One of the worst-kept secrets of the teaching profession: The amount of time many educators dedicate to their jobs outside of their contract hours. Additional duties such as lesson planning, grading, and monitoring after-school activities are among the many forces that can extend a teacher’s workday.
For many, the most frustrating part of this phenomenon is that these extra to-do’s often don’t include more pay. Education Week put out a LinkedIn poll asking users whether they believed teachers should qualify for overtime pay (teachers don’t currently qualify, but other school staff do), and respondents had a lot to say in the comments, as well as on Facebook.
Below is a summary of the main themes from those conversations. The comments have been lightly edited for clarity.
Fair compensation may break the system
If they would agree, I would agree, but that means cities’ taxes would increase by like 1,000%, or else they’d go bankrupt.
School systems survive on the unlimited unpaid overtime of teachers!
Hahaha the system would go broke!
Is salary status enough?
This is a salaried position, but we should be paid a fairer rate based on the level of education required.
Any answer other than "yes" is simply ridiculous. Either stop expecting more, stop demeaning teachers who clock out 'on time,' or start paying. There's nothing about any job, anywhere, that means anyone should do more than what they’re paid for ... it defeats the entire definition of any employment.
Lesson planning and grading often require overtime
I work at least 20-30 additional hours a week just planning and creating lessons.
As a teacher, it would be impossible to track the amount of “overtime” we put in during the day. Also, different subjects require more additional time, such as the amount of extra time required by English teachers for marking.
After-school events should be factored into pay
Between PTO meetings, sporting events, etc., overtime pay is definitely needed!
If time beyond contractual hours had to be paid, they’d be pushing us out the door at the contractual end of day, instead of adding after-school tutoring, detention, and planning.
Other ideas beyond overtime pay
Just give us a salary commensurate with our workload and the fact that we need an advanced degree to do this.
Give real time to plan for the job within the school day. Planning time is the issue, especially for K-5.
