After 16 years of teaching and almost as much writing about TEFL, I can give you a half-decent worksheet or article on almost any topic, and with up to 24 hours of teaching, a young daughter, and 5 articles and 12 worksheets a month, half-decent is generally what everyone gets. Given more time, however, my readers and students get something much closer to the most suitable worksheet or teaching ideas, after I have done one or more of these:

– analysed what language is needed before brainstorming ideas

– slept on it

– searched the internet and bookshelves after brainstorming my own ideas

– searched through previous lessons for language that I can revise in this one

– worked on several worksheets and chosen the best

– worked on an article and worksheets at the same time

There is also of course a point where I have so much time that I waste most of it, and as useful it would be to have the time to write a Cambridge Delta essay for each of my lessons – and I honestly believe it would – I doubt my students be willing to pay for that.

However, I can’t see how anyone can expect a teacher with 24 contact hours to do anything approaching their best unless they have mainly adult textbook-based classes and/ or repeat levels – and even in those cases it would mean making the completely unprofessional assumption that all classes are basically the same.

Following the rules of the whole chain, my present employers actually have the cheek to write down on my typical schedule as:

 Teaching 21 hours

 Preparation 10.5 hours

 Hours available for projects 8.5 hours

and then to make lip-service to work life balance on the presumed assumption that it is realistic.

Here’s how that 10.5 hours a week would pan out if I took it seriously:

 waiting for the ancient computers to do something, e.g. allow me to log in – 1 hour

 deleting pointless emails – 15 minutes

 replying to student emails – 10 minutes

 searching for books, scissors, glue etc – 5 minutes

 printing out emailed homework – 20 minutes

 marking IELTS and Academic Writing homework as quickly and roughly as I possibly can – 2 hours

 arriving fifteen minutes early at all outside lessons – 1 hour

 skimming through the copies of the TEFL magazines that they kindly provide as quickly as possible so I can illegally photocopy some articles to read on the train- 10 minutes

 reading and answering relevant internal emails – 30 minutes

 copying my lessons to the school hard disk for other teachers to use – 5 minutes

 photocopying for up to 60 students a day, most with no textbook – 40 minutes

 regular admin such as entering results on the computer system and writing reports – 15 minutes

 some pointless admin such as having to prove the teacher development that I am doing in the time that my schedule makes unavailable – 15 minutes

That leaves about 4 hours a week for planning 21 hours of lessons, then I should have plenty of time left for projects and teacher development…