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EW GURU

Latest post on 25 October 2015 - 22:13

Believe me, children miss absolutely nothing by having their week shortened. I used to be a teacher and on Thursdays we would just do things like decorate the classroom, watch a movie (an educational one, of course!), and do some gardening. Yes, first three hours would still be language arts and math, but nothing would really happen in the afternoon, anyway. For many parents, in fact, it was sort of a free baby-sitting service. I honestly do not understand why are some parents so upset that their children get to spend a few more hours at home. It's not about children spending more time at home, Berberis. It's about a significant portion of weekly hours being cut. School time is measured in contact hours (not days!), so by shaving off 2 hours of teaching time on Thursdays, the school is effectively cutting out almost 10% of the total time spent in class during a week. Curricula are designed around a specific number of hours so I don't understand how a school can cut 2 hours per week (which works out to almost 80 hours per academic year on average) without this having an impact on learning. Maybe it doesn't make too much of a difference to the little ones who spend most of their time learning through play, but it does make a huge difference to older kids. Imagine what you can learn in an 80 hour course! You could easily master the basics of a new language! I am shocked that KHDA and the Ministry of Education would allow schools to do this, knowing well that contact hours are one of the main indicators used for assessing learning outcomes (along with marks/grades). Schools need to make provisions for their teacher training outside regular school hours. There are lunch breaks, all teachers have free hours/periods during the day and there's always online learning so there's plenty of time for their professional development. If my child's 80 hours are being used to train his teachers, I for one would like to see the benefits of this expansive training programme! Hi, I am a teacher and I understand your concern about hours being cut. However, we finish at 1pm on a Thursday and always have done and we only miss 55 mins of teaching on that day compared to any other day. We start teaching at 7.55 and end at 3pm and that is a long teaching day compared to other countries where you might start teaching at 8.30/9am and then finish at 330pm. I have only worked at one school in the UAE but I can categorically tell you it is the same as any other teaching day of the week apart from the fact we are looking forward to the weekend! However, I do think the parents vastly underestimate the job of the teacher and to suggest that teacher training can occur inside the school day at lunch or a free period really annoys me. Firstly not all teachers have a free lesson at the same time so you can't do training with everyone. Secondly, our lunch is 35 mins long which is just enough time to eat or maybe provide a quick club to students. I have meetings after school 3 days a week and some of that does involve training but usually involves strategic planning. In a school day the average teacher might have 1 hour of "free" time. They will arrive at work at 7am ad prepare for the day. They will then have tutor time for 20 mins before launching into a day of teaching. At lunch they will quickly grab lunch and eat for 10 mins. They will have at least 2 duties per week where they have to patrol the school monitoring behaviour. If they are lucky they have another 5 mins before registration and teaching again. Then they will have an hour meeting after school to discuss new policies or that time might be given for data entry/analysis. Usually at this time of year there is a parents evening once every 2 weeks where they will have to stay work until 6pm. Then they will have their marking to do. Imagine a teacher teachers 9 different classes they may have over 100 exercise books to mark which need detailed comments in them. Every six weeks there will be a formal assessment and twice every 6 weeks the books will need to be marked. It will take at least 3 hours to mark a set of 30 exercise books. In addition to this, depending on their job title they will receive at least 20 emails per day sometimes reaching as many as 80, and these will have to replied to within 24 hours otherwise parents will complain. Then they have to deal with young people all day which I am sure most will agree is both rewarding but also challenging and exhausting. I do understand parental complaints especially when they pay so much money, they do deserve a quality education. The vast majority of teachers love their jobs and time manage like there is no tomorrow and we learn to deal with the work load. We enjoy living in Dubai but it is not easy here, bringing it's own challenges in a way that we don't expect in our own country. On top of this we don't earn very much money. Yes we have the holidays but quite frankly this is not even relevant. I have done 2 online courses in the last 5 months and both of them required at least 6 hours of online interaction per week. This is on top of the above. And on top of potentially having your own family, husband, life, friends etc. We are expected to constantly innovate, share resources and improve. In any normal industry you could take time away from your computer to do this. We cannot take time away from the children, so it has to be done when they are not there. Wow you must work in a very big school. It seems like a heavy workload. I always used to see the teachers in my school in the teachers lounge having a cup of tea, gossiping about the students, they had too much free time. When I was a trainee I used to have to do training courses in my weekend. So I was literally at work 7 days a week. On top of that I was in the process of getting my certifications so I didn't have alot of free time either. How long is your training? Surely when teacher training is over they will not make the school day longer again?

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