The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, is complaining because the national average salary for our educators is only $46,752. Keep in mind that this figure does not include any summer school salary teachers make.
Here’s the money quote:
“Teachers should never have to choose between doing what they love and supporting their families,” the group’s president, Reg Weaver, said Thursday. “We can’t continue to ask them to fulfill such an important mission without providing the support they deserve.”
Cry me a river, Reg. I think I would fall to my knees and thank God if I could make $46,752 working 8 months a year, with time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas and typically, Easter.
I might add that that’s $10,000 a year higher than the per capita income, and that also doesn’t include the ridiculous pension benefits. Two married teachers would be pulling down upwards of $90,000 and would be able to retire at 55 (50 in some states, or after 25-30 years, depending on the state). I would gladly take $90,000 for a family that’d be able to take their kids on road trips during the summer for weeks at a time.
Yes, try being a teacher for a year first. Keep in mind that the stat you list is AVERAGE salary. A first year teacher where I live makes $21,500 a year, bank tellers, restaurant employees and hotel front desk clerks make the same money! Keep in mind that the typical teacher works 9 1/2 months per year and puts in 13 hour days.
If you are not capable of making decent money with all the education you supposedly have, then you have really wasted your money!
I was about to say the samething Mike. In California, where the standards of living in much higher than elsewhere, a first-year teacher makes about $23,000 a year. That’s roughly 3000 a month,(assuming he/she does not teach durign the summer) rent in LA county is typically 1,200 a month for a 1 bed, 1 bath apt. Add in taxes and car insurance and gas money, that leaves very little money for verything else. Not to mention that most teachers spend their own out of pocket cash for classroom supplies for the kids. A tentured teacher in San Diego makes about $55,000 a year, that’s after about 15-20 years of teaching. That is well below the mean of comparable workers with the same level of education.
(supportive grin) Becky - I could have predicted at least some of the responses …
I have a good friend who was a teacher (6th or 7th grade) for about 6 months, who decided the second time he was assaulted by a kid in his classroom that enough was enough … (the school told him that it couldn’t do anything to discipline the kid - and he wasn’t allowed to, either) … so he is no longer heading to be a teacher …
He headed that way because of the satisfaction he experienced as a TA in my classes, when he saw the look of wide-eyed wonder when students realised that they had learned new things and were enjoying using the new skills … then he experienced the public school system …
AJ - would that “standards of living” were higher in California - sadly, it’s the COST of living that’s higher …
Me - I have difficulty feeling sorry for anyone who complains about not being able to support a family on what he earns - why did he start the family *before* he could support ‘em ?
12 hours a day? HAHAHA! I’d LOVE to meet that teacher. Really.
I’m the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
I have no sympathy for teachers at all.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Both my parents are elementary school teachers in the city. And no Andrew, they don’t make upwards of $90,000–try “upwards” of $70,000. They work long hours under incredibly stressful conditions in bad neighborhoods, and they make less combined than some of my undergrad friends who are making over 80 grand a year their first year out.
Becky, I don’t know what your background is, but I wish you knew what its like to grow-up in a household with two working teachers as parents.
Becky, your consistent lack of class and tact amazes me to no end…indeed, it amazes me so much that I have a terrible desire to match your drivel with my own tirade of verbal venom that would make even you look like an angel–but I suppose less is more.
Needless to say, thanks for getting my Irish and my heart-rate up…you’ve ruined what was otherwise a nice Friday evening!
Oh yeah, and for all of you would would just LOVE to be a teacher…go ahead, who’s stopping you? Oh, that’s right–probably the shitty salary and the lack of respect teachers receive on a daily basis
The beef, actually, what’s stopping me from being a teacher is a lack of opportunity. School districts here are laying off teachers, not hiring them. And, in an act of pure union-induced brilliance, I can teach in community colleges and local universities, but K-12 won’t hire me. I know, that makes a whole buttload of sense.
And baby, just because I think that the vast majority of teachers are underqualified and overpaid does not mean that I lack class or tact. It means that my powers of observation are perhaps less tainted than your own. Or perhaps, we have an honest disagreement.
The first few years of teaching, university or otherwise, are more challenging because lectures and lesson plans are being created, as opposed to evolving from older lectures. But boo-fucking-hoo. So you have to work hard. EVERYONE works hard. That girl who vacuums hotel rooms all day for $5.25/hr works hard too. The UCLA teaching assistant living on $14,500/year works HARDER than any other teacher (seeing as how they’re either taking classes or writing a thesis while simultaneously developing courses, teaching and grading while quite possibly raising children).
I mean, damn. $46,752. That’s more than I’ll ever make in a year, barring a lucky lotto ticket. You could definately raise a family for four comfortably with one partner making that much money. What else could a teacher do to make MORE money than that? What other, more remunerative career is just begging for those people?
