We believed that too until my wife began doing work at our children's schools while living in Louisiana.
What we learned was that teacher workdays are not times in which they can do useful things like catching up on grading and improving lesson plans. Instead, they have to attend various training seminars for which they receive no continuing education credits.
Ditto for scheduled early release days when kids are let out at lunchtime. Teachers have to stay at school as if it was a regular day attending training seminars for which they receive no continuing education credits.
Superficially, teachers do receive generous holidays but what isn't realized is unless they use their annual vacation time during Christmas and Spring Break, they will have to report to school during those times, or take unpaid leave.
Teachers that actually try to teach and interact with students can't sit at their desks and grade papers during class. This then means grading has to be done during planning period, or after hours. Because of school crowding, the teacher may not be able to stay in their room during planning period because the class will be used by another teacher. If the school is short substitutes on a particular day, a teacher may lose their planning period and be required to cover a class as a substitute.
Periodically, teachers will be required to attend meetings with the parents and case managers of any children they have receiving special education. These meetings may take place during the teacher's planning period, or after hours.
All of this causes teachers to do grading and planning during unpaid after hours time.
Because of teacher turnover, remaining teachers may find themselves being rescheduled by principles to teach unfamiliar courses which places additional burdens of planning and preparation on them which must be done after hours.
Then there is parent communication which must be done after hours mindful that every word typed in an email could come back at them in a lawsuit.
Depending on the school, administrators may expect teachers to be seen periodically attending after school events and activities for which they do not receive compensation.
Depending on the school, administrators may also expect more senior teachers to take on "leadership: roles by "volunteering" after hours time as advisers to student groups, or by joining faculty school improvement teams.
Teachers are required to attend open house nights but are not compensated for it.
When you add up all of the work a teacher must do throughout the year for which they are uncompensated, that time then seriously erodes their summer vacation time.
Thank you for saying all that. People don’t realize. I mean, if teaching is such a cushy job, why don’t more people want to do it, eh? Like right now. I’m heading for the laundromat with about 170 essay intros to grade. That’s every single weekend.
Teachers average roughly 1250-1400 hours at work. That compares quite unfavorably to the 2000 hours per year typical of other FTE's.
In my district, the average pay for 1260 hours per year is $42,500. That compares to an average $46,000 for 2000 hours in this community. That's NOT being underpaid.
I heard -- and still hear -- teachers whine all the time about how many hours they have to spend outside of class preparing for the job. Guess what? Welcome to the world of being a professional. Most successful professionals spend 10-15 hours per week more for various kinds of uncompensated overtime. Get used to it. It's what professionals do.
Here in NJ our public school teachers are our upper middle class, and none of those I know do anything you describe. I also work by a school, and we watch the exodus at 3:01 every afternoon. No other job pays so much money for so little results; they fear competition for a reason. They are unemployable in the private sector. What you are calling “uncompensated time” is in fact the work they throw in critics’ faces, so it IS compensated; in the private sector (where we are expected to pay those teachers) we actually have unpaid overtime...