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Comment by Sniperfish | Hacker News Reader

My wife is a teacher. I am consistently shocked how much work she does in evenings, weekends. I earn more than twice as much as her and more than her maximum salary cap (we are both early in our careers). She blows me away in her dedication and effort, it's a great inspiration for me to continually study and work harder.

I mention it to people and always hear 'well maybe she is different but I've seen lots of teachers and they just do it for the holiday'. As if everyone is equally dedicated in any profession. As if the guy that sits at his computer 'working' for hours a day is a more efficient or effective worker just because he does more hours. As if outside observers of any industry can really spot who is producing vs who is not.

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I can echo your story exactly. My wife teaches and is involved in an after school program. It isn't football but has a similar time commitment. During certain parts of the year she works 6 days a week often leaving the house at 8 am and returning at 9 or 10 pm. It is insane. Two other teachers in her department work similar hours. The pay per hour isn't very good once you factor all of that in.

At the other end of the spectrum, one of the teachers at my old school used to turn up at 8:30 and leave at 15:30. She used to put a video on, and then hand out worksheets to fill in whilst she marked the worksheets from the class before. Terrible teacher, luckily I only had her for a few weeks.

I have a few friends that are teachers and most of their schools wouldn't allow for this sort of thing to happen. Teachers aren't allowed to sit at their desk while a class is in session, they must be instructing or walking around (during a test, video, etc...). They get a planning period, where they might have a chance to do some grading or lesson planning, if they don't need to meet with a parent or something. This means they need to either stick around school several hours after it lets out to grade work and do lesson plans, or bring it home and work on it that night.

Same boat here. I pretty much assume that my wife will work at least 8 hours, uncompensated, every weekend. She typically works 7-4 at school, and then an hour or two at home. Because we've worked overseas, she has no seniority (years overseas don't count where we're at). Every year since being back in the states, she has been given a slightly different set of classes that have required her to spend a sizable portion of her summer developing new materials--again, pro bono.

I honestly hope she will leave teaching. Part of her extreme work schedule is self inflicted (she genuinely values her students and wants to hold them to a high standard, which creates a lot of work for her). However, I can't see anyone doing as much as she does for an entire career.

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