it: take, leave, over.

I love teaching, but I don't hate life. This is a tardy response to this finding, which I think (after a restless night in which I paced my living room, listing all my shortcomings as a teacher and adding "I never give myself a 15.5-hr workday" to said list and then driving to work in the dark to prove I can do it too) is a pile of crap. First of all, you would have to get to work at 6 a.m. Prep for two hours, teach and put out fires from 8 to 2:15, meetings till 3:30 or 4, grade papers and file till 6, plan and prep till 9 p.m. Uh-huh. Sure as I am that any teacher could easily fill 15.5 hours or more a day with the labor of love that we chose, and much as I love the notion that we all deserve an additional $63K a year, I say fuck that. First of all, if I could sue the researchers for the sleep I lost last night, I would, because 15.5 hours is not a realistic average, period. Even if you were so dedicated/pathetic that you had no life outside of teaching, you'd still have to break once in awhile to shit, shower and shave (I had a Desert Storm penpal in the 8th grade, sorry), not to mention sleep. What if you have kids? How do they figure into this 15.5-hour day, and why are more teachers' children not being carted off by Child Protective Services? What if you don't have kids but are married and have someone to think of other than yourself? Heavens, what if you have just yourself to think of - no husband or kids, just a stubborn belief that teachers are people too and should stay the hell out of their classrooms past 5 p.m. and on weekends? One of the things I fretted over last night was just that. Am I supposed to be putting in 17 hours a day because I don't have a family to get dinner on for? Last night I slapped a Boca patty in a frying pan and called it my boyfriend's dinner. According to the 15.5 schedule, there is no time to throw together even a shitty dinner for someone else. At 8 p.m. I was still supposed to be in my classroom, eating a stale granola bar with one hand and grading essays with the other. I have a CRAZY idea. What if instead of 15.5, we were human beings with lives that included cooking actual meals, caring for kids that don't belong to other people, or even just caring for ourselves? What if we excelled due to passion and not slavery? What if people said, my students will remember this unit forever, and not I might as well put in another couple hours because my husband's not home and I don't have to cook? I know, I've got my feminism and my 15.5 rage all in a twist, but stay with me, there is a common point to this, and it goes a little something like: Just as one should eat to live and not the other way around, one should teach students to live, not live to teach students. In honor of (or out of pity for or sheer morbid curiosity about) those who actually put in the good 15.5, I'm going to try it for a day. Letcha know how it goes - if I find it too too addicting, or if I put my red pen down at 8 p.m. because I want to have an actual conversation with the person I live with or want to toss a salad or go for a walk. We shall see. Oh, and remind me to never take a position at Leihoku.