If I Could Put Time in a Bottle... A Study of Teacher Time Use Outside the Classroom by Lisa Peterson Research question What can I learn about the challenges facing teachers and schools by examining my daily use of time outside the classroom? Rationale  It seems that each year, teachers find themselves under more pressure to help their students meet higher standards. While I applaud this effort to increase student achievement, as a ten-year veteran of the public schools, I have been finding myself increasingly overwhelmed. It seems that I don’t have enough time to plan creative lessons, to guide my students’ academic development thoughtfully, or to conduct any sort of personal life. Therefore, I decided to record my time usage over two different one-week periods. I wanted to see if I could identify patterns that would provide clues to my struggles, and possibly to those of other teachers.  Data I documented my time use for five days during the week of February 19, and for all seven days during the week of June 7. When I examined the data, I found that I was working over 70 hours a week on teaching-related tasks. On weeknights, I generally worked 5 or 6 hours beyond my mandated 6 hour and 20 minute workday, and on weekends, I worked a total of 8-10 hours. The charts below break down how I spent this time.  Week of February 19  (Five days) Week of June 4  (Seven days) Planning/assessing: 8 hours  Tutoring individuals: 7 hours Extended day literacy program: 4 hours  (I am paid for work in this program.) Organizing, preparing room: 4 hours Planning/assessing: 14.5 hours  Organizing 3-day trip to Boston: 7-8 hours Preparing video for NY State permanent certification: 6 hours (and preps) Organizing, preparing room: 4 hours Observations and Analysis: Why Such a Long Work Day? Teaching to high standards requires significant amounts of time. During both weeks, I spent a large amount of time commenting on drafts of student history papers. I could have taught straight from the textbook without spending any extra time of my own. However, I wanted my students to develop critical thinking and writing skills, so I chose to engage them in research and writing projects, which proved very time-consuming for me. For example, over the entire 3-4 weeks of February’s project, I spent nearly 30 hours of my own time planning, gathering resources, commenting on drafts, and grading final papers.  Class size and composition both impact the amount of time required of the teacher. With large classes of 29 and 32 students, I did not have enough time to interact with individuals in class. I attempted to compensate through written communication and after-school tutoring, but both of these measures placed additional pressures on my time. Interestingly, I found it more time-consuming to help individuals in my smaller class, because this class was comprised entirely of students not yet fully proficient in English. For instance, all but one of the students who needed after-school assistance came from that class. The composition of a class impacts a teacher’s time, because students with greater academic needs tend to need more individual assistance. The scheduling of preparation time affects its usefulness for different tasks. With 2 45-minute preparation periods a day, I have more time than many of my counterparts. However, I found that preparation periods that are scattered throughout the day are useful mainly for gathering resources, phone calls, record-keeping, and other relatively short tasks. This time is useful, but not a substitute for scheduled time for long-range planning. If I wanted to plan a thoughtful, in-depth unit with my colleagues, we had to do so outside of the school day. Teaching isn’t necessarily easier for mid-career teachers. We often tell overwhelmed novice teachers that the job will get easier. However, some pressures are more common to mid-career teachers. We are more likely to be taking on additional personal responsibilities, such as marriage and a family. At the same time, we are more likely to take on additional responsibilities at school, such as organizing the trip to Boston that consumed much of my time during the week of June 4. Moreover, while it is flattering to be considered an “expert,” mid-career teachers still need support and staff development. Perhaps I wouldn’t have needed to spend so much time after school tutoring my bilingual students if I had received training on how to meet their particular needs in language arts. What Policy Issues are Affected by the Teacher Time Crunch? Teacher retention. Most teachers enter the profession because they want to help children. Thus it follows that teachers leave the profession because they feel ineffective in doing this. In a 1995 U.S. Department of Education survey, teachers who left their jobs because of dissatisfaction with teaching most commonly cited reasons related to their difficulty in reaching students (student discipline problems -17.9 percent, and poor student motivation to learn -17.6 percent). It is reasonable to assume that with more time for building relationships and working with individual students, many of these teachers would have been less frustrated and less likely to leave.  Student achievement. Teachers who stay in the profession often must make compromises. Given the time pressure on teachers, what happens to educational quality? Teachers assign fewer essays and more multiple choice tests; they plan fewer in-depth projects and more textbook readings. Even though I tried not to compromise academic quality by engaging my students in extended research projects, I ended up behind in the curriculum because I couldn’t assess their work fast enough. With such intense time pressure on teachers, there is less time for educating each child.  What Can Be Done? Reduce class size, especially for students with greater academic needs. Schools can cut down on out-of-classroom positions and pull-out teachers in order to make more positions available for classroom teaching.  Focus out-of-classroom personnel on the classroom. Schools need individuals like staff developers and reading specialists. However, their work should involve them in classrooms as much as possible, sharing both their expertise and the responsibilities of teaching. Restructure the use of time to emphasize collaboration and long-term planning. By making planning time less fragmented and allocating extended group meeting time, schools can assist teachers in the time-consuming task of building meaningful lessons and curricula.