Job Discussion Forums

[BobStrauss]

I'm just now getting out of the international school scene, where workloads can be quite high. Despite having roughly 20 contact hours per week, I typically put in 50+ hours of actual work (more like 55), and a couple weeks out of each semester it is much higher (well over 60). This is due to paperwork requirements, extra-curricular activities, parent meetings, staff meetings, assessment-development, marking of assessments, etc.

Now I realize that many things will be similar at the university level in the UAE, but how much actual time do teachers put in? Not the "company men" who go above and beyond, nor the slackers who put in the minimum, but the solid educator who works hard and does his or her job well. How many hours each week does it require?

[Eisenhorn]

Bob.

You might not find many actual professionals who will actually tell you. There is a lot of debate and bickering about how much/little many of us actually do.

I will tell you, that I RARELY take home student work to mark, or spend massive amounts of time at home lesson planning or creating materials. I get almost all of it done during my 40 hours per week. In fact, often less (some weeks MUCH less) than that, and I know of people who duck out at 3 to 330 every day. But at the same time, during finals or if I haven't been careful in scheduling my student projects, I can then end up doing 50 to 60 hour weeks.

We do have things like the random events, the planned weekend activities, CEPA days etc, but they can be planned around and often are extra paid activities (CEPA especially).