Sounds to me like this union is about to kill the golden goose with PR like this.
First, congratulations on your 100th post, Joe and I welcome you to the tripple digits club.
Second, I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
Becky, there are a few things you bring up which seemingly support your case but, in fact, don’t.
First, you’re the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
That’s great, but most private schools have significantly higher success rates–for a variety of reasons–that are hardly representative. The nuns at your school don’t make much, but (if they’re like other nuns) aren’t supposed to and don’t need to.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Yes, that’s true, but tax deductible doesn’t mean reimbursable. Those teachers forced to buy school supplies are still without the money spent, they just donÃt have to pay taxes on it.
IÃve never met a teacher who worked only 8 months a year. In fact, almost every teacher I know spends about 3-5 weeks on vacation and the rest of the time attending classes & conferences, working on the next yearÃs lesson plans, coaching teams, and a few get part-time work for more income.
ThereÃs likely only a rare superteacher or two that work 12-hour days, thatÃs for sure. But that doesnÃt mean itÃs uncommon for many, perhaps most, teachers to be commonly working very long hours during the school year. In fact, the teachers I know average 9-10 hours a day for much of the school year. I really feel the hours they get ìoffî for summer & holidays probably drop the yearly work-hours for a teacher down to around the work-hours of a typical full-time employee.
Also, I think typically all American workers get ìThanksgiving, Christmas and typically, Easterî off because the first two are national holidays and the last is a Sunday.
My wife is a high school biology teacher; she’s at work by 6:45 AM. The kids are gone by 2:10, but she has to be around for ’staffings’ — meeting with administrators and parents and the like — as well as be available for students. Then there’s the grading. LOTS of grading. She has about 160 kids, and the grading is so much that she is often at work until 5 or 6 PM. Frequently she brings work home, which sometimes is offloaded to me (grading again).
She also has the duty of dealing with the kids who have been bused in from the east part of the county, which is not so affluent; one girl was out for two months or so while she had a kid, and more than one has been arrested. Security is called on a near daily basis. While in a wealthy county, it’s still an urban environment.
To your belief that they are underqualified, in her department there are two PhDs, and almost everyone has an MS. Most have done ‘real’ work in their respective fields prior to teaching. My wife, a microbiologist, has her Masters, and started life as a (published) researcher for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Now, she and her school may be the exception rather than the rule — her school was ranked 29th in the nation by Newsweek, if that matters at all — but teachers still work very hard. Your ‘8 months’ assumption is wrong; she actually works 10, because she’s there 1-2 weeks before the kids, and 1 week after. She also has to work 3 weeks during the summer writing curriculum, and has to maintain her certification by taking 6-9 credits every five years (which, OK, isn’t all that hard a req). BTW, most private school teachers aren’t required to be certified, so public school teachers aren’t the incompetent boobs you might believe them to be.
And an average of 46K/yr? Well, she doesn’t make that much. And we live in one of the most expensive parts of the country (Montgomery County, MD). We make far below the regional average. It’s quite tough, especially with the disrupted cash flow without any regular summer paychecks. Many teachers don’t even live in the county; they commute, some as far away as Pennsylvania or West Virginia (two states over!). Thankfully I make enough with two jobs that with her teacher’s salary we can live where we do.
So you’re an educated but unemployed woman living in Indiana while your fiance finishes law school; maybe I should make some unfair assumption that one day he’ll be making enough that you simply won’t have to work.
I might add that that’s $10,000 a year higher than the per capita income, and that also doesn’t include the ridiculous pension benefits. Two married teachers would be pulling down upwards of $90,000 and would be able to retire at 55 (50 in some states, or after 25-30 years, depending on the state). I would gladly take $90,000 for a family that’d be able to take their kids on road trips during the summer for weeks at a time.
The person requesting to meet a teacher that puts in 12 hour days… I would like to introduce you to my mother. Also, I would like to introduce you to the vast majority of teachers she has worked with during her career… Keep in mind that teacher also work weekends. And generally take various classes through the summer to maintain current certifications.
Oh, and Becky, you have a very odd view of salary numbers to think that 40 some K a year is a lot. In most major metropolitan areas that is basically scrapping along — Most teacher cannot afford to live in the community that they teach in.
Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.
Yes, try being a teacher for a year first. Keep in mind that the stat you list is AVERAGE salary. A first year teacher where I live makes $21,500 a year, bank tellers, restaurant employees and hotel front desk clerks make the same money! Keep in mind that the typical teacher works 9 1/2 months per year and puts in 13 hour days.
If you are not capable of making decent money with all the education you supposedly have, then you have really wasted your money!
