This is highly variable. My wife was a high school teacher for two years. She was up and at school by 7:30AM each day, and worked until at least 6:00PM each night just to keep up with grading. Couple that with lesson planning and hard to grade assignments (like essays) and she was easily putting in 60 hours a week. At least half of that time was spent in front of students (who can be a fairly adversarial audience). At no time did I look at her and think she was having an easy time of it. Also, if you do the math, you'll notice that she worked -more- than the average professional, despite the 10 week break.
In the interest of full disclosure, this was a very good school that had high expectations of both its students and teachers.
As a counterpoint, I date a lot of school teachers in NYC.
Almost every one of them has the same story... They were working in another job with crazy hours, like film production or advertising, and specifically became a school teacher because it had easier hours, good benefits, and summers off.
Perhaps compared to doing nothing, 7:30 to 6 is a hardship, but if you're coming from a normal NYC office job where it's not uncommon to work 9am-10pm it sounds like a vacation. Also, you don't actually have to be at the school from 7:30 to 6. You typically can go home by 3:30 and do whatever grading you need to at home.
On the other hand, being stuck in a room for 8 hours with NYC teenagers sounds like one of the most exhausting and frustrating tasks in the world. Maybe all that down time is necessary for recovery? I certainly would (and do) choose 10 hours a day futzing with C++ over 8 hours a day with teenagers who don't want to be there. Would be nice to have summers off, though.
I'd counter that NYC is not representative of the rest of the country. Most statistics I'm easily able to find say that the average hours worked per week in the US is closer to 35 than 60 or 65.
It's also worth noting that most of the people here don't spend 6 solid hours presenting to adversarial clients every day and then move on to 6 more hours of coding. In fact, most of us likely have jobs that allow us to take breaks whenever we'd like. That's a luxury teachers don't have for at least part of the day.
However, there is something to be said for the benefits and job security.
That same amount of hours over a "normal" year with 4 weeks of vacation (note: nobody actually gets 4 weeks of vacation until they've been working for a while) is only 52.5 hours a week.
A lot of people put in way more than 52.5 hours a week, all year, and most of them don't have 4 weeks of vacation. Or benefits that match anything approaching teachers. Not to mention the job security and union benefits.
Not to mention when teachers are off for 10 weeks, they are OFF. Most people take a 1 week vacation and are answering their blackberry and email becuase they have projects that span the vacation.
Also where I grew up, teachers had exactly 184 teaching days a year. That is only 37 work weeks. What the hell? I work 49 weeks a year, they get 12 more weeks of vacation than me, so even at 11 hrs a day, they are coming out even more ahead of me.
And it sounds like your wife is the outlier, and I doubt she puts in 60 hrs/week every single week. And what about the guys who have been there forever teaching the same class off the same notes they worked out 15 years ago?
I'd suggest that your idea of the "normal" professional isn't quite accurate. I worked at a fortune 500 for a few years. Most people put in 35-40 hours a week. Many of them were impossible to get a hold of during vacation. I'd also suggest that teaching is vastly different than coding - for at least half of the day.
My wife worked for a school that was an outlier - I admitted that (see my original comment). I can vouch for the fact that her average work week was 60 hours (for what that's worth). Roughly 30 of those were in front of students if I remember right. It's certainly easier when you aren't a new teacher, but good teachers constantly change their lessons and approaches creating additional prep work.
I've met very few good teachers who weren't putting just as much time into their jobs as everyone here is putting into their startups. Passion is passion.
I didn't say your wife worked less than 40 hours a week, I said that most teachers do.
Incidentally, for the average to be 38.5 hours/week, that means that for every teacher working 60 hours/week, there must be about 6 teachers working only 35 hours/week or so (the study I referenced only counts full time teachers, i.e. those working at least 35 hours/week).
In the interest of full disclosure, this was a very good school that had high expectations of both its students and teachers.