TCH: Teaching Times

So, as I tweeted last Friday, over a seven day span I worked 84 hours. This is what happens when report cards are due the same week as the school play. Tracking the time was fairly simple, as I was usually at the school itself, though there were times I marked papers elsewhere, so I included that in the total too.

I'M NOT SURE I KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD

I now think I'll keep recording, day to day. This for a few reasons:
1) People tend to take note of extreme highs or extreme lows. This presumes we have a baseline to work from, but do we really know what that is?
2) I'm wondering how I stack up against people I follow on Twitter. I feel like I'm an average teacher, but really don't know. If I'm working less than others, perhaps teachers who work more will feel better about what they're doing. Conversely, if it's more, maybe I need to relax a bit.
3) I was listening to the latest "Infinite Tangents" podcast (106), where there was discussion of "Day in the Life". It was remarked that there aren't as many submissions of late. Audio was pitched as an idea, but for now, I'm going this route instead.
4) It's easy, and no one's told me it's a bad idea. You are welcome to correct my thinking.

GROUND RULES

A weekly tally runs from Sunday through to Saturday. Because, calendar. So my previous 84 hour week was TECHNICALLY only 79.4, because the 4.6 hours on the prior Saturday don't count. In terms of the individual days, I figure on counting - or not counting - events in the following way:

1) TRAVEL TIME: No.
It takes me about 25 minutes to get to work. I might be thinking about math at the time, but not always, and it seems silly to think that someone living closer would be "working less". That said, I may include travel time from school to meetings related to education; I'm on a few committees.

2) LUNCH: Yes.
Mainly because it's rarely the full 45 minutes anyway. The two 14.5 hour days I worked last week featured only 10 minutes for me to actually eat. Besides, the 8 hours of a 9-to-5 job would include lunch too, AFAIK.

3) PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Yes.
It relates to the job. Also, if I go to a conference instead of to school, it doesn't make sense to me that I'm talking about math and teaching methods all day... then recording that I worked zero hours.

4) DISTRACTIONS: Not really.
In other words, if I take five minutes here and there, I'm not about to be deducting that. But if I take a twenty minute time out during lunch, or during my 75 minute prep period, I'm going to nix that time to the best of my abilities. (For instance, time checking Twitter or researching my web serial.)

Related to #4, if I'm distracted at home, I'll be making estimations. For instance, today I started doing some work around 2pm... but I was simultaneously catching up on Linkara videos, and playing Sims online. I took a break for Dr. Who, and at some point, I went shopping. It wasn't until 8pm that I really focussed in and worked for two solid hours. So, going to call that 4 hours overall.

My estimates will probably lean on the low end, because I don't give myself enough credit. I'm not sure how long I'll keep this up either, it's an experiment in progress. If you want to backcheck on my feed, I was tagging #WeekOfHeck for the last week, and now I'm thinking I'll use #TchTag or #TchDay.

Enjoy?