Whoa David! You are so wrong on this: I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
Catholic schools may have smaller classes, but smaller classes also mean that there are fewer pupils per class to pay teacher salaries. The government does not support Catholic schools, so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts, we had the pleasure of getting a total of $50/per student for all school books we needed for the year. In terms of parental support, I think that our school was fairly normal. There was one girl in our class whose mom was basically a crack whore and decided that the gal was too much trouble and tried to get the state to put her in a PINS program. Our school has TAP (tuition assistance) for kids who couldn’t afford the money.
Brian, boohoo, teachers don’t have to work all summer and they don’t get paid! Oh the humanity! How do they survive with their bloated salaries over the rest of the year?
Scientizzle, most Americans actually don’t get Thanksgiving or Christmas off. They have to fight for it. The people who do work typically get higher pay, call it an xmas bonus to get $10/hr instead of $7.50. Go to the mall on Christmas eve and you’ll notice that there are hundreds of people working. That’s life.
Even those who get time off for Christmas usually get a week, not the 10-14 days teachers do. Moreover, in Catholic schools, we got two weeks for Easter.
Now, the public school kids had a one week fall break, 10 days for Christmas and 10 days for Spring Break. That’s one month of vacation during the school year.
Finally, Brian, I think your comment merely cements my belief. Your wife works 10 months a year. She has two months off. She probably gets a pension when she retires. You’ve got it good.
And if she doesn’t think she has it good, she can always go and do something else with her impeccable education.
My largest point is how much is enough? How much money do we need to give teachers so that they can “support their families?”
Wouldn’t we all love to make $80,000/year? Frankly, teachers aren’t doing a good enough job to deserve that much money. When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
And Brain, just for the record, Catholic school requirements for teachers differ from state to state. For example, in NY, all schools are bound by the NY Regents curriculum and, last time I paid attention, all teachers, private and public, were required to have a graduate degree in order to teach.
But anyway, how much is enough? How much should we pay for lackluster results?
I was about to say the samething Mike. In California, where the standards of living in much higher than elsewhere, a first-year teacher makes about $23,000 a year. That’s roughly 3000 a month,(assuming he/she does not teach durign the summer) rent in LA county is typically 1,200 a month for a 1 bed, 1 bath apt. Add in taxes and car insurance and gas money, that leaves very little money for verything else. Not to mention that most teachers spend their own out of pocket cash for classroom supplies for the kids. A tentured teacher in San Diego makes about $55,000 a year, that’s after about 15-20 years of teaching. That is well below the mean of comparable workers with the same level of education.
(supportive grin) Becky - I could have predicted at least some of the responses …
I have a good friend who was a teacher (6th or 7th grade) for about 6 months, who decided the second time he was assaulted by a kid in his classroom that enough was enough … (the school told him that it couldn’t do anything to discipline the kid - and he wasn’t allowed to, either) … so he is no longer heading to be a teacher …
He headed that way because of the satisfaction he experienced as a TA in my classes, when he saw the look of wide-eyed wonder when students realised that they had learned new things and were enjoying using the new skills … then he experienced the public school system …
AJ - would that “standards of living” were higher in California - sadly, it’s the COST of living that’s higher …
Me - I have difficulty feeling sorry for anyone who complains about not being able to support a family on what he earns - why did he start the family *before* he could support ‘em ?
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders. You seem to lack first hand experience with actually public school teachers. Those of us who do have that experience can tell you story after story of why our teachers deserve better, but you seem to stubborn and obtuse to listen. But I’ll try and show you the error of your ways in any case.
so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts
Really? I would love to visit these schools. Most districts would love to just get new books and enough supplies, let alone swimming pools and basketball courts. You mention that teachers get tax breaks on school supplies they purchase, you do realize this is things like paper and pencils right? In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.
In the school district I grew up in we haven’t passed a construction bond in a decade. We have ONE high school with over 3,000 students and its not big enough for that. Every single elementary school in our district has 6-12 portables. Drama, art, music are all being cut further and further.
Sadly the latest bond proposal passed with over 59% support, except because of stupid Washington law bonds have to get 60% percent to actually pass.
When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
I’m frankly surprised you mentioned this. Do you realize how much more German (and most of these other school systems that people like you cite) school systems recieve in terms of support from taxes both local and government? See the people there are willing to invest in their education system.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
The men and women who teach in the public education system are by and large true American heros, right in the same vein as our military. They work in poor conditions, often putting themselves in physical danger on a daily basis for low pay, and poor support. We ask them to suceed but aren’t willing to give them the tools to do it. Since you seem to have some free time there in Indiana maybe you should think about volunteering in a local school, or better yet one in Chicago, then tell me teachers are overpaid.
12 hours a day? HAHAHA! I’d LOVE to meet that teacher. Really.
