Job Discussion Forums

[FreddyM]

Just out of curiosity and for comparison's sake, I'm wondering for those of you who teach at private schools (colegios), what your teaching load and other responsibilities are besides teaching, especially at the primary school level. I've taught at two different schools and the workload has varied, even in the same school, at different grade levels.

On the low end, I once taught two groups of the same level, English and English subject areas, about 24 forty minute blocks a week in front of the group, with the usual responsibilities, lesson planning, parent interviews, not so many meetings, exam preparation, grading, etc. A unique responsibility compared to other colegios was interviews with the kids once a month (about 25 small talks a month). Usually there was plenty of time not being in front of the group to accomplish everything, although the work hours were around 7:00 to 5:00, even though the kids went home around 2:00, with an hour and a half lunch break after the kids went home. During summers we usually got 4 weeks off.

On the extreme end, I taught at another school with similar mission and responsibilities, but I had 36 teaching blocks (40 minutes each) to cover with different grade levels (so I couldn't prepare just one lesson and repeat with the second group), three guard duties a day (morning, recess, after school), twice a week meetings after school that always ran long and hardly ever canceled, and still had to do all the planning, preparation, exam-making and grading, etc. Plus parent interviews and interviews with the kids. There were some days (regularly) in which from the moment I got to school to school until the moment the kids went home I didn't have even five minutes to myself. I found that work schedule insane, primarily because we weren't given much time to do any sort of planning, but the administration either didn't care (and expected you to do all that at home), or they thought that was "normal". Work hours were from 7:00 to 4:30 also with a 40 minute lunch break after the kids went home (although at least once a week that lunch break was cut short due to some kind of staff meeting). Summer breaks being only two weeks off. I've never felt so overworked than I was at this particular school,

Someone in administration told me the situation at the latter school is more common in pricey colegios, but I don't think that's true. So now I'm wondering what the workload is at other colegios. Sometimes I think it's not worth the extra money to be worked like a slave.

[MotherF]

As you know I teach at the university level.
We've had a lot of variations over the years, and sometimes the department where I work has chosen to take on more responsibilities and sometimes we've been asked to or even told not to.

The lightest has been two groups of the same level meeting five times a week for 50 minutes. I even did that in the same classroom back to back so I didn't have to completely reset up everything.

The most has been 20 hours of teaching, I did 4 groups meeting 5 hours a week, two different levels. And I also did 10 groups meeting 2 hours a week of two different levels.

I would say the average has been 3 groups meeting 5 hours a week, one or two levels that I've taught many many times, so prep is light.

Outside of the classroom--no parent meetings at university, but grading homework, record keeping, giving oral exams to other teacher's students during finals week, staff meetings, etc. Occasionally asked to do translations for the institution and served very rarely on other temporary commissions for the university.
We have a summer session, so we only have two weeks off (paid) in the summer, two a christmas and one at easter. In the summer session classes are intensive for students who've fallen behind, but with a more limited number so that was 2 hours a day.
We are generally asked to work 9 to 2 and 4 to 7 which is kind of a pain, I'd like to have the collegio hours and have more free time in the evenings.