40-Hour Teacher Workweek Club

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Angela Watson. Angela is a National Board Certified teacher, author, speaker, and creator of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:31] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:34] SPEAKER_01:

Angela, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:35] SPEAKER_02:

Thanks so much for having me, Justin.

[00:37] SPEAKER_01:

So your club is based around what to some ears might sound like an impossible ideal or an impossible idea, the idea of having a 40-hour workweek for teachers. Where did that idea come from that we should actually as educators hold ourselves to a 40-hour workweek?

[00:56] SPEAKER_02:

Well, you know, I call it the 40-hour teacher workweek club because 40 is the number of hours that most teachers are contracted to work every week. So when you hear that name, it's designed to have that reaction to really kind of make you think, wait a second, 40 hours? Is that even possible? How many hours do I work? How many hours do I need to work? So the name just sort of opens up the conversation.

[01:17]

And then from there, teachers can choose their own target number of hours that is realistic for them. So the average member is working 62 hours a week when they joined. and 51 hours a week when they graduate. So that's a savings of 11 hours a week or 500 hours a year. It's a lot, but most people are not getting down to 40 and that's not a realistic goal for them. I think that's okay.

[01:39]

You know, in terms of where the idea came from, it was less about trying to get teachers to work to contract and more about getting them to think about being intentional with their time. Because I felt like when I was a teacher, I was in the classroom for 11 years before doing instructional coaching. I felt like I was able to maintain pretty good work-life balance and still do a great job for kids. But I knew it wasn't the norm. And when I started coaching teachers, you know, I saw what was actually happening in their classrooms and how perpetually overwhelmed they were and how they felt like they had to do everything. And they never really done enough, no matter how hard they worked.

[02:12]

And I'm getting to observe them teach. So I'm seeing all kinds of places where they could be more efficient and lots of habits that they could eliminate or streamline. But there weren't any resources that I could point them to to help them with that. So I wanted to create something that would help them figure out what's truly important and let go of the rest. Because I think sometimes the culture in education is to just keep adding more things to your plate and to try to do as much as possible. And I just wanted a counter narrative for that.

[02:36] SPEAKER_01:

I love that counter-narrative, because the narrative that you're countering, I think, is a very powerful one of doing whatever it takes, of putting in the time. And I think for most people who are working far more than 40 hours, and even more than they want to, honestly, there's an attitude of acceptance, right? That this is just kind of the way it is. This is the job. Whatever it takes, takes a lot. You know what I mean?

[03:02]

And that commitment is there. But it seems like we need to rethink whether that commitment actually forces us to spend as much time at school as we do.

[03:12] SPEAKER_02:

That's exactly right. And I like the fact that you pointed out that it may be more hours than we want to work. Because sometimes I hear teachers say, you know, I love this job and I enjoy doing things in my free time. That's great. You just have to be aware of the trade-offs. And you also have to be aware of how much work you're bringing home in the evenings and weekends that you don't want to be doing.

[03:30]

That's keeping you from working out, from being present with your family and all those kinds of things. And just making those choices really intentionally rather than assuming that you have to work more to prove something or There's no possible way to do a great job for kids and also have work-life balance.

[03:45] SPEAKER_01:

And I think from my perspective as a former principal and as someone who works with principals, I think we deserve no small share of the blame for kind of the guilt trip that we put on teachers sometimes. If we have this expectation that people are going to be there all the time, that they're just going to stay late for the sake of staying late, I feel like we've lost track of teaching as professional work. And I wonder about your thoughts on professionalism, because I look at other professions. I look at people who went through a similar level of education, who have a similar level of skill in their field. And honestly, Angela, I just don't see people putting in tons and tons of extra hours. I see pretty normal hours in most industries with very few exceptions.

[04:31]

What are your thoughts on that kind of professional understanding?

[04:34] SPEAKER_02:

I feel like the 40-hour workweek is maybe not the norm in as many professions before as it used to be. I think America's work hours are kind of creeping up and unpaid overtime is becoming more normalized, particularly with our 24-7 connected culture. So I do see it as a broader problem beyond just education, but I understand the point that you're pointing to. And I think that has to do with the guilt that comes with it. Because in other professions, when you're working these long hours, it may be so that you can get ahead. or so you can get a raise, be promoted and work your way up.

