What's it actually like being a teacher?

Have you ever wondered about what it’s actually like to be a teacher? Sure, teaching is one of those professions that almost everyone has had contact with in their life-as a student, a parent, a friend, heck-on social media, but what is it truly like to be a teacher for lets say, a week?

Even as a teacher myself, I’ve often wondered, “What are my teacher friends up to before, during, and after school?” For a profession that has you surrounded by people all day, you may not think of it as an isolating/individual job, and in many ways it’s not, but many teachers spend their mornings and afternoons in their classrooms alone and with their students for about 6 hours a day in between. We rarely watch each other teach, so although some teams may plan together, grade together, and brainstorm, a majority of teaching is spent in the absence of other adults.

My position is a bit different from most classroom jobs, so my account may be a bit unique, but here is my attempt at narrating a week in the most raw, accurate way I could. This doesn’t include all of the wonderful, mushy, grateful emotions that come with teaching. I LOVE my job, even in all of its chaos, but I am saving that for another post. Here ya go!

Mornings at home: Contractually, I have to be at school at 7:45, and thankfully I live close to school, so in order to get all of my morning responsibilities accomplished, I *should* wake up around 5-5:30 AM (this does not always happen). Before I leave for school I try to read my Bible or devotional or listen to the verse of the day story on the Bible app, as well as write in my journal. I make coffee, sometimes breakfast, and pack some snacks or lunch for the day. If I get up early enough, I will go to a CrossFit workout at my gym or workout in the gym at my apartment complex, but often I work out after school. Two days a week I walk my lab, Penny, for about 30-45 minutes around the neighborhood, and three days a week I take her to doggie daycare before school.

Planning, creating, and preparing curriculum materials for the year:

I’ve taught a few different grades and classes in my five years as a teacher, so during each summer, I typically start to plan both the overview of the year or semester and the general weekly and daily routines that I want in my class. For the semester/yearly overview, state standards help guide the skills that need to be addressed, and grade levels or schools may determine some of the topics/genres that will be focused on: for intervention, I can choose pretty much any texts that are age appropriate and engaging. I usually start with a few novels and as the year progresses, I pair the novels with other texts and media resources that build background knowledge. As for weekly/daily routines, it took a while to establish one that is effective and doable, but Monday-Wednesday I teach whole group (about 15 minutes of phonics, 15 minutes of vocab, and 15 minutes of comprehension for each class period), Thursday is small group work as a follow up to the previous days’ lessons and determined by individual students’ assessments, and Friday is for quizzes, assessments, and choice time. Daily, students pick up their novel and their folder from their respective class period box. Their folders contain their decoding sheets, their REWARDs workbook, their vocab workbook, any vocab extension activities, and any comprehension graphic organizers.

Planning, creating, and preparing curriculum materials for the week:

Once I’ve established my overall routines and schedule regarding academics, the actual planning and prepping can begin. My district provides REWARDS workbooks for all of my students, which is a phonics and morphology curriculum for intermediate and secondary students, 95% Group Multisyllabic Routine Cards and practice sheets, Vocab Surge workbooks, and a comprehension curriculum with grade levels texts and graphic organizers for each reading standard (I use the graphic organizers for ideas but change the texts as they’re quite outdated). My phonics focused classes need more practice with syllable work, so for each syllable type, I make a list of additional words to practice fluency and print out decodable texts for each syllable type. REWARDS is great, focusing on vowel patterns, prefixes, and suffixes, but it also needs additional word lists and decodable texts, so I create those for each lesson and print those out. Vocab Surge has some activities that we do in each lesson (each lesson takes about 2 weeks), but I usually create an additional 2-3 supplemental activities for each lesson’s root words so that students have more opportunities to practice using the words. I tend to use novels for comprehension instead of our curriculum, so prepping for comprehension involves reading and annotating the novel, creating slides and activities to build background knowledge, creating graphic organizers, creating skill based tasks (inferring, questioning, identifying author’s purpose/theme, finding evidence, etc.), typing fluency paragraphs from the text, creating questions and quizzes, and identifying words with difficult patterns to decode. Lastly, I create a daily slide so that students know what materials they need each day, what our agenda is, and have a warm up activity to start when they come into class.

Assessments (three types):

Standardized assessments that are diagnostic in nature-state tests, iReady, and Oral Reading Fluency passages tell educators who need additional support and who are performing at grade level. These are already created, so for the state tests that every student takes, my job is to look at the scores and data and identify students who initially qualify for intervention-this is typically done through a spreadsheet and lots of emails with counselors and parents at the beginning and end of both semesters. Oral Reading Fluency passages are also diagnostic but only administered to students who have qualified to determine if fluency and phonics are an instructional need or not.
Instructional assessments are typically administered 1:1 or in small groups that determine specific areas of needed instruction like phonics patterns, prefixes and suffixes, or explicit or implicit comprehension. The administration of these assessments takes place in various forms, but this year I will be giving these assessments to students during our daily advisory/homeroom class and after school on Fridays with early release. This data is kept in a spreadsheet and informs my instruction regularly.
Content based assessments are what people most typically think of in regards to “grades”. I usually make all of these to gage student understanding and progress on our vocabulary and morphology study, novel studies, and other text comprehension checks. Some grades are mastery based and some are effort based. The creation and grading of these assessments takes place before and after school or during my planning period. Students take 1-2 comprehension checks every two weeks and are graded on completion or effort for other activities about 10-20 times a semester.

