Episode Summary

In this episode, I look at one of the simplest realities behind teacher workload: there are still only 24 hours in a day. During my 24 years in education, the responsibilities surrounding teaching have expanded tremendously. Many of those responsibilities are individually reasonable, but when we continue adding them together, the total workload can become unreasonable.

I explore the invisible ways teacher time disappears through email, documentation, interventions, meetings, technology, behavior support, data collection, communication, safety responsibilities, and other expectations. Planning time is often consumed by everything except planning, but the lesson still has to be ready tomorrow. That's how work quietly migrates into mornings, evenings, lunches, weekends, and teachers' personal lives.

I also challenge the idea that every workload problem can be solved through better time management. Organization, technology, automation, routines, boundaries, and good systems can absolutely help, but they cannot make 10 hours of necessary work fit into an eight-hour day. That's why I believe addition should require subtraction. If schools add something meaningful, leaders should also ask what can be removed, simplified, automated, delegated, or stopped.

Ultimately, I believe protecting teacher time is a teacher-retention strategy. Teachers are willing to work hard, but willingness to work hard should not become permission to continuously add more. Sustainable teaching has to leave room for teachers to remain human beings outside the classroom, and protecting that life may be exactly what allows great educators to keep showing up year after year.

Show Notes

• How the scope of teaching has expanded
• The accumulation of “just one more thing”
• Email and other forms of invisible work
• Why planning time keeps disappearing
• Teachers quietly donating personal time
• Why productivity cannot fix an impossible workload
• Addition should require subtraction
• Protecting teacher time as a retention strategy

Key Takeaways

• Individually reasonable responsibilities can create an unreasonable total workload.
• Every additional responsibility requires actual time somewhere in a teacher's day.
• When planning time disappears, preparation often moves into teachers' personal lives.
• Better time management cannot make an impossible workload equation work.
• Adding new expectations should require conversations about what can be removed.
• Protecting teacher time is a practical teacher-retention strategy.
• A sustainable teaching career must leave room for a life outside school.

This is Mr. Funky Teacher with BeAFunkyTeacher.com. I'm coming to you with another Be a Funky Teacher podcast.

Welcome back, everyone.

Today's episode is called More Responsibilities, Same 24 Hours.

There are 24 hours in a day.

That hasn't changed during my teaching career.

I'm beginning my 24th year in education, and I can tell you that the job inside those 24 hours has changed tremendously.

There are things I do today that weren't nearly as significant a part of teaching when I started.

More documentation.

More data collection.

More interventions.

More communication.

More technology.

More assessments.

More meetings.

More accommodations and differentiation.

More behavior documentation.

More social-emotional responsibilities.

More mental health needs.

More safety responsibilities.

More emails.

And individually, a lot of those things make sense.

That's what makes this conversation complicated.

Someone says:

"We need better data."

Okay.

Someone says:

"Hey, we need to communicate with families more."

Absolutely.

Another person might say:

"Hey, we need to document interventions."

Okay.

That makes sense.

We need to support students emotionally.

Of course.

We need teachers to learn this new technology.

Probably.

We need another safety procedure.

Absolutely.

But eventually, somebody has to ask:

Where is all of this going to fit?

Because we can add responsibilities to a teacher's job description.

We can add initiatives.

We can add meetings.

We can add documentation.

But there's one thing we haven't figured out how to add:

Hours to the day.

Before we get into it, let's ground ourselves in gratitude.

Here are three things that I'm thankful for.

The first thing that I'm thankful for is leaders who remember what it's like to be in a classroom.

I've heard my current superintendent talk about intentionally trying to remember what it feels like to be in a classroom as a classroom teacher when decisions are being made.

And I appreciate that.

Because one of the easiest things that can happen when somebody moves away from classrooms is forgetting how quickly seemingly small requests accumulate.

Leadership decisions feel different when somebody asks:

And I'm thankful for leaders who are willing to ask that question.

The second thing that I'm thankful for is things outside of education that remind me that I'm more than my job.

I love teaching.

I love teaching so much.

But I also love getting outdoors.

Paddling.

Traveling.

Podcasting.

Hiking.

Dancing.

Biking.

Spending time with people I care about.

Those things aren't distractions from being a good teacher.

They are part of what allows me to continue being one.

And I'm thankful for the parts of life that refill me, especially the parts of my life that refill me instead of requiring something else from me.

