Julie Reed wrote:Eric,
I don’t know how many hours he worked on the days he taught, but adding up weekends, Xmas break, spring break, 3 day weekends a few times and summer vacation he had an equal number of days not in school, not teaching, which left him free to log with horses and raise a few dairy cows. That’s how he explained it to me and it made perfect sense. I’ve heard other teachers comment similarly. The school day is 6-7 hours, I would guess most teachers end up at around 10 with prep, correcting papers, etc? It’s not a job I would want, or could do well. I love kids and am able to teach them things (we homeschooled for a few years) but not in multiples of 25!😳
My ex-wife was a teacher, and her contract was 181 days, which is 6 months. I think after that it gets into how much passion a person has. When I worked at the shipyard I worked 9 months out of the year, as most "real" jobs do, but with full-time farming, I work everyday. In fact, people used to ask me, why I did not know what the weather was going to be. And I said, "I am a farmer, I am going to be out in it no matter what the weather is."
My ex-wife, she called "homework", homework to her kids, but called it "Busy work" to me, and so she took them home where we burned them in our burn barrel. Grades were based on test scores and her estimation of how they did on the homework. So I would say a teacher works 6 months a year, but good for them if they are more passionate.
Here in Maine, the typical farm back in the oxen/horse farming days was sized around 40 acres. That was about all a farm could handle back then. Ours was always a little bigger, we had 2000 acres, but my Great Grandfather also had 17 teams of horses he had to keep going all the time. Obviously that was through a lot of hired hands, but the old duffers here have told me, he was so tired keeping so many people moving in the right direction for the farm, that he would sleep anywhere. It was just that stressful, and all consuming.
He loved horses, and always did. But my Grandfather (his son) hated horses and preferred tractors. That was where I got my love from, but I have been driving tractors since I was 5 or six years old.
I actually got my first traffic violation at age 10 by "driving across a paved way with a tracked machine." I never thought in the world the Deputy Sheriff sitting on top of the hill would pull a 10 year old over for just driving a bulldozer across the road. That cost my dad $65 as it was determined he had, "Allowed to Operate", kind of a catch-all offense.
My 5th grade teacher, she once told my mom that "I was a good kid, but lived in a fantasy world." My mom was shocked and said that I was "honest to a fault." That was when my teacher said that I kept saying how I drove bulldozer. That was when my mom informed her that I really did. I was only 10, but because the bulldozer moves slow, and is steered by levers, I could put my feet on the dash and pull my guts out, and get the bulldozer to steer through the woods. my dad would log, get the bulldozer hooked to the trees, and my job was to drive it to the landing, push them up, then drive back as he cut more trees. To stop the bulldozer, or shift, I had to stand on the clutch.
I did not actually start using a chainsaw until I was15 years old. My dad told me if I started to cut wood, to not stop until I finished that load...10 cords of wood. I have been cutting wood ever since.