Reality Check

I find it quite disturbing when students complain if I don't have time to look at their extra work, as though I should be prepared as a teacher to work unpaid extra hours. Often the complaints seem to assume that I - and other teachers - have taken on too many committments - personal or other-professional - if we refuse or postpone this extra work. Like anyone else, my personal life and my other professional activities occur outside the finite number of hours I am employed by the TAFE, as you would expect.

Let me put some facts forward. I'm employed by GippsTAFE to work for a set number of hours and I work that set number of hours. My work is divided into a number of different activities, mostly teaching time, but including preparation, marking, professional development, administrative work and meetings.

Now, while in an ideal universe this set of number of hours would include a weekly allocation to look at extra work from students, to read and research further material appropriate to the courses I teach, to undertake a diversity of professional development opportunities and to learn, develop and utilise new technologies that are appropriate to e-learning, the reality is that I am paid to work a finite number of hours each week and the preceding list doesn't get factored into these. Some of these, in particular wide reading and research and professional development opportunities, I undertake for my own personal interest and am happy for my teaching institution to reap the benefits of my recreational time.

I expect to get paid for my teaching work. I simply wouldn't teach if I didn't get paid. I don't expect an electrician to come and fix something for me for the sheer love of fixing it. Nor would I expect to find Vic Roads open after hours just so they could provide unexpectedly good customer service. So, please, when you approach a teacher to commit to extra work - read over a rewritten assignment which, in a previous version, they have already marked and commented on, or look through a short story you want to submit to a competition, or an article you're hoping to submit to a journal, don't take for granted that they can easily fit this work in to their paid teaching hours. Your revised assignment, short story or article may have to wait until there's a spare moment at the end of whatever is their paid teaching week, or even the teaching term. Exercise patience and courtesy and I'm sure we'll find time eventually.