And then the third thing that I'm thankful for is systems that actually save time.

Every once in a while, you find a system, a tool, a routine, or a piece of technology that really does make the work easier.

Not something that claims it's going to save teachers time and then creates three more things they have to maintain.

Something that genuinely removes friction when teachers already have full plates.

Anything that gives some meaningful time back is worth appreciating.

And I'm just so thankful when you encounter something that actually does save time.

So the topic once again is More Responsibilities, Same 24 Hours.

And I want to make an important distinction.

This isn't an argument that teachers shouldn't be accountable.

We should.

This isn't an argument against interventions or communication or data or professional development or supporting students.

The question isn't whether each responsibility has value.

The question is:

What happens when we continue adding individually reasonable responsibilities until the total workload becomes unreasonable?

Because sometimes the problem isn't that teachers don't know how to manage their time.

Sometimes we've simply put more work into the day than the day can hold.

The job has expanded.

Teaching has never simply been standing in front of a classroom delivering lessons.

That's not new.

But when I compare the profession I entered more than two decades ago with the profession today, the scope of the job has expanded.

Think about interventions alone.

Many schools don't have one intervention structure anymore.

There may be multiple intervention periods or systems.

Teachers are collecting data.

Monitoring progress.

Adjusting groups.

Documenting what they've done.

Communicating results.

Then they're differentiating.

They're making accommodations.

Looking at assessment data.

Working with technology platforms.

Doing parent communication.

Then you have behavior documentation.

Focusing on social-emotional learning.

Providing support around mental health and behavioral health.

Then doing professional development.

Being part of committees.

Doing safety trainings.

Then you have lockdown procedures that may vary depending on the type of emergency that we have to become proficient in and have mastery over in order to really try to keep our students as safe as possible for any type of emergency.

And then there's the actual teaching.

Planning lessons.

Teaching them.

Assessing learning.

Providing feedback.

Reteaching.

Building relationships.

Creating engaging experiences.

Responding when students don't understand.

The work hasn't simply gotten busier.

The definition of what teachers are responsible for has gotten wider.

And that's an important distinction here.

One more thing is really one more thing.

This phrase may be one of the most dangerous phrases in education:

"It's just one more thing."

Because sometimes it really is a small thing.

Maybe this thing that's been added takes five minutes.

What's five minutes?

Except another person has a five-minute request.

And another.

And another.

Now multiply that across the week.

Across the month.

Across an entire school year.

The problem isn't necessarily the individual request.

The problem is accumulation.

That's why I think we need to stop evaluating workload only by asking:

"Is this particular request reasonable?"

We also need to ask:

"Is this reasonable considering everything else we are already asking teachers to do?"

Those are very different questions.

A glass can hold another drop of water.

And another.

And another.

Every individual drop is tiny.

But eventually, the glass overflows.

Teachers can experience work the same way.

You keep filling.

You keep filling.

Until it just overflows.

Email is invisible work.

Email is a perfect example of invisible work.

Email is one of those things that doesn't sound like much.

"Just answer the email."

Okay.

One email might take two minutes.

But what if there are 50?

And they're not all:

"Thanks. Have a great day."

One person needs information.

Someone else needs documentation.

A parent has a concern.

An administrator needs a response.

There's a meeting update.

Someone sent a document you're supposed to review.

There's something you need to complete.

There's something you need to schedule.

And meanwhile, you've got a classroom full of students.

That's the part that's easy to forget.

Teachers aren't sitting at desks for eight hours answering correspondence.

Our primary work is happening with children.

So when exactly does the email get answered?

Before school?

Planning time?

Lunch?

After school?

At home?

That's how small responsibilities quietly migrate outside the workday.

Not because one email is overwhelming.

Because 50 individually manageable tasks still require 50 pieces of time.

Planning time is constantly competing with everything else.

Planning time sounds simple.

It's right there in the name.

Planning time.

Except teachers know how quickly that time gets claimed.

A meeting gets scheduled.

A student needs support.

Someone stops by.

There's paperwork.

You need to call a parent.

You need to enter data.

There's an intervention issue.

There's a technology problem.

You need to document a behavior.

You need to answer those emails we just talked about.

And suddenly, your planning period is over.

But here's the problem.

The planning still has to happen.

Those students are coming tomorrow whether you had time to prepare or not.

