Intensification/increased workloadWith the exception of Matt—who felt his workload hadbeen relatively constant for 8 years—the teachers allagreed that the era of accountability had indirectlyincreased their workload. Because they were asked togive more writing assignments, they had to spend extratime at home assessing their students’ work. Dawn said:“I do more lesson planning, there’s just more paperwork.… But I wait until my kids go to bed. I’m gradingmore—oh gosh yes, there’s the writing thing. Yeah I’mdoing more grading. Because we have to have themwrite.”Josie discussed a similar increase to her workload:“That is a ton of time, I mean to grade those. Oh mygosh. And if I could just have my kids do it on the computerand I could grade everything on the computer, Iwould love that. But a lot of my kids don’t have computersor Internet access.”Matt recounted stressful times in the past when workconflicted with his home life. One situation “blew up,”when he had to cancel his child’s birthday party to conducta rescheduled fall musical performance. Being inthe middle of this situation had prompted Matt to entertherapy. As a strategy to compartmentalize his work,Matt had decided to purposefully isolate himself fromcolleagues at school. His workday was intense as a resultbecause he was committed to using every second of theschool day to avoid taking too much work home:I’m a little bit—I don’t want to say standoffish, but Idon’t talk to people on my planning period. I don’t. Andif I can help it, I’ll excuse myself from conversations110 R. D. SHAWDownloaded by [Temple University Libraries] at 10:04 01 June 2016because every second there is something going on. Withvery few exceptions I’m constantly planning for thefuture, running this [copy] off, getting information toparents, whatever.Interestingly, teachers said it was not simply morework that affected their stress, but the addition of workthey found to be unimportant. In fact, all four teacherswere taking on extra duties gladly. Josie taught an afterschoolorchestra and private lessons, Tammy playedone night a week in a community band, Dawn workedwith a community band, and Matt planned extra fieldtrips to amusement parks for his high school band. Butwhen extra time is required for “jumping throughhoops,” as the teachers put it, stress was created. AsTammy said:But really it’s just—a lot of it is just I can’t physically geteverything done. There aren’t enough hours in the dayto get everything done. … We’re [documenting] all thetime and no one is ever looking at our data. They justsaid, “You need to do it.” … Some of it’s useful, butother’s like, “OK, jump through that hoop, now what?”