The Baltimore Sun ran an op-ed piece last week, written by a teacher. Link here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.teacher27mar27,0,1082198.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines This teacher points out for the first time that I've seen, that we routinely put in extra hours beyond the official workday.Yes, there's "planning time", but mine was cut in half this year. Half the time to do more work than before. And most of that time gets eaten up with meetings, parent conferences, and calling home to tell parents what's going on.So, when do I "plan"? After hours. Sometimes it's staying an extra couple of hours to prep a lesson for the next day, type up lesson plans, nail down details of a project, grade papers, etc. Sometimes it's a few hours of research at home to get something ready that I want to use.Right now, as I write this, I should be working on some paperwork that needs to be turned in on Monday. This is my spring break, by the way. I'm NOT on a beach, NOT relaxing. Instead, I'm stressing about the crap that isn't done yet.Oh, and grades are due in when we get back from break. If that's not an assumption that we'll work on it during our break, I don't know what is. I've never actually kept track of the extra hours I put in, partly because I don't want to know, but also, I'm afraid of what the numbers might show. I can report that last week I stayed at least an extra hour from Monday till Thursday. How about all of you out there?