Job Discussion Forums

[Gusss]

I know everyoen says "thats part of the job" etc but....
I have read by some people that for every hour spent in the classroom you should spend an hour outside the classroom preparing, marking etc This in some cases would put teachers below the legal minimum wage in some countries. Why is this viewed as acceptable - it wouldnt be in any other job.

[Justin Trullinger]

I can't speak for every country. But where I'm at-

Depending on your teaching context, I would say that in Ecuador, an hour outside of class for every hour in would be an extreme estimate. Most teachers don't spend that much, and the responsibilities of language institutes don't really call for it.

THat said- most institutes, if they pay by the hour, pay somewhere from $6 to $8.50 an hour. That's a lot in the local economy. It means that teaching 24 hours a week, you could be taking home from $144 to $204 per week. This is more than some people here earn PER MONTH. So I wouldn't worry too much about it falling below legal wages.

Teachers who feel that their $7.50 per classroom hour means they should only work the actual classroom hours they teach kind of get on my nerves. The hourly rate is quite high by local standards, and is set high because we know teachers will put in outside time.


Best,
Justin

[spiral78]

At the university level in most Western countries, the standard is that you are paid 1:1. Sometimes more - less is getting on the iffy side. Meaning that 20 contact hours = a 40 hour job, and is paid as such.

[naturegirl321]

For every hour in the class, you spend an hour outside? I sure hope not. I've worked 40 hour weeks before. ONce you get into thr routine of things and have set lesson plan, your hours are shorter.

I just teach privates and of 21 hours, probably spend about 1 hour a week planning. I used to make all my materials, but found out that my students preferred a book, so I copy pages. For one business student, I have to prepare everything, but for the 8 kids I teach, 5 I copy books and 3 have books that we work from.

[spiral78]

We are not required to actually spend the hour working. It's simply considered the standard, and we are paid accordingly.

Sometimes I spend more time, if it's a course that I can publish or write a publishable article about. For normal faculty courses, I often spend -0.

I'm simply saying that it's the standard.

[Teacher in Rome]

It mostly gets quicker as you get more experience, know where you can find resources and be able to predict what sort of problems students are going to have. And as you get more of this experience, you also realise that having ten minutes or so "unplanned" is great as you can spend this time going over student mistakes, reviewing past vocab / structures and skills, and getting the student to use new vocab etc. I always like to leave at least 10 minutes from every hour unplanned so I can review what we've previously covered.

[Justin Trullinger]

[Jetgirly]

The less you're paid for prep, the crappier the job. When I worked at a chain school in Italy, all prep time was unpaid. At first, they also didn't pay us for travel time between the school and in-company classes (contrary to what was said during the interview). I taught a summer course at a community college in Canada, and I just billed them per hour worked on-site (I didn't bill them for the stuff I did at home, however... I didn't think they'd be keen on that). Now I teach ESL in the public school system in Canada, and although I am "salaried" in theory, I am backed by a strong union who says I can only work 1200 hours per year, of which only 900 can be classroom hours. That leaves me with 300 prep hours per year, or 1.5 per school day.

I think schools that don't pay for prep are typically VERY profit-driven and don't typically recognize theories like differentiated instruction, universal design for learning, multiple intelligences, etc. The idea that you can just recycle the same course content and activities with each new group of students is pretty outdated. To teach different students you'll need to adopt different strategies. Pure and simple.

[SueH]

It varies so much that it's difficult to generalise. I've no "set lesson plans" as referred to above as even exactly the same material needs to be presented or augmented differently depending on the pupils. For adults I can sometimes get away with very little, but for a small private group of 9 year olds who come after school I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on prep, even if it is only to think about what will keep them engaged. The older kids of 12/13 are a lot easier.

I do think Parkinson's law applies, and if I were to double my part-time hours I'm sure my prep hours would diminish accordingly.

[rusmeister]