I’m the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
I have no sympathy for teachers at all.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Both my parents are elementary school teachers in the city. And no Andrew, they don’t make upwards of $90,000–try “upwards” of $70,000. They work long hours under incredibly stressful conditions in bad neighborhoods, and they make less combined than some of my undergrad friends who are making over 80 grand a year their first year out.
Becky, I don’t know what your background is, but I wish you knew what its like to grow-up in a household with two working teachers as parents.
Becky, your consistent lack of class and tact amazes me to no end…indeed, it amazes me so much that I have a terrible desire to match your drivel with my own tirade of verbal venom that would make even you look like an angel–but I suppose less is more.
Needless to say, thanks for getting my Irish and my heart-rate up…you’ve ruined what was otherwise a nice Friday evening!
Oh yeah, and for all of you would would just LOVE to be a teacher…go ahead, who’s stopping you? Oh, that’s right–probably the shitty salary and the lack of respect teachers receive on a daily basis
OK, Becky, I’ll bite. Most of what you’ve said here has already been addressed (and, sorry Becky, I think you’re pretty off baseI was in public school in the same area you were in private school, and at the same time. What the heck are you talking about in terms of Fall Break? We had no such thing. We typically had about 7 days off in late December/early January (a normal year had us having school on December 23rd and resuming again around January 4th), 10 for Spring Break (the weeks before and after Easter), and a day or two in Regents Week in late January. Other than those, we had, um, federal holidays off. What is this Fall Break of which you speak?
Also, one other thing, Becky: in NY you don’t need a Masters to teach K-12. Most teachers get one, as it increases their salary, but you can get hired without one. 2 of my frineds from my high school class are currently teaching back at home–one in French, one in Math–and neither has a Masters at the moment, though one is working on hers in night school.
The beef, actually, what’s stopping me from being a teacher is a lack of opportunity. School districts here are laying off teachers, not hiring them. And, in an act of pure union-induced brilliance, I can teach in community colleges and local universities, but K-12 won’t hire me. I know, that makes a whole buttload of sense.
And baby, just because I think that the vast majority of teachers are underqualified and overpaid does not mean that I lack class or tact. It means that my powers of observation are perhaps less tainted than your own. Or perhaps, we have an honest disagreement.
The first few years of teaching, university or otherwise, are more challenging because lectures and lesson plans are being created, as opposed to evolving from older lectures. But boo-fucking-hoo. So you have to work hard. EVERYONE works hard. That girl who vacuums hotel rooms all day for $5.25/hr works hard too. The UCLA teaching assistant living on $14,500/year works HARDER than any other teacher (seeing as how they’re either taking classes or writing a thesis while simultaneously developing courses, teaching and grading while quite possibly raising children).
I mean, damn. $46,752. That’s more than I’ll ever make in a year, barring a lucky lotto ticket. You could definately raise a family for four comfortably with one partner making that much money. What else could a teacher do to make MORE money than that? What other, more remunerative career is just begging for those people?
Sounds to me like this union is about to kill the golden goose with PR like this.
First, congratulations on your 100th post, Joe and I welcome you to the tripple digits club.
Second, I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
Becky, there are a few things you bring up which seemingly support your case but, in fact, don’t.
First, you’re the <i>product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.</i>
That’s great, but most private schools have significantly higher success rates–for a variety of reasons–that are hardly representative. The nuns at your school don’t make much, but (if they’re like other nuns) aren’t supposed to and don’t need to.
<i>And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.</i>
Yes, that’s true, but tax deductible doesn’t mean reimbursable. Those teachers forced to buy school supplies are still without the money spent, they just donÃt have to pay taxes on it.
IÃve never met a teacher who worked only 8 months a year. In fact, almost every teacher I know spends about 3-5 weeks on vacation and the rest of the time attending classes & conferences, working on the next yearÃs lesson plans, coaching teams, and a few get part-time work for more income.
ThereÃs likely only a rare superteacher or two that work 12-hour days, thatÃs for sure. But that doesnÃt mean itÃs uncommon for many, perhaps most, teachers to be commonly working very long hours during the school year. In fact, the teachers I know average 9-10 hours a day for much of the school year. I really feel the hours they get ìoffî for summer & holidays probably drop the yearly work-hours for a teacher down to around the work-hours of a typical full-time employee.
Also, I think typically <i>all</i> American workers get ìThanksgiving, Christmas and typically, Easterî off because the first two are national holidays and the last is a Sunday.
I don’t have time to give a detailed response, but let me just say for the record that I disagree with Becky on this. I do think the teachers’ unions are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I certainly don’t think teachers are overpaid. I’m not certain whether they’re as vastly underpaid as some say they are, i.e. whether the pay that some would like to see them get is realistic, but I certainly think they deserve to get somewhat more.
