because a student failing a course is HIS(or HER) fault.
                            Jesus. And the country as a whole shouldn't care if its young adults are poorly educated? Businesses shouldn't care if their new hires can't understand instructions, can't think clearly, and can't effectively communicate? That attitude may have been OK back in the Industrial Revolution when only a tiny fraction of workers needed to be educated, because most of them were just manual laborers anyway. It didn't matter if a lot of schoolkids failed because you really didn't need that many well-educated people to begin with.

                            But that's not what we as a society need today. These days we need and expect our citizens to know more and to do more than they did 150 years ago when universal public education was started. Never mind why students can't do well, the fact is we need them all to do well. We can't afford to write off the failures, because we need everybody.

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                            • #15
                              Re: Teachers spend 15.5 hours at work daily

                              Getting back OT on the OT teachers spend, as a union member (in the HSTA), I would think the union needs to step up and demand compensation for their member's work off hours.

                              As a former Teamsters Union member, the union (local 996) would never allow me to work uncompensated for). Pressure from management to do so would result in a grievance. The collective bargaining contract would demand compensation.

                              Is there such writing in the HSTA's contract between union and management? Now I do understand there is the that little issue called NCLB. How does the HSTA work around meeting those standards yet protect the wages of their union members?

                              In other words: TEACHERS!!! YOU PAY UNION DUES AND YET YOU ARE GETTING SHORTCHANGED FROM YOUR GRATUITIOUS WORK.

                              Either get another union or change union leadership because they are not negotiating for you in ways to help you. Those hours at that pay isn't what I call good union leadership or vision.

                              I understand there is a thing called give and take, but if you are doing you job well and the results are in your students' achievements, then I think it's time to start taking for a change because we all know teachers have been giving all these years in the DOE system.

                              IT's time to start demanding more from your union, you paid your dues now it's time for those dues to pay you back.
                              Life is what you make of it...so please read the instructions carefully.

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