Why teacher workload is the scariest thing of all

With Halloween looming, teacher Glen Fraser shares 3 tips to help teachers cut their terror-inducing mountains of work

29th October 2021, 11:22am

Teacher Workload Is The Scariest Thing Of All At Hallowe'en

In October 2020, I devised a plan more horrifying than any seasonal slasher film. No, it didn’t involve donning a ghastly latex mask and scaring any teen who dared to walk past my classroom at lunchtime (although that went down a treat). Rather, I settled on the idea that I would devote the entirety of my October break to lesson planning, marking and (it has to be conceded) terrifying the neighbours’ children with my ghastly latex mask at Hallowe’en.

On paper, it seemed like an ingenious idea for which the pros surely outweighed the cons. After all, what’s one tiny, insignificant week of holiday compared with an entire winter term of having evenings and weekends free? Sadly, much like the teenager in a horror film who foolishly ventures upstairs to investigate that strange noise, I was doomed.

Amazingly, I had hoped to plan out a new unit of work each day until Thursday and spend all of Friday marking. You see, I was new to my school then and I really wanted to hit the ground running in the build-up to Christmas, especially with the increased workload that came with the Covid pandemic.

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As you have probably predicted, I was burned out by Wednesday. I gave up and spent the rest of my holiday wallowing in feelings of inadequacy and guilt.

On so many levels, this was an astonishingly grave error on my part. I should stress that nobody asked me to work over the holidays - I am lucky to have a very supportive boss who never demands that their staff take work off-campus. However, it is equally true that the “working time agreement” is a fallacy about as plausible as Freddy Krueger winning a babysitter of the year award.

Teacher workload: The problem of too much class contact time

As James McEnaney highlighted in his recent book, teachers in Scotland have an inordinately high amount of classroom contact time when compared with other countries. This essentially means that unless I throw textbooks at my pupils each day and kid myself that it constitutes teaching (which I flat out refuse to do), it feels nearly impossible to avoid some kind of unpaid overtime.

The term that followed my lost holiday nearly broke me, and part of that grim reality resulted from my reckless decision. One year later, I have learned a lot about burnout and (crucially) the ways in which it can be curbed.

1. Say ‘no’ more often

(I’m looking at you, NQTs.) I spent the first three years of my career seriously struggling with that powerful two-letter word. In short, there is nothing wrong with saying “no”; it shows strength, conviction and a commitment to your pre-existing duties. A good tip for new teachers is to use your planner to pinpoint exactly when you will mark, develop resources and take CPD courses. This makes it much easier to recognise when you are about to take on too much.

2. Share all of your resources

There is no need to duplicate work. It is far less time-consuming to adapt pre-existing lessons to the needs of your learners than to start from scratch. The wheel does not need to be constantly reinvented.

3. Dare to read the room and improve your reflexivity

A distinctive new teacher trait is to lean on PowerPoint presentations like a crutch. This is understandable, as a good deck of slides can help the pace of a lesson and certainly reaffirm confidence for student teachers who still feel a little uncertain in the classroom.

The problem is that developing a year’s worth of fresh units is extremely time-consuming. And mapping out the minutiae of a lesson weeks in advance can often fly in the face of differentiation by detracting from the needs of the kids in front of you.

Thankfully, I have found that experience brings a greater propensity to experiment with reflexivity. For me, this means having a range of activities up my sleeve that can be easily modelled with little more than a whiteboard and a pen.

Nothing I have suggested here is original, and nor will it solve the problem of teacher burnout. That will only come with huge education reforms for which I am not holding my breath.

However, I am pleased to report that the tips above meant that I didn’t work at all over the 2021 October break. Instead, I focused on the important things in life such as resting, spending time with my wife and (of course) purchasing a new ghastly latex mask for the purposes of terrifying my teens at Hallowe’en. See the evidence below...

Glen Fraser is a secondary teacher in Scotland