(and certainly not less, as you seem to misguidedly believe)
About the issue of vacations, in Newington we had both a February and an April vacation, but as I recall, the teachers would often have inservice days and other duties during those weeks. Don’t make the assumption that anytime the students are off, so are the teachers.
My wife is a high school biology teacher; she’s at work by 6:45 AM. The kids are gone by 2:10, but she has to be around for ’staffings’ — meeting with administrators and parents and the like — as well as be available for students. Then there’s the grading. LOTS of grading. She has about 160 kids, and the grading is so much that she is often at work until 5 or 6 PM. Frequently she brings work home, which sometimes is offloaded to me (grading again).
She also has the duty of dealing with the kids who have been bused in from the east part of the county, which is not so affluent; one girl was out for two months or so while she had a kid, and more than one has been arrested. Security is called on a near daily basis. While in a wealthy county, it’s still an urban environment.
To your belief that they are underqualified, in her department there are two PhDs, and almost everyone has an MS. Most have done ‘real’ work in their respective fields prior to teaching. My wife, a microbiologist, has her Masters, and started life as a (published) researcher for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Now, she and her school may be the exception rather than the rule — her school was <a href=”http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/bcchs/academics/newsweek.html”>ranked 29th in the nation by Newsweek</a>, if that matters at all — but teachers still work very hard. Your ‘8 months’ assumption is wrong; she actually works 10, because she’s there 1-2 weeks before the kids, and 1 week after. She also has to work 3 weeks during the summer writing curriculum, and has to maintain her certification by taking 6-9 credits every five years (which, OK, isn’t all that hard a req). BTW, most private school teachers aren’t required to be certified, so public school teachers aren’t the incompetent boobs you might believe them to be.
And an average of 46K/yr? Well, she doesn’t make that much. And we live in one of the <a href=”http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/hpci_data/”>most expensive parts of the country (Montgomery County, MD).</a> We make far below the regional average. It’s quite tough, especially with the disrupted cash flow without any regular summer paychecks. Many teachers don’t even live in the county; they commute, some as far away as Pennsylvania or West Virginia (two states over!). Thankfully I make enough with two jobs that with her teacher’s salary we can live where we do.
So you’re an educated but unemployed woman living in Indiana while your fiance finishes law school; maybe I should make some unfair assumption that one day he’ll be making enough that you simply won’t have to work.
The person requesting to meet a teacher that puts in 12 hour days… I would like to introduce you to my mother. Also, I would like to introduce you to the vast majority of teachers she has worked with during her career… Keep in mind that teacher also work weekends. And generally take various classes through the summer to maintain current certifications.
Oh, and Becky, you have a very odd view of salary numbers to think that 40 some K a year is a lot. In most major metropolitan areas that is basically scrapping along — Most teacher cannot afford to live in the community that they teach in.
Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.
Whoa David! You are so wrong on this: <em> I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.</em>
Catholic schools may have smaller classes, but smaller classes also mean that there are fewer pupils per class to pay teacher salaries. The government does not support Catholic schools, so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts, we had the pleasure of getting a total of $50/per student for all school books we needed for the year. In terms of parental support, I think that our school was fairly normal. There was one girl in our class whose mom was basically a crack whore and decided that the gal was too much trouble and tried to get the state to put her in a PINS program. Our school has TAP (tuition assistance) for kids who couldn’t afford the money.
Brian, boohoo, teachers don’t have to work all summer <em>and</em> they don’t get paid! Oh the humanity! How do they survive with their bloated salaries over the rest of the year?
Scientizzle, most Americans actually don’t get Thanksgiving or Christmas off. They have to fight for it. The people who do work typically get higher pay, call it an xmas bonus to get $10/hr instead of $7.50. Go to the mall on Christmas eve and you’ll notice that there are hundreds of people working. That’s life.
Even those who get time off for Christmas usually get a week, not the 10-14 days teachers do. Moreover, in Catholic schools, we got two weeks for Easter.
Now, the public school kids had a one week fall break, 10 days for Christmas and 10 days for Spring Break. That’s one month of vacation during the school year.
Finally, Brian, I think your comment merely cements my belief. Your wife works 10 months a year. She has two months off. She probably gets a pension when she retires. You’ve got it good.
And if she doesn’t think she has it good, she can always go and do something else with her impeccable education.
My largest point is how much is enough? How much money do we need to give teachers so that they can “support their families?”
Wouldn’t we all love to make $80,000/year? Frankly, teachers aren’t doing a good enough job to deserve that much money. When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
And Brain, just for the record, Catholic school requirements for teachers differ from state to state. For example, in NY, all schools are bound by the NY Regents curriculum and, last time I paid attention, all teachers, private and public, were required to have a graduate degree in order to teach.
