I just conducted a very unscientific poll. I sent out a link on Twitter only and asked people who happened to be around how many hours they worked. It’s not rigorous. However, in the limited sample group I have of 85 (update actually 132) educators on Twitter, here are the results as a CSV file. If you haven’t responded to the survey, and want to add yourself, please feel free to do so, but please be as honest as you can.
First, I had to discard some outliers. While I do believe that there are educators who work 100+ hours in a week, there are too few of you, and you are skewing my results. One lonely soul even indicated that they work 168 hours per work, or 24/7.
First, we can see that elementary school teachers work about the same as secondary school teachers. Some people responded other, and they worked 57.1 hours per week (One of the people in the "other" category contacted me to let me know he was an administrator so maybe this is true of everyone in the other category?).
Post-secondary school teachers apparently have it easy at only 47.8 hours a week, but only 8 of them responded so obviously this a pretty tiny sample size. I don’t think we can conclude much from their responses without more data.
Here’s another chart where I’ve grouped the data.
The most important message I think we can get from these graphs is that teachers work damn hard. Look at how many educators work more than 40 hours a week! Over 90% of the educators who responded to the survey indicated that they work over 40 hours a week. I still think the 3 people at 100+ hours of work a week are a bit extreme and might be exagerating slightly…
The next time someone complains to you about how long teacher vacations are, ask them to count total hours worked in a year, not weeks. You’ll come out ahead in that argument for sure.
Kemp Edmonds says:
As a new educator in post secondary at the part-time level i have been blown away by the amount of unpaid work i am require to do to ensure a quality education for the school’s paying customers. I am paid for 3 hours a per week per course. The challenge to me is that none of the curriculum comes from a textbook. I create it from scratch. I am not paid for that time. Or the time to mark assignments or the time to facilitate online discussions. With an online course the workload and timing of students working throughout the week can become overwhelming. I know my point about part-time instruction of new curriculi is a bit off topic but i know those educators in the 40+ hours/week know what i am talking about. Thoughts?
January 21, 2011 — 9:52 pm
Tara Ehrcke says:
Check the BCTF worklife survey from 2009, chapter 3: http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/WorklifeWorkload/2009/Chapter3.pdf
It shows similar results from a perhaps larger sample group. While it shows an average of 49 hours per week, the data includes part-time teachers as well!
January 22, 2011 — 2:37 pm
Anonymous says:
Really… most teachers work about 5 – 6 hours maximum per day.
Yes, there is marking and lesson plans, but marking and lesson plans in front of the television for 2 hours would probably equal 45 minutes at your desk. I will agree and stand-up for the teachers that work until 4:00 or 5:00 everyday at the school, and help out with the extra-curricular activities. Kudos!
That is what a teacher job is all about though… and you knew that getting into the profession.
So tell me… why did you become a teacher… to have the long summer’s off, or to be there for the kids. I work in the school system and I have not been impressed with the teacher’s working hours for years. I see it all!
The teacher who commented about working 40+ hours per week. You are paid well already and you have loads of time off. Join the millions that work 40+ hours per week doing shift work and get paid the same or less. Maybe be thankful that you are not needing to do your job at 3:00 am, and that you have an entire summer to recharge for the school year.
Having said that… why am I required as a parent to leave my job early to get to parent/teacher conferences that are only available until 2:30, because of the current job action.
Is 2:30 really the end of their workday?
Frustrated and confused about the Job Action.
October 17, 2011 — 11:34 am
David Wees says:
I think it’s important to note a few things:
October 17, 2011 — 11:55 am
Jon Lehman says:
As the author writes, this is a (very) “unscientific study.”
I think most people would tend to consider themselves busier than they actually are.
What’s next? Asking people to rate how intelligent they think they are? 😉
I’d love to see a more accurate study though. It’s a well-debated topic.
January 6, 2012 — 9:42 am
Erica says:
I am an elementary school teacher, and I work about 80 hours a week. I get to school at 7 AM, leave about 6 PM, and after supper continue grading, planning, or making activities until around 10. I work most of Saturday and go into the school on Sunday as well. I know that my co-workers work similar hours. I believe that the graph, especially in in this high-stakes testing age, is fairly accurate.
September 22, 2012 — 11:45 pm
art says:
I had a heating problem that forced me to come home early one day(but had to go back to work)so drove my the local middle school at 4 PM. There were 2 cars in the lot- there are about 40 in the morning. Do they drive home and walk back? Of course no cars at all in the summer. Since most people I know are professionals with master degrees that work 55 hrs a week all year round it is hard to take this seriously
October 6, 2012 — 10:27 pm
David Wees says:
Of course, you’ve assumed that those teachers did no work at home, and you are judging how hard-working teachers are based on a single sample size – one school. Also, what time in the morning did the parking lot get filled up?
October 7, 2012 — 9:55 am
Peter H says:
This study seems fairly accurate. I was an Elementary School teacher and I put in about 60hours a week total. This can take a toll on you not necessarily because of the amount of hours but more so because it felt like you could never escape the work. Brining work home blurs the boundary between work and leisure
May 19, 2013 — 2:59 am
David Wees says:
I read recently that most people overestimate how many hours they work, so I’m not sure how accurate these numbers are. Studies based on monitoring how long people work are probably going to be more accurate than self-reported data. In any case, either way the amount of work teachers do is significant.
May 19, 2013 — 7:24 pm
jeremy says:
enough already with teachers telling us they work 80hrs a week. Investment bankers work 80hrs a week. If any of you even work 45hrs a week you are terribly inefficient. Teacher is an important job but lets not get out of control with the actual work involved. Stop, please.
June 14, 2013 — 10:47 am
David Wees says:
Do you have any evidence to support your position?
June 14, 2013 — 12:11 pm