Planning Period/After school: Every day and week after school is slightly different, some weeks filled with meetings and others less busy. A typical week would include a Wednesday all staff meeting where nuts and bolts are addressed, and a Friday professional development/training meeting. Most weeks include either an SST, IEP, or 504 meeting, where we are discussing students of concern as a team or students who already have a legal document in place and conferring with parents on updates. The other two days usually consist of me downloading emotionally after the day, then planning/prepping for the next day, grading, or collaborating with another teacher about a student we have in common.

For every student we submit an academic concern for and for students who have IEPs and 504s, there are surveys to fill out, sometimes parents have questions and want to chat via email or phone, and sometimes I need to contact parents to discuss a concern or celebration regarding their child. I may need to submit a discipline referral (or 5) if I didn’t already complete that during the school day.

Daily agenda over the course of a typical week:

7:30-7:45 arrive to school

Turn on string lights
Power up projector
Display daily slide
Print out any new graphic organizers, decoding sheets, or extension activities if needed
Check emails (Morning emails usually consist of):
- Teacher absence list / sometimes being asked to sub during planning period
- Reminder of any special schedules or school events going on
- Reminder to make any announcements to my advisory/homeroom class about forms, events, elections, etc.
- Maybe a parent email about a student’s grade, absence, etc.

Classes are 50 minutes each. Each teacher has 5 instructional periods and one planning period.

Below is the academic outline for each day, but the part about being a teacher that really keeps you on your toes is that schedules rarely are followed perfectly due to hundreds of reasons (I’ve tried to list as many as I could think of here, but so much happens over the course of a day, you honestly forget a lot)

Student comes into class crying
Conflict in the hallway and students want to talk about it
Peer to peer conflict during class
Student shares about something that is on their mind mid lesson (sometimes sweet sometimes not lol) :)
Student falls asleep in class
Student does not have needed supplies, so you are reprinting materials and sending student to library to pick up
Student(s) gets called to office during class
Student was absent and asks what you did when they were absent mid lesson (we have an absent folder, but it’s a work in progress)
Office calls classroom during lesson
About 8 students ask to use the restroom or get water (we do have a system/passes)
Student tells you 15 minutes into lesson that they haven’t had a pencil
Student doesn’t have computer or charger for iReady or quiz
Student has emotional struggle and leaves class abruptly
Intercom announcements
Students blurt out/are talking mid lesson about 28 times during class (I’m not exaggerating lol)

Monday-Wednesday:

8:05 Bell Rings for first period (50 minute classes + advisory + one planning period)

I have 5 periods of students per day, so this schedule is generally similar for each class although different novels for 7th and 8th grade and a phonics forward class and a comprehension forward class

Students sleepily walk in and grab their folders, check the daily slide, and I take attendance while chatting with them and finding how they’re doing that day.
I have tea and hot water for students if they’d like to bring their own mug to school on Mondays.
We begin Monday mornings with a guided meditation.
Decoding curriculum (syllable splitting, spelling on whiteboards, fluency word lists, sorting charts, dictation, fluency paragraphs). We do most of this together under the document camera or with partners at table groups
Vocabulary practice-every 2 weeks we study about 5 root words and together, in partners, and independently students practice building words, using words correctly in sentences, and figuring out word meanings in context
Comprehension-each class reads 5-6 novels a year (I mostly read aloud to them and they follow along). We do a plethora of background knowledge building, vocabulary practice, fluency reads, close reading, comprehension strategies (visualizing, connecting, inferring, determining theme, analyzing writing strategies, etc.). We also watch videos and read shorter texts that pair with our current novel.

Thursday:

The class schedule is the same, but Thursdays are for small group/individual instruction. I have a range of student needs in my class (as all teachers do), and all of my students are needing extra instruction in one or more areas of literacy to achieve at grade level. These groups are determined by the three types of assessments explained above. While I am teaching at a horseshoe table on Thursdays, the rest of the students are completing iReady lessons at their tables. My groups are usually about 10 minutes each and consist of 1-2 students up to 8 students. Some examples of content include fluently decoding two-syllable words, fluently decoding 4-5 syllable words with complex morphology and schwa sounds, practicing more vocabulary, or reading a short text and answering comprehension questions or forming writing responses. The planning/prep for Thursdays is the most taxing because I am teaching about 15 direct instruction lessons each day, but it also meets students where they are at and helps me connect with them as well.

Friday:

Fridays students take either a vocab or a comprehension check quiz to ensure understanding. Then, we have “Fun Fridays” where students can choose an activity to do individually or in small groups. I rotate these out, but some include: nail art, jewelry making, color by number, mini workouts, listening to a podcast, slime, and others-always looking for suggestions! Many of my students have negative outlooks on school, and they take my class in replacement of PE or their elective, so I hope to build buy in by offering this time each week.

Advisory:

Advisory is 25 minutes Monday-Thursday and once a month for an hour on Fridays. 2-3 times a week I pull students from their advisory classes to monitor progress. On Friday extended advisory days, I meet with about 30 students who are ASB advisors and we update them on school happenings and events. About 2 days a week I meet with the four elected officials and we plan our assemblies, fundraisers, school dances and parties, and family gatherings. I spend the rest of the time during my advisory booking vendors and updating reading assessment spreadsheets.

There ya have it! I hope this offered some clarity for fellow teachers and nonteachers alike!