But anyway, how much is enough? How much should we pay for lackluster results?
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders. You seem to lack first hand experience with actually public school teachers. Those of us who do have that experience can tell you story after story of why our teachers deserve better, but you seem to stubborn and obtuse to listen. But I’ll try and show you the error of your ways in any case.
<i>so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts</i>
Really? I would love to visit these schools. Most districts would love to just get new books and enough supplies, let alone swimming pools and basketball courts. You mention that teachers get tax breaks on school supplies they purchase, you do realize this is things like paper and pencils right? In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.
In the school district I grew up in we haven’t passed a construction bond in a decade. We have ONE high school with over 3,000 students and its not big enough for that. Every single elementary school in our district has 6-12 portables. Drama, art, music are all being cut further and further.
Sadly the latest bond proposal passed with over 59% support, except because of stupid Washington law bonds have to get 60% percent to actually pass.
<i>When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.</i>
I’m frankly surprised you mentioned this. Do you realize how much more German (and most of these other school systems that people like you cite) school systems recieve in terms of support from taxes both local and government? See the people there are willing to invest in their education system.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
The men and women who teach in the public education system are by and large true American heros, right in the same vein as our military. They work in poor conditions, often putting themselves in physical danger on a daily basis for low pay, and poor support. We ask them to suceed but aren’t willing to give them the tools to do it. Since you seem to have some free time there in Indiana maybe you should think about volunteering in a local school, or better yet one in Chicago, then tell me teachers are overpaid.
OK, Becky, I’ll bite. Most of what you’ve said here has already been addressed (and, sorry Becky, I think you’re pretty off baseI was in public school in the same area you were in private school, and at the same time. What the heck are you talking about in terms of Fall Break? We had no such thing. We typically had about 7 days off in late December/early January (a normal year had us having school on December 23rd and resuming again around January 4th), 10 for Spring Break (the weeks before and after Easter), and a day or two in Regents Week in late January. Other than those, we had, um, federal holidays off. What is this Fall Break of which you speak?
Also, one other thing, Becky: in NY you don’t need a Masters to teach K-12. Most teachers get one, as it increases their salary, but you can get hired without one. 2 of my frineds from my high school class are currently teaching back at home–one in French, one in Math–and neither has a Masters at the moment, though one is working on hers in night school.
In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them. Not Kleenex!
Seriously though, don’t all schools do that? We always had to bring in Kleenex, 3 boxes in fall and 3 boxes after Christmas break. I remember that really well because we were very competitive about who brought in the prettiest tissue boxes. Puffs plus baby!
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
Actually David, this statement underlies a common American fallacy. As I said previously, Catholic schools tend to get better results than public schools in many areas; they also cost less per pupil and pay their teachers less. Why pump money into a system when doing so doesn’t produce results? That’s nonsensical.
Look at my local school district. With less money per pupil, we got higher test scores. Where is that $4,000 per pupil going? Certainly not for Kleenex.
You also clearly misinterpreted my point about the American vs. German educational systems. What I meant to say was that if our education system produced better results, perhaps people would pay more to support it. A Catch-22 I suppose.
But honestly, Catholic schools are truly the foil for the “teachers/schools” need more money mantra. Given less money and a greater geographical diversity of students, our schools do more.
Of course, you don’t even need to Catholic school example. Look at your cost per pupil and school performance. Look at your salary requirements in similar economic regions across the country and look at the performance of the schools. How can you justify a raise when there’s no correlation between wealthier teachers and more edumacated students?
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders.
I’m not sure what kind of connection you’re trying to make here, David, but I do think you should be cautious in making such an inadequate comparison. My lack of compassion for teachers’ unions claiming that an average of $48,000 per teacher is not enough to cover basic living expenses is a bit difference from my ire with people like Tom Cruise who would like to believe that mental illness is a twisted fairy tale. Here’s why. Teachers choose to teach and in doing so, they choose a decent lifestyle. They choose a state job with abundant benefits and 2-3 months off during the year. And they complain about the hardships of it.
In contrast, those with mental illness do not choose their afflictions and typically gain no benefit from being ill. However, it would be nice for those on disability to get $48,000 year because we’re a compassionate society. Unfortunately, most make do with less than $1,000 month, regardless of their location. So yes, I have a lot more compassion for those disabled by mental illness scraping by than I do for teachers whining about $48k a year.
And Dane, this comment is unbecoming of a gentleman such as yourself: Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.. Really darling. You aren’t Andrew ;) It is possible to disagree with me on the merits of my argument without resorting to this sort of thing. The fact that I once upon a time had a trust, all of which was spent long ago, really has no bearing on this argument at all.