[05:07]

It's a career aspiration. But I feel like what's on the line for educators is your dedication to kids. Because there's the belief, as you pointed out, that you can't do a good job by working your contractual hours. You can't do a good job if you're prioritizing your own needs or your own family. And if you do, that means you're not dedicated. You don't care about kids.

[05:26]

You're not willing to do whatever it takes. And you should just not even be in the profession if you're not going to be there for the right reasons. So that's what I really want to challenge is this correlation between effectiveness and hours worked. Because it's not about how late you're staying in the building that makes a difference. It's whether you're focused on things that make the biggest impact for kids. And that might take you 60 hours a week.

[05:47]

It might take you 45. There's no correlation between your effectiveness and your hours worked, or no direct correlation, where if you're doing more, then automatically that means you're better. And that's a perception that I would really like to change.

[05:59] SPEAKER_01:

And I think one thing that a lot of people overlook when it comes to those longer hours is the law of diminishing returns. I might be much more effective going from 40 to 45 hours if I can put those extra five hours into really good planning. But if I'm talking about going from 67 to 72 hours, those additional five hours probably are not going to add the same value to the quality of learning that my students experience.

[06:24] SPEAKER_02:

That's right. And there's tons of research to back that up, that we actually decrease in our effectiveness after 40 hours a week. And it's kind of interesting to think about how we also do the same thing to students, right? Like, oh, we'll add, we'll lengthen the school day. We'll add more. We'll have all these programs and stuff as if.

[06:39]

You know, making kids sit in a classroom for 12 hours a day is somehow going to help them learn more. And the same thing is happening with educators. You know, if I just stay there more and I just do more things, it's going to give me better results. And it's just not true. There's just no research to back that up.

[06:53] SPEAKER_01:

You know, I think about prep time, right? And the work that teachers need to put in when students are not there in the classroom in order to get ready, in order to plan, in order to assess, in order to prepare materials. And You know, I can't help but think our prep period or our prep time that we have built into teacher schedules is inadequate by a pretty wide margin. You know, and I look at the schedules of tenured college professors, you know, I think, okay, a semester or per quarter. But in terms of the amount of class time they have, you know, it's just really a couple hours per week. And I personally would love to see teachers get about 50% of their day for prep time and collaboration and planning, you know, as part of the contract day, you know.

[07:38]

I think that's probably pretty unrealistic in most places. I don't think that's going to happen. But what do we do with this sorely inadequate amount of prep time that we have? You know, if a teacher has 30 minutes a day or 40 minutes a day, how do we deal with that? How do we get the most out of that?

[07:51] SPEAKER_02:

I think that's a really great point about how more prep time is needed. And it's a difficult problem to overcome because I think, you know, the people who are funding our schools and making these decisions about the budgets and the structures are don't necessarily understand the amount of time that it takes to craft a really awesome lesson. And teachers are not going to walk in there unprepared. If it means giving up your evenings and weekends, you're going to because no one wants to show up with a lesson that's going to completely bomb and not help their students. So we're sort of back to this issue where teachers' big hearts are being taken advantage of, where they're expected to do something on their own time that they really need paid time and resources to complete. So I think one of the most important things that principals can do is allow teachers to use the prep time that they have to actually plan and to do things in their classroom.

[08:39]

Because what I hear from more and more teachers is that this time is being taken up with meetings. They're losing it because they need to cover other classes or they need to fill in for other people. And so they're not even getting that time during the day. And I think we need to really protect that because it speaks to that issue of professionalism. that you brought up that where we treat people as professionals, you know, who need time on the job with all of their resources there, with their colleagues there to collaborate with, to really think about the best way to educate kids. So, you know, that prep time is super, super important.

[09:10]

And I would encourage administrators to try to protect that for their teachers as much as possible. And I would encourage teachers to not write off any block of time because they think it's too small to get something done. So if you only have 15 minutes, don't just check email. Look for something that can be done in 15 minutes. And if you have a good to-do list, if you have a bunch of tasks that need to be done already written down, it's very easy to pick something. So you're not wasting time standing there saying, what should I do with this time?

