Bob Shepherd, a frequent commentator (I love his writing and wish he would write more often for the blog) had this to say about teaching:

For many years, I held various jobs as a publishing executive (in later years at very high levels). I thought that I worked very, very hard.

Then I returned to teaching.

Everything I did before was a vacation by comparison.

Teaching is relentless in its demands on one’s time and energy. I came to school this year and found that I had 190 students, 3 minutes between classes, no prep period on half my days, car line duty in the morning, 20 minutes for lunch, two extracurricular activities to coach (including plays to produce), administrative meetings one day a week after school, 20 detailed lesson plans to prepare each week (specifying the class, period, standards covered, lesson objectives, assessments used, bellwork, vocabulary covered, and ESOL…