I teach 3 grades and 2 subjects... is this normal?

[nandz238]

This is my second year as a teacher and I'm already starting to hate it. The first year they had me teaching 6th and 7th grade Math and Science and this year I'm teaching 6th, 7th, 8th Math and 6th, 7th Science. That's practically 4 to 5 lesson plans daily and I think is a lot of work. I don't have time for anything else during the day than writing lesson plans during each prep period, lunch and sometimes at the end of the day I still have work to do. On top of that they ask me to work on "Saturday School" and if you say anything or complaint they make it seem like if you were not doing enough. They even ask me if I was available to go on a PD during the upcoming winter break; I said no the first time and today they asked me again (I did not say anything, put my hand on my mouth, look at them and moved my head saying no).

I work in New York and some other teachers in my school are going through the same, also Ive heard other schools are doing the same. I think is ridiculous and because of that every day is a struggle and you end up doing a 50% of your work, the kids doesn't learn what they need and you never feel good about yourself.

I mean, is this normal, for schools to have 1 teacher doing the job of 2 or 3? Then they say the kids are not being promoted without knowing what they need when that is a complete lie ( but that's another topic... and I think Ill be writing something about that later).

[busbus]

Hi,

In my school district, especially in the middle schools, content area teachers are teaching two subjects. If they are certified in math, they can also teach science. If they are certified in English, they can also teach social studies. The reverse can also be the case in each of these. Usually, these teachers will teach two grade levels. I don't recall knowing of any teacher teaching three grade levels.

I can imagine that, whether teaching two or three grade levels in two content areas, the work is very hard. However, if it were me planning lessons, I would try to see where the objectives are somewhat common across the grades that I am teaching. My plans for each grade would center around this commonality. Usually, the objectives reading is: By the end of ... students will ... . The standards are broad enough to address across the grade levels.

Try not to work too hard. :eek: I wish you luck.

[Boxcar]

Trying to make the lessons work across the grade levels is a good suggestion.

You can certainly take the sixth grade plan and add a little more to bump it up to the seventh grade level. The seventh grade plan can be bumped up to the eighth grade level.

[Bananas]

Welcome to the world of special education. :) You individualize the education, so they can be working on many different things. I have had well over 20 different plans in a day. You have to keep those lesson plans basic and simple.

Teachers have to be highly qualified now, and you must be certified in the subject and level areas to teach. Districts must place their teachers in the subjects and levels of need, and that can change each year. This depends on grade level size and staff on the roster. Our district's efforts to retain staff takes creative work. One teacher teaches between the middle and high schools and travels between the two towns.

As busbus stated, we try to find the commonalities between the groups. When I am teaching writing, we all use the same lesson/topic. I address the differences in both books.

Good luck!

[Boxcar]

Wow. Twenty plans for one day!

[Chef Dave]

Ick ... this is precisely why I don't miss being a core academic instructor. As a chef instructor, I only have two lesson plans to write for the week - one for beginning culinary arts students and one for advanced. I generally distinguish between academically oriented plans and culinary plans where we actually cook - so I effectively write four different plans for the week.

Next year this may go up to six because if current level II students stay with me for another year, I will have to have a level III curriculum for those students.

Six lesson plans wouldn't bother me at all. As a former elementary teacher, I had to write weekly plans for spelling, reading, writing, language arts, cursive handwriting, math, social studies, science, and health ... 9 lesson plans ... with 2 or 3 reading groups that needed differentiated instruction ...

In terms of Nandz238's post, I think it's important to also consider the size of a given faculty with respect to the size of the student body. I have visited some rather small high schools with 140 or less students where teachers have to wear more than one hat because the size of the student body precludes the expense of having a larger faculty.

An administrator who works at a small school has to juggle his or her faculty as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Everything has to fit together just so, so that all state standards are being taught by personnel with all of the appropriate endorsements and certifications.

[wig]

I teach 5/6 Literature, Language Arts, Religion ( I do religion together, Lit in ability groups and separate Language arts for the two grades (5)

5/6/7/8 Social Studies (4)
5 Computer (1)

It is a small school but lesson plans are lesson plans whether you are doing them for 10 or 30 students. I don't see how SPED teachers like my DIL and Bananas do it.

