Paperwork

When I was a student, I always assumed teachers taught. Sure, they generated report cards twice a year and marked all my feeble, and occasionally good, work, but that was it. I just figured that lessons just happened, sometimes they had meetings, and if you couldn't find your teacher in the classroom he/she was probably hanging out in the staffroom. That's what teachers do - right? Wrong. Well, ok, not really wrong, just partially informed. What I didn't know at the time, and have since found out is that teachers are usually swamped with paperwork that has very little to do with actual teaching. Yes, teachers mark papers, yes they create lessons and, if we have time on the way to the washroom where we might have two minutes to grab a cup of coffee, that's not the end of things. Not only do teachers have to mark papers, good bad or indifferent, and create report cards that parents proceed to question because "how could my little darling only have a 40 when the child is brilliant", they also have to shovel themselves out from under a mountain of reports, documents, more reports, forms, documents, reports (did I say that already?), that have nothing to do with what goes on in the classroom, but that someone, somewhere thinks is terribly important and must be done immediately so that they can generate more reports and documents that teachers must fill in - again - somemore.
This of course spawns meetings, meetings and even more meetings on top of the weekly staff meeting, department meeting and whole school meetings, parent/teacher conferences official and unofficial, and everyone wants all the paperwork done yesterday when you only got it two minutes ago and really have no idea what you're supposed to do in the first place. Feel out of breath yet? Are you tired of all the work yet? No? Then make sure you add on committee meetings, interdepartmental meetings and student conferences where the teacher explains, for the ninehundredandninetyninth time why the sentence is grammatically incorrect and no one could possible do that no matter how hard they tried (and I'll leave it to your imagination to fill in the activity). Parents, and the public in general, then tell teachers that they really don't need six weeks in the summer, two weeks at christmas and if school is postponed for H1N1, natural disasters or snow/flood/hurricane/earthquake/tsunami days that the school can be open longer, over the weekends and holidays so that their little darlings can catch up, and of course teachers can handle 36 students in a classroom the size of a broomcloset. Wait a minute. That's my classroom! What do you mean I have to share it with the entire Chemistry department and the caretaking staff need a place to store their brooms and buckets?! Oh and don't forget to have your lesson and unit plans done and on the server by 3:30 yesterday. What do you mean you want planning time to do the work? That's what your evenings and weekends are for. Do we have a headache yet folks? No? Well I do and I'm just writing this. Welcome to my world.