I just completed a mammoth dissertation for a master’s program. The topic I chose was to explicate collaboration at an international school, including highlighting barriers to collaboration. And you know, the biggest barrier that I found in the literature review, and echoed by teachers in the 11 interviews I conducted? It was a lack of time to collaborate, and I get it! You see, I am back in the classroom and it is true, there is hardly any time to do the litany of tasks that are required at a surface level, let alone the deep level which is needed. I mean how else are we to get to know the 20+ human beings that are in our class, if we are not spending time on their learning? Should we do this at a surface-only level? Surely not! So, what happens is that you end up doing a lot of the work in your own time; essentially you do it for free. Moreover, this is a tacit expectation from admin (and for them from the board and so on) of what teachers should do; I have found this to be true of any schools that I have worked at, although some admin is better than others at showing their appreciation for the free labour which they receive, as we all know that it benefits our students. These expectations exist in education as they “come with the territory”, meaning that because we have amazing holidays (and we do), we should be intrinsically motivated to work for free. Then, what inevitably happens is we sit around and complain about the lack of time to do things, which does not create a positive work environment, and then we end up doing the work anyway. In my opinion, we need to critically evaluate the division of labour as it currently exists. And I have a solution…
Scenario
Let us take a typical international school that I have worked at; at the primary/elementary level.
Removing breaks, lunch, and transition time (walking between classes), I calculated that we have 5 hours and 30 minutes of total instruction time per day per student. At my school, this is 990 hours per year of instructional day, spread out over 180 days. Out of that 5.5 hours, homeroom teachers might, depending on the timetable, have non-contact time. For my school, it is a generous 1.5 hours. In this 90-minute session, there are books to mark, lessons to plan, pedagogical practices to read, strategic documents to review, PLCs to plan for, events to coordinate, report cards to write, meetings to attend etc. In other words, there is a ton of work to do outside the time we are with our students. Note, that it is not uncommon for me to spend 60 minutes planning a 60-minute lesson; my current class has a diverse set of needs. What I am getting at here is, I cannot get what I need to get done in those paltry 90 minutes.
Solution – Shorter Days, Longer Year
I propose that we shorten the school day so that instead of having 5.5 hours per day of instructional time, we have 4.5. And instead of teachers being onsite from 7 am to 3 pm, they could leave at 1230pm. They can choose when they collaborate and plan, whether this is on or off-site, as long as we can deliver. A different post is needed about distributed leadership and autonomy.
Given that we want to maintain the instructional time given to our students, we would need to extend the school year by 40 days, bringing the total amount of teaching days up to 220 days! When I mentioned this to two of my colleagues, I was grateful that they did not have any sharp objects to hand, as they categorically rejected this idea – which is part of the problem. I say this is a problem because we need to change our education system to reflect the realities of the world, and for me, this archaic style just isn’t cutting it.
Admittedly, I can be a pain in the ass, as I ask a lot of questions. But isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t this lead to innovation and trying new things to see if they fit? Would we have the current technologies we have because we just accepted things for the way they are? If so, I am fairly sure we would still be ploughing fields and raising livestock; not that there is anything wrong with that, we need to be fed after all. Surely we need to be more flexible, not rigid. Particularly with the advent of AI and all the changes that this will bring with it. Kevin Kelly calls this flowing, I call it waking up.
Let’s kick-start the conversation with these 5 why questions.
- Why are there this many hours of instruction per day?
- Why are the 180 contact days per year?
- Why are there tacit expectations of working in your own time?
- What schools have a different approach?
- Why are we doing things the way we have always done them?
Time to wake up…