Moreover, your contention that $48k is not enough to live in the community in which you teach is laughable. My sister and brother-in-law make less than $30k a year and they live in Santa Barbara, which is arguably one of the most expensive cities in the US to live in. The fact is, most people could live where they teach with their salaries, it’s just that they don’t want to deal with a lesser standard of living. I don’t blame them, but not wanting to live where you work is not the same as not being able to afford it.
Oh, and Dane, I wouldn’t go poking fun at people for non-existant trusts if I worked for my Daddy.
I don’t have time to give a detailed response, but let me just say for the record that I disagree with Becky on this. I <i>do</i> think the teachers’ unions are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I certainly don’t think teachers are overpaid. I’m not certain whether they’re as vastly underpaid as some say they are, i.e. whether the pay that some would like to see them get is realistic, but I certainly think they deserve to get somewhat more.
(and certainly not <i>less</i>, as you seem to misguidedly believe)
About the issue of vacations, in Newington we had both a February and an April vacation, but as I recall, the teachers would often have inservice days and other duties during those weeks. Don’t make the assumption that anytime the students are off, so are the teachers.
First, it’s ten months, not 8. Most places also give time off for holidays, if I’m not mistaken. (We get one week for Xmas, not two, and I’m sure you didn’t complain when you got that vacation as a student.) You can whine about those two weeklong vacations and the two-month long vacation if you like. I’ve gone in some days at 7 AM and walked out at about 9 PM. I come home exhausted, and headaches are common. I nursed two migraines just this last week. We also work at home a lot, unlike a lot of jobs, and I use my Saturdays to catch up on correcting. It’s a chore just to try to keep Sunday as a day of rest. (Those Ancient Hebrews had a great idea there.) A lot of us also join extracurricular activities, which usually pay very small stipends for hours of work a day. I only get 1000 for Drama Club all year. Keeping your certification is a Sisyphean task. No sooner do you meet one requirement than you have to meet another. Next year, I have to do BEST, Beginning Educator Support and Training, which is going to take up my every waking moment for two months. Then there’s all the in-services and teacher conferences you have to attend for CEU’s, Credit Equivalent Units. The paperwork is unbelievable. There’s always something else to do. We also have to deal with students who don’t want to be there and unreasonable parents, who can’t understand why their darling son is failing just because he didn’t do any work, or why I could ask their daughter to write a composition in Spanish. You’ve got kids whining that their A isn’t a high enough A, and colleagues that burned out long ago trying to take you with them. I’ve read stories and heard them from friends of never being able to see their SO’s enough, who often don’t understand because they don’t work nearly as long hours. Even veterans. One Social Studies teacher I know in East Hartford, a gentleman with gray hair, tells his wife on Monday mornings, “See you on Friday.” There’s a reason so many teachers quit within the first five years. If you don’t love it, you’ll either quit or feel fatalistically trapped. What exactly do you think we do all day, Becky? Play games? If this job is so easy, why are there teacher shortages? Why is it so hard to attract them, and why do all the editorials say we have to pay our teachers more if we want to get more of them?
Pools?! Berlin High has no pool. The swim team has to go to another town. New books? You mean like the ones with the covers falling apart? My town just went through a budget crisis where it had to get rid of several extracurricular activities. It only just restored them this year.
You quote an average salary, which counts the older folk who have been working for decades. I made 41,000 this year, including Drama Club, in the state that pays teachers the highest. That’s just enough for food, rent, taxes, insurance, mandatory retirement savings and union dues, car payments, and a couple luxuries like cable and internet. I’m not raising a kid or sending him to college on that. You also have to keep in mind cost of living when you consider these salaries. I can’t get rent any cheaper here. In fact, prices are going up. If I ever do get married, we could probably afford a mortgage together, but hey, NOT ALL OF US ARE MARRIED! I’ll never afford a mansion, let alone a house the size I grew up in, let alone two houses in two different states. In a couple decades, I might manage to get 70K, which is still a whole lot less than my Dad makes, who also graduated with a Master’s. I talk to students who want to be teachers about what they can expect to make in their first year with a Master’s. Some of them can’t believe the things they wanted that they’ll have to do without.
Yeah, I’d prefer a paycheck that didn’t come from coercing people to pay my salary. That’s not the reality we live in.
To be perfectly honest, once my car’s paid off, I’d be comfortable with a salary of 30K. I could even do 25K if I’m willing to stick to just the things that keep me alive and out of jail: food, rent, taxes, and maybe insurance. But I’m not going to pretend I’m overpaid when I work so hard and so many other professionals pull down much more. Sorry if this came off harsh, but I really am tired of criticism from people who have no idea what they’re talking about and wouldn’t last a day in a high school classroom. Think to yourself a moment: why is it every single person who knows what they’re talking about disagrees with you?
