[sammyg2]

N-D, I respect your opinion although I disagree. Comparing a teacher on summer break to an athlete training for big game, ......

I worked as an instructor for a couple of years and even prepared my own course material in some cases. It was in a professional setting and I was training craftsmen on new skills so it wasn't the same as public school, even though the material was very detailed and technical and presented to a very critical knowledgeable audience. Things like using laser tools to align multiple machines to each other, calculating and compensating for thermal growth, trouble-shooting and diagnosing recipropcating compressors using crank phase angle and compression pressure waves, vibration analysis, etc.

When writing my own course material I budgeted about 6 to 8 hours of prep work for every hour of instruction, sometimes more and sometimes less. Most of the time i was already familiar with hte subject, if I was not I would have to spend more time on it.
But .... here's the tricky part ... when the course curriculum was already developed as in a canned program (and in the public school system), a half hour per hour was a more reasonable ratio, and usually only applied to the first time I had to present. After that first time a quick 15 minute refresher and scanning of my notes was all that was necessary to be fully prepared.

That was for an 8 hour per day seminar, not an hour long class (repeated several times over the day) for a public high school teacher. I didn't get an hour in the middle of the day to myself to prepare for the next day and I didn't have a teacher's aide or three either.

I cannot for the life of me understand how any COMPETENT teacher would need to spend very much time preparing to instruct an hour's worth of material that is already prepared.