[09:35]

You're saying, oh, I've got these five things and this one will take five minutes. That one will take five minutes. Let me knock those out right now. And then I feel like I actually made the most of those moments. Because sometimes when you don't have a lot of time, you can actually get more done because you're not procrastinating. You're really just focused.

[09:50]

And you're really motivated to get it done because you know you have that hard deadline.

[09:53] SPEAKER_01:

And I think on the principal side, one thing that we did at the elementary level that provided a little bit of extra time for things like that, not necessarily time to have some big additional meeting, but was simply increasing recess time. And you spoke earlier to the research pointing to the the law of diminishing returns when it comes to extending the work week. But the research has also validated the importance of recess as a part of the school day. So one thing that comes to mind for me for a lot of elementary schools especially is let the kids outside more. Let them go play. Let the teachers have a little bit more time to make their copies and prep materials and talk with one another and coordinate.

[10:33]

Like that's basically free time. And we went in the wrong direction in eliminating that. I think, you know, earlier in this century, we kind of squeezed recess down to the minimum or even eliminated it completely for some grade levels. Kids need that recess time. So that's that's just my little soapbox for principles there.

[10:51] SPEAKER_02:

It's totally related because it's this idea where if we cut back on the time for play, then we have more time for teaching and more time for teaching must be better because more hours is better. It's all that same idea. And we know that kids need that time to run around, get fresh air. They need the time for play. So I think that's a really great point.

[11:08] SPEAKER_01:

So in your program, the 40-Hour Teacher Workweek Club, you have a kind of a year-long game plan. for teachers to go through to free up some of that time to focus on what matters most to trim those hours off the work week what are some of the things that you encourage people to do because you know teachers will be the first to say you know this sounds great but i don't have time to do that you know like so every month you take people through some some actionable steps uh share a couple of those with us if you would yeah i i really sort of broke the mold on this one and everyone told me do not make this a year-long program because it's just too much of a commitment

[11:44] SPEAKER_02:

But what I know from being a teacher and from being an instructional coach is that giving people information one time is just not enough. They really need community. They need ongoing support and they need to hear the same ideas over and over again in different contexts. And that's what I really wanted to create was this ongoing support. It's across a full year because what a teacher needs in August is very different from what a teacher needs in April. So I thought really carefully about what teachers are struggling with at various points in the year.

[12:10]

And we just go step by step. So we spend a month on grading. We spend a month on lesson planning. We spend a month on, you know, setting up a classroom to foster student engagement and, you know, all these different things that teachers are grappling with. And they get something new every single week. So it's a PDF and an audio.

[12:25]

They can either read or listen. And the idea is just pick one thing. Pick one thing that resonates with you and try it out. Really small steps that you can take to be more intentional about how you're using your time and making sure that you're getting the best results for kids. People can go to 40HTW, so 40HTW.com, and you can see sample materials.

[12:46]

And you can also learn about school licensing. That's been something that's really been taking off as we have principals who are wanting to shift the school culture here so that teachers are thinking about this kind of thing together and working together to kind of change the norms in our schools. And that's been really awesome. So you can find school licensing information there as well.

[13:04] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I love that you make this available to entire schools as well as to individual teachers because, you know, obviously people's support from their administration in working fewer hours may vary. But I want to challenge our listeners. If you are an administrator, if you are an instructional coach, encourage your teachers to go home. You know, don't make a hero out of...

[13:23]

the person who works the longest hours you know this is this is about having an impact on kids this is about doing the job effectively not spending the most possible time on it so i would encourage you to to check this out how can you get your teachers to be just as effective or more effective in less time so that they can go home so they can have a life so they can do the things that they need to do for themselves for their family and come back refreshed So Angela, if people want to reach out to you, learn more about your program or find you online, could you tell us again, where's the best place for them to find that?

[13:57] SPEAKER_02:

The best place is the cornerstoneforteachers.com. So there you can find my podcast, which is called Truth for Teachers. You'll find my blog, you'll find my courses and all my social media channels. So I'm happy to connect with any of your listeners. I would love to hear from principals and anyone else listening who wants to connect around these concepts.

[14:15] SPEAKER_01:

Angela Watson, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[14:18] SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for having me.

[14:19] Announcer:

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