Overtime? The average teacher works less than 40 hours/week (unlike other professionals) for the 9-10 months/year they actually work at all.
In the interest of full disclosure, this was a very good school that had high expectations of both its students and teachers.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.