The astute fol­low­ers out there may have noticed that it has been a whole day since I’ve updated my report timer. There’s a good rea­son I haven’t updated it. It’s the same rea­son I was able to nap yes­ter­day after­noon for two hours, go to the movies today and appear in pub­lic with­out the fear of get­ting grumpy at some­body for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son. Those dreaded reports are fin­ished! And I think we’ve come through rel­a­tively unscathed.

Here’s a lit­tle sum­mary of how they went. I’ve done it in list form, as that seems to be the way things are done around here.

1. 72.5 hours works out very neatly to be 2.5 hours per child. I didn’t plan that.
2. Of the 72.5 hours spent on writ­ing reports, approx­i­mately 62 of them were spent out­side of work hours.*
3. These extra hours were typ­i­cally spent on four nights of the week. I tried to have a lit­tle bit of bal­ance in order to retain my san­ity. It almost worked.
4. I did not receive “over­time” for those hours or take them as time off in lieu.
5. Typ­i­cal report writ­ing activ­i­ties included; design­ing report cri­te­ria, set­ting assess­ments, mark­ing assess­ments, analysing assess­ments and class work, grad­ing stu­dents, writ­ing com­ments and data input.
6. Report writ­ing activ­i­ties com­pleted, but not included in the report timer, were; indi­vid­ual con­fer­enc­ing with stu­dents (approx­i­mately 8 hours), test­ing stu­dents, mod­er­at­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing with other teach­ers and edit­ing with my Head Of Department.
7. Hours 1–2 were a lit­tle bit more fun than the rest because I was plan­ning and organ­is­ing things. I like plan­ning and organising.
8. Hours 2–30 were com­pleted because of my dili­gent work ethic.
9. Hours 30 – 50 were sur­vived by lis­ten­ing to and enjoy­ing clas­si­cal music while I worked.
10. Some­where around hour 50 was my birth­day. Happy birth­day to me, and a num­ber of my friends. I enjoyed my almost sur­prise party very much.
11. Hours 50 – 60 were not fun.
12. Around hour 60 I had a bit of an emo­tional break down. There’s some­thing about sit­ting at home writ­ing reports on a Fri­day after­noon that isn’t so fun.
13. Hours 60 – 70 were com­pleted because my hus­band was espe­cially thought­ful and encouraging.
14. Hours 70 – 72 were com­pleted because I could see the light. And because I really wanted a week­end free of report writing.

There you have it. The reports haven’t actu­ally been approved yet. That process can take a day or it can take three weeks. I really hope it’s the for­mer. For those of you who are par­ents out there, I’m expect­ing to see a few framed report cards hang­ing on your liv­ing room wall. They cost a lot.

* By out­side of work hours, I gen­er­ally mean from 5pm onwards. My school day typ­i­cally lasts from 7.30am – 4.30pm. As my teach­ing load remains exactly the same dur­ing report writ­ing sea­son, so do my hours.

Author: Robyn Campbell

Robyn is Nathan's wife. She was once a teacher. She is now a student at Queensland Theological College. She enjoys playing music and all sorts of exercise. She is the proud owner of two pet turtles.

Read Robyn's 22 articles.