And I don't just want to throw something together.

I want to have students engaged.

I want them thinking.

I want to create experiences that make them excited to learn.

I want to refine what I'm doing.

I want to keep growing.

High-quality teaching takes preparation.

So when preparation gets pushed out of the preparation time, it has to land somewhere.

And very often, that somewhere is the teacher's personal life.

Teachers quietly donate time to make the system work.

Early mornings.

Late afternoons.

Lunch.

Evenings.

Weekends.

Teachers have been donating time to education for generations.

I've done it.

Especially at the beginning of a school year.

I may come in early or stay late because there's so much to establish.

I've worked weekends.

I've worked through lunch.

I've planned at home.

I've also learned that I have to be careful.

If I'm coming in early regularly, I try not to also stay extremely late.

If I know I'm going to stay later, maybe I don't come in as early.

I'm trying to create some balance.

Because there's always something else you could do.

That's one of the traps of teaching.

You can always make tomorrow's lesson a little better.

You can always send another email.

You can always organize another thing.

You can always create another resource.

Review another piece of data.

The work has no natural ending.

At some point, the teacher has to create one.

And that's difficult for people who care deeply about doing the job well.

The time taken by school comes from somewhere else.

This is something I think really gets lost in workload conversations.

Time isn't created.

It's transferred.

If I spend another hour working tonight, that hour comes from somewhere.

Maybe it comes from sleep.

Maybe exercise.

Maybe my family.

Maybe something I enjoy.

Maybe simply sitting quietly and letting my brain stop working for a while.

Teachers have lives.

Some are raising children.

Some are helping aging parents.

Some are caregivers.

Some have second jobs.

I also am an adjunct college instructor at a local college.

Many educators work additional jobs for all kinds of reasons.

Then there are the things that make us human.

Hobbies.

Friends.

Travel.

Exercise.

Faith.

Being outdoors.

Whatever fills you back up.

Those things matter.

Because the goal can't be to create teachers who are technically getting everything completed while their lives outside school slowly disappear.

A sustainable teaching career has to leave room for a human being to exist outside the classroom.

Better time management cannot fix an impossible equation.

I believe in organization and efficiency.

I believe teachers can develop better systems.

I've certainly gotten better at those things over my career.

Technology can help.

Automation can help.

Templates can help.

Routines can help.

Systems can help.

Prioritization can help.

Boundaries definitely help.

But we have to get to the point where we're careful about turning every workload problem into a personal productivity problem.

Because eventually, the mathematics stops working.

Imagine a teacher has 10 hours of work that genuinely needs to happen inside an eight-hour workday.

We can teach that person productivity strategies.

We can give them a better calendar.

We can tell them to prioritize.

We could recommend a new app.

But unless something changes, there are still 10 hours of work and eight hours available.

At that point, saying:

"Manage your time better."

Can become another way of telling teachers:

"Figure out how to make an impossible equation work."

Sometimes teachers need better systems.

And sometimes systems need to ask less of teachers.

Both can be true.

Addition should require subtraction.

There's something that I've really appreciated with my superintendent.

He believes that if we're going to add something to teachers' plates, we really need to take something away.

I've heard him say that to our teachers.

To our administrators.

That type of thinking tells me he gets it.

We can't just keep piling stuff onto teachers' plates.

And I've had individual conversations with him, the superintendent where I teach.

I think that's a powerful leadership principle.

Because schools do need to change.

I'm not advocating that we freeze education exactly where it is.

New needs emerge.

New technology arrives.

Research changes.

Students change.

Sometimes something absolutely needs to be added.

But addition should force a conversation about subtraction.

What are we going to stop doing?

What can we simplify?

What can be automated?

What can be delegated?

What can happen less frequently?

What documentation are we collecting that nobody actually uses?

What meetings could be shorter?

What initiatives are we doing that have outlived their usefulness?

And here's the hard part.

This has to be ongoing.

Because I've seen organizations make a big push to reduce workload, saying something like:

"Hey, we took these three things away."

And that's great.

But then September comes and something gets added.

October comes.

Something else gets added.

Then November comes.

Another little request.

Before long, we've rebuilt the pile.

We said we were reducing workload.

Workload creep is real.

So subtraction can't be a one-time initiative.

It has to become a leadership habit.

Protecting teacher time is a retention strategy.

Sometimes teacher-retention conversations jump immediately to recruiting.