[Boxcar]

I think the higher levels (El. Ed. and Sec. Ed.) have it harder than the Early Childhood teachers. Or, maybe it is just different.

This is just from what I've encountered, but I think it might be valid.

It is very quick for me to write up plans once I have an idea or theme. The teacher is more of a faciliator than an instructor at this level. I decide which concepts I would like to focus on, but I don't have to worry about all the objectives, standards, and NCLB. Sure, there is a lot of pressure from these even for Early Childhood teachers. However, we have a different type of philosophy for our kids. I can also get a lot of subjects into one activity because I teach all the subjects. This is a time-saver.

I've noticed that the plans I've seen for my age group are much less detailed than those for the upper levels. I'm not sure exactly why that is, but it might be because the little ones need a greater amount of flexibility and individuation?

[upnorthteacher]

In our district (which is very small and rural), middle school and high school teachers teach 3 or 4 grade levels, sometimes in more than one subject area. Elementary teachers prep 6-7 lessons/day. (reading, writing, spelling, math, science, social studies, and sometimes health, art, or music) We all seem to have too much to do. Fortunately, if your assignment doesn't change much, it gets easier after the first couple of years. I go back to previous units and adapt them to the students I have now. As far as Saturday School and other extra duties, you should check your contract and possibly talk to your union rep. Some administrators put way too much pressure on new teachers to do these things, when these are the teachers that need their time to prep and get adapted to the job. Good luck!

[Flipp]

I'm teaching 6, 7 and 8th grade Science and computers in a Catholic middle school. The first year they had me teaching Science and Math, that was pretty hard. Now that I'm in my third year, I'm not creating new lessons every day, just adapting the lessons I've already done, and now that I'm teaching Computers once a week instead of Math daily, my schedule is much better.
So they sent me back to school to get my Masters! I can't complain too much, the school is paying the whole bill, but my family and friends have honestly forgotten what I look like!
Yes, it's unfortunately normal (well, not the Saturday school), but it does get better! :o

[jsfowler]

After reading your posts, I will never complain about my lesson plans again. I teach middle school science. Our middle school only consists on 7th and 8th graders...we have approximately 600 students. We team teach and we have 6 teams in our school each consisting of a science, social studies, math, language arts, and special needs teacher. I teach 4 classes a day then students go to various exploratory classes. In the past, each team has had two 7th grade homerooms and two 8th grade homerooms so I had 2 lesson plans a day. This year however, I am only teaching one grade level. Even though each class moves at their own pace, I pretty much only do one lesson plan per day. This allows me to really put a lot of time and effort into each day. I don't understand why administrators would ask someone to teach so many different subjects at so many different levels. Is it because it is a small school with only one class per grade level? Wouldn't it be easier if you only taught one subject (6th, 7th, 8th grade science) so that you could buid on top of prior knowledge each year? OR...only teach one grade level. If your certification is science and math, pair up with another teacher who teachs social studies and language arts and team teach 7th grade, for example.

[Hermione]

I've been teaching for twelve years, and I've always taught
5th & 6th grades (which is middle school at my school), but my subjects have changed a lot. One year, I taught English, Reading, Social Studies. Another year, I just taught Reading and SS. Then I taught Reading, Spelling, Writing. This year, I'm teaching Reading and Spelling, but emphasized writing in order to get my 5th graders ready for the state writing assessment. I have 85 kids each day. Fun stuff!

A saving grace for me is that my 5th and 6th grade reading standards are so similar that I can teach the same lesson to both grades, but I can make it a little more challenging and in-depth for my sixth graders.

So to answer your question, yes, I think it's normal. I'm so spoiled with my middle school planning that I don't think that I could make it in a self-contained class where I have 8 subjects everyday.

