Busy!

Regular classes are in full swing now and I'm down to the grind of teaching daily! Life is actually sometimes difficult for a university teacher. Overtime classes in various programs have just started as well so that's a lot of extra hours to teach. Some of my coworkers have a similar workload to me but aren't as busy. That's because they don't prep, but just open the book a couple minutes before walking into class and browse through it. They wear it kind of like a badge of honor, like they're such a natural teacher or something they don't need to plan. This is even with books they've never taught before.

This just seems weird to me. I prep for my classes, a moderate amount. Like for a one hour class, I'll usually take at least 15 or 20 minutes. My 2 hour classes that I teach 9 times, I spend about over an hour usually. It seems worth the investment to make it a good one, since no one likes teaching a dud class 9 times! There are lots of interesting things to do in the world of ESL/EFL teaching that aren't in the books and need some planning/photocopying/internet searching time.

To me, prep work is just part of being a professional. Like if I choose to make this my career (for the time being at least), then why would I be proud of slacking off while doing it? I don't want to waste my student's time, doing things that aren't helpful or interesting. And opening my book a few minutes before class for the first time definitely increases the chances of this!

What do you think about this?