The Bottom of the Iceberg
I thought wrong. The time spent in class teaching is only the tip of the iceberg. There are hours and hours put into a 90-minute lesson and a constant flow of emails to respond to.
I'm just running an ASL club, so I don't even have any assignments to mark and I receive a scarce amount of emails. All I have to do is create lessons and activities to fill 60 minutes every two weeks. But you'd be surprised at how much time that actually takes.
Typically, in the week between meetings, I start getting ideas for the next. I'll go home that night, excited about the topic and game, and put, "create ASL slides" into the next available slot in my day planner. When the time rolls around for me to start creating the lesson, I clear my desk of homework (almost too eagerly), silence my phone, and get to work.
As I try to get comfy in my old, creaking wooden chair, I open up a new slideshow. As soon as it loads (with my wifi, it can take a while), I start typing out the week's topic on the title slide as fast as my fingers will go, eager to get all my ideas down.
I usually think of vocabulary on the go and search up GIFs to paste onto the slides (not everyone can see me signing, especially with social distancing). I usually start with about 10 signs and keep thinking of more and more related signs until I have a 40-slide presentation and an FBI agent who's probably looking at my search history thinking, poor Julianne's losing her hearing!
And by the time I've finished adding the activity slides, my laptop's spamming me with "Your laptop battery's running a little low, you may want to charge it" popups, my butt's so numb that it feels like I'm floating, my family thinks I've died, and I'm getting midnight cravings.
All in all, I'd say I spend three times as much time preparing for meetings, as I do running them.
Don't get me wrong, I love making these presentations and I love typing until my butt's sore. But I've come to see that the in-class portion of teaching is only the tip of the iceberg—the rest is the preparation. I've come to appreciate how much work my teachers put into my learning.
I hope that this week, we can all take a little time to show our appreciation for our teachers and acknowledge their unseen dedication to our futures.
Although I wouldn't recommend using a 'sample of 1' in any formal research project, you have actually arrived at the same ratio for prep time that I use (based on decades of 'experiments'). I wonder what ratio your teachers use?
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your important insights, and on selecting a winning number!
It's not really a high investment - good leadership comes from ensuring enough time for debrief reflections, strategic design discussions, and then the logistics prep (finding the images, gathering materials...).
To save my butt, and stay healthy, I have been trying to get off my seat for some of my reflection, design, and prep work: I debrief with colleagues on the phone while walking in the park. And I have set up a standing desk space for my laptop (when I'm not facilitating I can use it, since I don't need multiple screens).
I am jealous that you can facilitate in-person - away from a desk, moving around with real 3D people! All my work is still in Zoom... but that won't be forever.
Thanks for the insights!
DeleteI think I'm going to try new ways of getting out of my chair while working. I might just try a makeshift standing desk!
I'm very grateful that we get to do things in-person this year! I hope you get to go back to in-person soon too!
That does seem like a lot of work... I, like you, used to think that teaching required minimal effort. As my teachers have started to become more forthcoming about the time they spend on marking and planning, my opinion has changed.
ReplyDeleteDespite the large workload, I'm glad you've managed to push through and that you ultimately enjoy running your ASL club.