Cooking labs require a lot of preparation. On a lab day, family and consumer sciences teacher, Mr. Haberberger, typically shops before school and prepares materials during his prep. During lunch and after school, he cleans up the messes left by students and stores any unused materials for future use.
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”
-Albert Einstein
Teachers are more than just people who teach an endless stream of students the same content, often for years on end. Teachers, like any other professionals, require time to prepare for their day. “Most schools give teachers what is called a prep period during the school day. This is a period of time, often around 45 minutes, that teachers are meant to use to prepare for their lessons, grade, and do other non-teaching tasks during the work day,” according to businessinsider.com. In order to unveil the mystery behind what happens during a teacher’s prep period, many CHS teachers revealed how they spend this valuable time.
Ms. Guzman is a Spanish teacher at Cascade High School and her prep period is at the very beginning of the day. On a typical day, Ms. Guzman plans and organizes activities to make them more engaging and easier to understand. Ms. Guzman creates and recreates activities to make them as fun as possible. To keep sane, Ms. Guzman usually slips out of her classroom briefly and checks in at the office during her prep period to socialize with the fantastic staff in the office. During one prep period “[she] usually complete[s] prepping two of [her] classes, while the last one [she has] to prep during lunch.” For Guzman, prep is a time to get mentally ready for the day and get lessons/activities for students.
Culinary and life skills teacher, Mr. Haberberger has first period prep as well. Mr. Hab uses Canvas to give assignments for his students. When students get onto Canvas it appears easy and straightforward; however, for a teacher preparing Canvas for takes a lot of effort. Mr. Hab spends the whole period preparing Canvas and hands-on activities to ensure that his students learn the content each day. “I never finish prepping for the day, since its my first year at this school I always have something to do and lessons to prepare,” explained Mr. Hab. Mr. Hab likes to get ahead; but, as a teacher, getting ahead is always a battle. Mr. Hab prepares his lessons sometimes weeks in advance to ensure they’re ready for his students.
Mr. Davies, one of the math teachers at Cascade High School, spends his prep period in the morning planning one, or ideally two, day(s) in advance. “This year, due to online learning from Covid, a vast majority of students are behind especially in math,” Mr. Davies explained. Mr. Davies cares a lot about his students’ ability to learn, so much so that in order to better serve all of his students, he has been learning Spanish. For the past year, he has spent a portion of his prep period learning this new language. If Mr. Davies ever has extra time he works to prepare the track schedule. Even though it's months away, he’s already excited for the season and trying to get slightly ahead of the immense workload the season will place on him. Mr. Davies, like most of the teachers at CHS, never finishes prepping for the day. In addition to using every minute of his prep period, Mr. Davies often spends extra time on weekends, evenings and during the summer getting ready to serve CHS students. Mr. Davies spends most of his prep time changing lessons to making them new and different as well as recreating his Algebra II lessons. Lessons have to constantly be changed to accommodate students varying abilities, keep up with changing educational initiatives, and be in keeping with current best practices in the field.
Ms. Robison uses her prep period much like the other teachers. She tracked every minute of her prep for a day and revealed that she spent about 15 minutes preparing materials for communication with parents; another 15 minutes returning emails from parents, students, other staff, and community groups collaborating on leadership and publications projects; 10 minutes proofing a spread before submission to the company that produces the yearbook; 5 minutes printing and retrieving documents for a marketing campaign being run by the publications team; 10 minutes preparing certificates for students as part of the Student of the Month recognition program in leadership; 20 minutes planning and preparing resources for an activity for her American Literature class; and, finally 20 minutes grading and entering work students had submitted for the dual-credit course she teaches. “I am always behind,” she said. “Despite working late nights, early mornings, weekends, and for hundreds of hours over the summer, my to-do list only seems to grow. When I first started teaching this really stressed me out; but, after a couple of years, I realized that this is the norm for most teachers. It is impossible to keep up with the work. I have learned to become okay with the idea that there is always something left undone.”
Prep period for teachers is like flex for students: they have time to get ready for the rest of the day/week, time to engage in activities to enrich and further their craft, and occasionally time to recharge a bit before their next class. However a teacher uses their prep time, it is clear that their main focus is on their students.
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