Is that a FULL 8 hour day like most people work? Or is it 8:30 to 3:30 with 4 breaks during the day?
Unless they teach a specialized subject like math or a hard science.
Newsflash: A teacher's day does not end at 3:30. There are new lessons to write, papers to grade, phone calls to parents to make. And if you're teaching more than one subject, this can take hours. I don't know where you're getting "4 breaks a day" either. I got 2 free periods and a lunch, during which I often met with students to give extra help. And there were mandatory meetings after school sometimes, and parent/teacher night and afternoon.
Teachers DO get good pay in much of the country, contrary to the complaining. But if you think a teacher only works while she is in front of the classroom, you’re willfully clueless. The amount of paperwork teachers have to do these days would stagger and befuddle a teacher from just a couple of decades ago. With no real training in psychotherapy, law or medicine, they have to the paperwork of a therapist, lawyer and doctor. It’s all bullsh!+, but it’s enough busy work to fill the day... for some teachers in some disciplines. The unfairness of the work distribution is another insanity.
My wife is a retired teacher, and by her contract she was obliged to be in the school from 1/2 hour before classes started until 1/2 hour after classes were dismissed for the day.
Of course, teachers argue "but we work additional hours correcting papers, etc." Well yes, but not for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for all of the 187 days.
If teaching is such an easy job, with such short hours, I do not understand why more people do not go into that profession.
See Post 49 in this thread.