A colleague of mine started me thinking about equity in the teaching profession. The conversation began with a discussion of timetables in various departments in our school and varying amounts of release time for planning, etc. My colleague was quite distraught about what she perceived as a tremendous inequity amongst the staff in terms of contact time with students. My lack of engagement with her frustration level seemed to only make her more agitated. I managed to brush off the conversation and change the subject, but I was left with her question: “Why doesn’t this bother you? It isn’t fair!”.
It isn’t fair.
I have spent some time unpacking this three word sentence today. The number of times that I have heard my own children or students say this to me is impossible to count. I was taken aback at the passion that my colleague displayed when asking this of me. I hadn’t really thought about it, if I am honest with myself. Why doesn’t it bother me, I wondered…
There is only one thing that I could come up with. It’s not about the quantity of time we have in our classrooms; it’s about the quality. I will acknowledge that there need to be some general guidelines for contracted teaching hours within schools, but these are decided by the administration in response to the needs of the community. Within departments, however, the demands will vary. As a teacher who has taught in many different situations over the past decade, I know the demands are different for every position in the school, and I can appreciate that they will always be different:
- A classroom teacher has a heavy workload, with many different subjects to address, and a lot of different things to plan and grade. Classroom teachers spend a lot of their free time grading assessment pieces on their own time, and this is never time that is clocked. This is a very demanding position in the school. Planning time needs to be there, especially in a school where integration across subjects and grade levels is encouraged, to allow for a variety of different groups to meet and plan.
- Specialist teachers have a range of demands. The amount of preparation and set-up/clean-up required in a visual arts classroom is overwhelming to even think about. The high levels of noise and perceived chaos that music and dramatic arts teachers endure every day is enough to give most teachers a migraine at the mere thought of it. The behind-the-scenes set up and organization required to work with students in a physical education capacity is exhausting, not the mention the extreme weather conditions that many of these teachers withstand day in and day out. The level of engagement that is required of a special education teacher, to know the students they are working with and how to best support them in their learning, is mind-boggling to most of us. The testing, and reporting, and communication with parents and professionals is never-ending.
- Administrators have to think about the big picture, and about their vision for the school. They need to have an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of their team, and know which skill areas need to be improved. In addition to this, they are dealing with parents and their concerns, as well as the difficult disciplinary issues that arise within the school. They are the go-to people for unanswered questions, with their doors on swinging hinges, never with a moment to gather their thoughts.
How can we possibly begin to compare and/or mandate equity in terms of hours, or contact time, or release time for all of these varied roles without our learning community? Why would we even use up valuable time thinking about it? I would argue that this is not something that we can standardize. It is something that comes down to each department and its needs. And in the end, it is about the teacher – and the quality of education that each of them have committed to providing for their students. The number of hours that we, as teachers, spend on the internet researching topics, ideas, projects, etc. just because we want to… those are given of our own free will… not because they are clocked.
Let’s stop debating this. Let’s appreciate each other for who we are, and what we do within our learning community. I think we will find that it is time well spent.