Saturday afternoon, when your head is feeling fine (Jefferson Airplane)

Teachers have it easy. All those holidays. You finish at 3.15 in the afternoon. Pushing a pen - easy peasy!

Teaching's not a real job.

Everybody thinks this. My family certainly did when I was growing up.

Sidebar: My father, who I loved and who loved me, never ever gave me any indication that he thought teaching was worthy. I heard from others that he was really proud of me when I became a Principal, but not from him directly.

No. Teaching's not a real job.

I heard it when I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I was 12 years old; during my initial university years when I got a teaching studentship; and when I was finally a teacher in 1983, age 26. And I have often heard it since from people, often when there is PPTA strike action but not restricted to that.

I still hear it.

On Saturday I marked student work for my senior students from 9am until 9pm. I stopped then because I could feel my brain overheating and starting to turn to mush. Soft right?

On Sunday I finished the marathon stint off with another three hours. Total during the weekend - 15 hours.

The previous weekend I'd spent a day reading Year 12 reports and writing my Dean's comments.

The weekend before that I'd spent Saturday writing report comments for my senior classes. It took 5 hours.

That's a fair chunk of my supposedly 'free' time.

I don't mind. It has always been like that. It's the life of a teacher. It's not peculiar to me. One of my colleagues has a young family, has a larger teaching load than me and struggles to carve out her marking time. I feel for her, but for good or for bad, it's teaching.

Yeah. Teachers have it easy.