Struggling to manage work-life balance, teachers across Longfellow are feeling crushed under the weight of their responsibilities. The profession of teaching has long been used to these difficulties, yet the public outside of the field of education tends to forget just how overworked they are.
“Our hours don’t start or stop on weekends or after school at 2:30,” said science teacher Dr. Elizabeth Daniels. “It continues on to about four more hours after school each day.”
Dr. Daniels listed some of the many aspects of teaching students don’t think about. Special meetings for teams and departments, paperwork to support Special Education, extra duties (like Lunch Duty) called IPRs, and that’s all before the usual grading of papers. Time is a luxury for overstressed teachers.
“You know, you never stop running around. It’s just the day,” said history teacher Jim Bermudez. “There’s never a day that goes by slow, like ‘Man! Nothing’s going on today!’ When you’re teaching you’ve got to use every minute of the day to get everything done. There’s always something you could do.”
For starters, grading papers takes far more time than you might realize. Let us presume that a teacher has a total of 130 students, and has assigned all of them a two-page paper to write. That would lead to 260 pages to grade. If it were possible for teachers to grade each paper in two minutes (that’s one minute per page,) it would take over four hours to grade. For some perspective, teachers are allotted about 90 minutes a day in their contracts to handle all of their responsibilities outside of teaching students.
“Homework adds up really fast,” said civics teacher Fletcher Phillips. “If I give out two assignments a week, that turns into 240 pieces of work that I need to review, I need to edit, I need to go over, I need to provide feedback on, that I need to grade…”
Suddenly, those 2 minutes per paper are looking inadequate to get the job done. Teachers don’t just want to put a grade down, they want to give quality feedback so their students can succeed in class.
Science teacher Bindhu Zachariah makes it clear that feedback lengthens the time to grade, but it is worth the expense when it helps students succeed in her class. Teachers make it one of their top priorities to ensure that their students will grow from their previous mistakes.
“Grading takes up a lot of time because I want to provide feedback to my students, I don’t just want to put a grade down. I want to show them what they got wrong and why it is wrong. So that they understand, and won’t make the same mistake again,” said Zachariah.
Of course, FCPS has included time for teachers to plan their lessons, but it doesn’t begin to cover all of the things that need doing. Out of the seven periods of an anchor day, teachers usually get two periods off (for a total of 90 minutes), dedicated to planning. Similarly, on block days they typically have one planning period, which also equals about 90 minutes. However, that time is often taken up by other responsibilities, typically meetings, that progressively shorten their actual planning time. Mr. Phillips explained that at least three of his planning periods a week are taken up by meetings, running from 60 to 90 minutes.
These class periods when a teacher is supposed to get their work done are referred to as planning periods. This reminds us that in addition to grading and meetings, teachers still have to plan their lessons.
“If I don’t have something to do, I’ll start planning the next unit,” explained Mr. Bermudez. “Or I’ll start planning the next week, or the week after that. I don’t waste any time at school. The days always fly by because I never do nothing.”
Another aspect of teaching that can be stressful, according to math teacher Heather Postlethwait, is outside factors that get in the way of doing the job.
“The act of teaching is not stressful,” said Ms. Postlethwait. “Teachers do what they do because they want to help students learn and seek knowledge. Over the years, many things have been added to teacher workloads, but very few things have been taken away. Many teachers feel that they are not respected outside of the field of education.”
Outside factors might include writing emails and dealing with late or absent students, but they also include the life part of work/life balance.
Dr. Daniels described them as “the usual life problems,” listing taking care of pets, paying bills, and maintaining cars and homes as examples.
Most Longfellow teachers love what they do, and get satisfaction and energy from interacting with students all day. Though it is nowhere near the top of the teacher’s list of stressors, Ms. Zachariah conceded that student behavior can add to the mix.
“I do think that sometimes when students are very chatty or they are not paying attention, it makes it very difficult to teach. And then it’s easy as a teacher to sometimes think it’s your fault. A lot of teachers would take that very much to heart,” said Zachariah.
Mr. Phillips easily related to this, expressing that no matter how professional a teacher is, at the end of the day, it is hard to not let certain student behavior affect a teacher’s feelings. Disrupting class, neglecting classwork, and simply not listening at all, affects teachers more than you might perceive.
Ultimately, all the stress and work that teachers endure results in little compensation.
“The pay is not as high as it should be. That’s just a simple fact. We as teachers deserve to be paid more for the profession and the work we do,” stated Mr. Bermudez.
Historically, it has been illegal for teachers in Virginia to go on strike or engage in collective bargaining through a union, but 2021 legislation changed this long-standing rule. The FCPS school board followed suit, passing a collective bargaining resolution in March of 2023. The only thing that needs to happen now is to decide who will represent the teachers at the bargaining table. The two teachers’ unions that represent Fairfax County teachers are teaming up in order to have a solid base for negotiating, meaning that this century-old problem just may have a solution, although that has not been determined yet.
Teachers are faced with all sorts of responsibilities to juggle, from managing children to balancing their lives at home to making ends meet with the low pay they receive. The time they are given to do the things they have to accomplish is very limited, and their pay is not as high as it should be. Next time you have a chance, have a conversation with your teacher, because now you know just how much they have to go through to do their job.