[wig]

I don't understand why administrators would ask someone to teach so many different subjects at so many different levels. Is it because it is a small school with only one class per grade level? Wouldn't it be easier if you only taught one subject (6th, 7th, 8th grade science) so that you could buid on top of prior knowledge each year? OR...only teach one grade level. If your certification is science and math, pair up with another teacher who teachs social studies and language arts and team teach 7th grade, for example.

Being a small school is definitely the reason why we teach so many subjects. However, I teach all the SS for grades 5 - 8, and half the Lang Arts/Lit. Another teacher teachers all the science and math grades 5-8. Another teaches 7/8 Lang. Arts and Computer. But it still adds up to a lot of preps.

[Boxcar]

It does sound like a lot of work!

[amanda033]

Wow, it's so nice to read about people like me! This is my first year teaching and I teach an 85 minute Global I class an 85 minute Global II class and a 40 minute Global II class. I also was "asked" to teach Saturday School.

There are 3 other first year Social Studies teachers at my school and we all have crazy course loads so that keeps us all from going nuts. We try to share our ideas and plan together so that helps ease the planning pressure. :)

[sgaestel]

Wow.
I am thanking my lucky stars I do not have to teach Saturday school! I thought I had a full load with two levels of English III and three levels of Theatre Arts (all in the same class).
If I had to teach Saturday school on top of all those preps and directing the school play...I might go crazy!

[MissTeach]

The first year I taught, I taught seven subjects (two during one class). The next two years I taught four subjects to two grade levels. Then I got in hired in a larger school and taught the same subject all day long. I honestly don't know which I prefer! I hated teaching the same thing all day. By last hour I couldn't remember what I had already told the class and what I hadn't told them!!

Now I teach two subjects. I really don't mind teaching up to three different subjects.

I would not want to teach Saturday school! My weekends are sacred to me! I need that time to catch up on grading, to work on projects for my students, and to clean my house!!

[lxguy]

It's quite normal in many rural schools in my country.

[molita]

I had a similiar experience when I was teaching in Costa Rica at a private, bilingual school. The school was organized so that half of the day the students were learning subject matter in English and half of the day they were learning in Spanish. I, too, taught 3 subjects for 4 grades. I was the Math and Science teacher for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade and then they needed an English speaking teacher to teach 7th grade Geography and I was the one available.

Like many of these teachers, I feel that it is stretching ourselves too thin and you can't do anything really well, so everything turns out to be mediocre. I spent all of my time planning and was exhausted when it came down to teaching. I understand that schools do this because of lack of resources, but it is hard on both the teacher and the students.

There must be another way!

[Ima Teacher]

As funding becomes more scarce, schools have to do the best they can with what they have. It varies from year to year. For the past few years, I've had one subject and one grade.

I'm only certified for English/language arts/reading, so that limits my options, but plenty of teachers have multiple certifications and teach multiple subjects. We have one teacher who has 6th grade language arts, 6th grade health, 7th grade health, and 8th grade health/drama. One year I had 6th, 7th, adn 8th grade langauge arts . . . and one of the 7th grade classes was an advanced group, so they had separate lessons from the other 7th grade LA class I had. My most hectic year was when I had 12th grade British lit, 11th grade American lit, 9th grade English, and 7th grade reading . . . four preps at two different schools . . . and I was also completing my state internship and going to grad school!

I've found that I do whatever they need me to do. After all, complaining about it doesn't do anything except make me miserable. It's easier just to do it and hope for something better the next year.

[wig]

You do what you need to do. It isn't always easy, but many do it. Teaching multiple preps is a given in most private schools as well as small districts. Truthfully, if one cannot or does not want to do this, the alternative is to find another placement. I have done this for so many years that I am not sure I would know what to do with all my extra time if I had fewer preps. :D (Just kidding). The longer you do it, the eaier it is.

[akb]

At one point, I taught four different preps in a high school, and I was miserable and thought I was overworked... Now, I feel like I wasn't doing so bad. I think that it is normal for us to have to teach multiple preps, and hopefully it is balanced with the years when we plan for only 2 or 3 classes. At one point, I was teaching in a school district where, according to our contract, we could not teach more than 3 preps in a grading period, without special permission and extra pay. I miss those days...:)