A Day In The Life Of A Teacher At Hermosa Beach City School District
A day in the life of a teacher, according to Karen, a retired elementary school teacher, involved a long day starting with a 6 a.m. wake-up call and ending with lesson planning at 8 or 9 p.m., with "the brakes very short" between prepping materials, teaching, supervising students at recess and lunch, and communicating with parents. The job required significant preparation time before and after school hours.
Early Mornings, Lesson Planning, Classroom Management, Communication, Work-Life Balance
Advizer Information
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Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
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Karen Maguy
Retired Teacher
Hermosa Beach City School District
Stanford University, 1991
UCLA - Master of Education 1995
Political Science, American Studies
Education
Education
Greek Life Member, Student Athlete
Video Highlights
1. Teachers typically start their day early, often arriving an hour or more before students to prepare their classrooms and lessons.
2. A teacher's workday extends beyond the school day, often including tasks like grading, lesson planning, and communication with parents after school hours.
3. Throughout the day, teachers balance instructional time with other responsibilities such as yard duty and communicating with parents and colleagues
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a teacher look like?
Take a deep breath. I'd say you are waking up early in the morning, at least I did, especially in elementary school. You have to be at school before the students get there, so 6 am waking up.
Getting yourself out the door and being in your classroom at least an hour before school starts, making sure everything is prepped. That may be everything from running copies or prep cutting shapes and organizing crayons or sharpening pencils, to rereading your material, timing your lessons, writing up your lesson and objectives on the whiteboard, or getting your presentation ready.
And so that's in the morning, and you are really going the entire day. The breaks are very short. You're on yard duty, you're watching the students during their recess breaks. The lunch hour is quick; you talk to other teachers, you check your emails, you're checking your messages from parents.
Three o'clock comes pretty quick. From three until six, you're still in your classroom finishing up whatever cleaning up whatever you did, and then starting to prep for the next day. Usually, you come home and you have more work to prep and plan, and communication to respond to.
So I'd say you're working until at least eight or nine at night, and then you're up doing the next thing the next day.
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