How do we get more people into education?

That's important.

But I've been arguing throughout this series that we also need to ask:

How do we make this a profession great teachers can sustainably stay in?

Teacher time is part of that answer.

If teachers constantly feel behind...

If every planning period disappears...

If nights and weekends become expected work time...

If every year brings additional responsibilities without anything coming off...

Eventually, people make decisions.

Some change schools.

Some change districts.

Some leave education.

And then we're surprised.

But why should we be?

You cannot continuously tell people that the workload is simply part of the job and then be shocked when some of them decide they no longer want the job.

Teachers absolutely have responsibilities.

This is demanding professional work.

But demanding and unsustainable aren't the same thing.

If we care about retention, we have to care about workload.

Not symbolically.

Practically.

In minutes.

In meetings.

In expectations.

In responsibilities.

In the actual lived experience of a teacher's day.

The goal isn't to do everything. It's to protect what matters most.

Maybe this is where the conversation ultimately has to go.

We can't do everything.

Teachers can't.

Administrators can't.

Schools can't.

Districts can't.

So the question becomes:

What matters most?

Students learning.

Students feeling known.

High-quality instruction.

Strong relationships.

Meaningful feedback.

Safety.

Growth.

Helping young people develop the skills they will need beyond our classrooms.

Those things deserve teacher energy.

And every time we add something else, we should ask whether it supports those priorities or competes with them.

Because being busy isn't the same as being effective.

A teacher can spend an entire day completing tasks and still leave feeling like:

"I didn't have enough time to teach."

That's a problem.

The goal shouldn't be squeezing every possible ounce of productivity out of teachers.

The goal should be creating conditions where teachers can invest their limited time and energy in the work that matters most.

Because there are still only 24 hours.

And teachers are still human.

Well, as I do a reflective close here, this is such a powerful conversation today.

Twenty-four hours.

That's what we get.

Teachers don't get 26.

Administrators don't get 27.

Parents don't get more.

Nobody does.

And maybe that's why this conversation is ultimately about more than workload.

It's about priorities.

If everything is important, eventually nothing is.

If everything is urgent, teachers spend their careers running from one urgent thing to another.

And if every new idea gets added without asking what can come off, eventually the profession becomes too heavy for people to carry sustainably.

That doesn't mean teachers shouldn't examine their own habits.

I do.

I've had to learn boundaries.

I've had to learn that there's always going to be something else I could do.

I've had to learn that sometimes I need to leave school and go live my life.

That's not laziness.

That's sustainability.

And leaders have a role too.

One of the most encouraging things I've heard from my current superintendent is his desire to remember what being a classroom teacher actually feels like.

I think that's powerful.

Because maybe one of the best questions any educational leader can ask before adding another expectation is:

Where will the teacher find the time to do this?

And if the answer is:

At home.

At night.

During lunch.

On Sunday.

Maybe we need another question:

What are we willing to take away?

Because great teachers are willing to work hard.

I've seen that for more than two decades.

Teachers give enormous amounts of themselves to this profession.

But willingness to work hard shouldn't become permission to continuously add more.

And teachers, here's my challenge for us.

Look at your workload.

What's one thing you're doing because it genuinely matters?

Protect it.

And what's one thing consuming your time that doesn't have nearly the impact you thought it did?

Maybe you don't need to do it perfectly.

Maybe you can simplify it.

Maybe you can ask whether it's necessary.

Maybe you can establish a boundary.

Because you are a teacher.

But you are also a person.

You have people who need you outside that classroom.

You have interests.

You have relationships.

You have a life.

And protecting some of that life doesn't make you less committed to your students.

It may be one of the things that allows you to keep showing up for them year after year.

The problem isn't always that teachers don't know how to manage their time.

Sometimes we've simply put more work into the day than the day can hold.

And if we want great teachers to stay, we have to be willing to talk about what's in that day.

In our next weekday episode, we're going to finish looking at this changing reality from another angle:

Teaching in the Age of AI.

Because while artificial intelligence may eventually help us remove some things from teachers' plates, it also brings an entirely new set of questions about what teachers are being asked to do.

If you found value in this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts and hit me up with a five-star review.

Let me know what you think.

It helps more teachers find this space.

And as you go into your day, I want you to remember to inspire greatness in young people.

And don't forget to be a funky teacher.

Bye now.