+1 on this
People who are not teachers are really failing to understand that a teacher does not just roll out of bed at 7:30 and grab some coffee before teaching class at 8. You're probably still thinking about when you were a student and got upset that your teacher gave out homework even though none of the grown ups have homework. Well guess what, teachers have the most homework because to teach well you have to do so much planning and grading outside of your scheduled academic day. Did you think the lessons and assignments you did just appeared out of nowhere? What about when you got a graded assignment back?
The 54 hours a week average stat doesn't surprise me at all, and if anything the hours for first time teachers are definitely more on average because they will take longer to learn a curriculum/curriculum framework, and will have to make WAY more materials from scratch. Hard to retain those young first time teachers for this reason, if you're not really gonna hit your stride until several years in.
It's a job that is tough because a lot of the hours are high intensity/stressful/chaotic work, and there is not a clear separation between work and not work in a teacher's life, since you're usually taking work home with you. A veteran teacher I worked with described the school year as a series of sprints, not a marathon. You're not working steadily every week of the year, doing a slow burn with a few vacation days. Instead you are going balls to the wall effort-wise in a lot of short bursts throughout the calendar year with breaks in between. Not surprising that with the distance running bias on here, some of you would not understand how difficult a series of sprints is, and also most of you would not be able to hang as teachers at all.
Also the vast majority of teachers report that they often have to pay out of their own pocket for teaching materials, so keep that in mind when thinking about whether they get paid enough (they don't).