“If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Since you are currently unemployed, perhaps you could be introduced to the world of teaching by joining Teach for America. You would gain an appreciation for the profession as a whole, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find a new career.
Ok Becky, you clearly don’t get it. Your comparison between public and private schools is laughable at best.
Catholic/private schools get students who are more concerned about their academic future. They get parents who are more willing to put time and money into their education. The are allowed to actually discipline students and remove students who are causing problems, of course there are fewer of those because of the selective nature of private schools. Smaller classes allow teachers to focus on individuals alot more.
And as Dane pointed out, exactly how much do nuns need to make?
In public schools you have to deal with more trouble some kids, kids who take away from other students ability to learn, something you don’t have to deal with in private schools. Part of the reason for this is that you aren’t given as much leeway in terms of discipline.
You also have less parental involvement and teachers have to take on a greater role. Now this is not necessarilly the fault of the parents, alot of them are less well off, or you have single parents of course.
Public schools also have to teach to every student, yes there are the occasional AP classes or challange classes, but in most classes (most of them over crowded) teachers can’t afford to offer more challanging curriculum for students who could handle it.
Oh and btw, you know those courses that someone above mentioned? Yeah teachers have to pay for those out of pocket in order to remain certified.
Every year teachers are asked to do more with less, and criticized for not doing a good enough job when they aren’t given the support they deserve. Year after year there are people like my dad who are hounded by parents for why their kids aren’t doing well, when its not the teachers fault. Year after year he has to deal with kids who don’t want to learn and get in the way of other people learning. He has to scrounge for supplies, and try and get by.
You think teachers just get up in the morning, teach, go home and thats their day? Yeah right. How about grading papers and preparing lesson plans? How about meetings at school with faculty, parents, and students? Extra classes to keep certification. Not to mention in service days, and days after students are out and before they start in the fall.
Yes they chose to do what they do, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated fairly. Gosh I guess all those poor workers in sweat shops should just keep their mouth shut cause they choose to work there after all.
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations. So before you go off about how unreasonable these teachers demands are, why don’t you get out there and meet some of them? Walk a mile in their shoes. Your ivory tower attitude is clearly out of touch with the reality around you.
Rock On, Becky! I totally agree with you on this topic. I have ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPATHY for teachers that whine about their pay. And I have first hand knowledge about the life as a teacher. Unfortunately, I had to spend 2 months as a substitute teacher while I was searching for a real job. The teachers I worked with (about 50 total) NEVER worked 12 hour days, all looked forward to their ample time off, wasted at least a quarter of the class time with BS and ALL WHINED ABOUT THEIR PAY. Granted, teachers must deal with the occasional unruly kid and ignorant parent, but dont we all have people we must work with that we would rather not? I DONT SEE THE JOB AS A TEACHER AS BEING ALL THAT DIFFICULT, all things considered. Moreover, I remember well the education majors in college that had ample time to party and screw around while us engineering/CompSci majors burnt the midnight oil studying. I NEVER saw an education major stressing about hving too much coursework to do. They had it way too easy. It was obvious that there were two types of people in the College of Education: those that were passionate about teaching and those that had nothing better to do in college. And neither of those two types ever had serious work to do (compared to us in the engineering majors).
So, to summarize, I dont think teachers have rough jobs as teachers, and I know they didnt have it tough as college students. Therefore, why should they get paid what other professionals do? How can one expect a teacher to make as much as a Chemical Engineer or a programmer?
The real problem with teacher salaries is that such salaries depend on the willingness of local taxpayers to pay those salaries. Frankly, I think in the abstract, if people were asked to list professions and then told to rank them in terms of how much money those people should be paid, I suspect that teachers would rank significantly higher than many other professions. Unfortunately, they as with most public employees have very limited ability to increase their salaries significantly since that would require either an increase in taxes or a decrease in the allocation of money to other places where our taxes are already going.
The one exception to this rule is of course our Congressmen (and women) in Washington. Since essentially they set their own salaries, they don’t really have this problem. Plus there are all the travel benefits, extensive vacations, and other perks. I suspect that Becky notwithstanding, most people if they simply had a choice of how to distribute a given amount of money between teachers and Congressmen, would opt to reduce substantially the amount going to D.C.
<em> In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.</em> Not Kleenex!
Seriously though, don’t all schools do that? We always had to bring in Kleenex, 3 boxes in fall and 3 boxes after Christmas break. I remember that really well because we were very competitive about who brought in the prettiest tissue boxes. Puffs plus baby!
<em>Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.</em>
Actually David, this statement underlies a common American fallacy. As I said previously, Catholic schools tend to get better results than public schools in many areas; they also cost less per pupil and pay their teachers less. Why pump money into a system when doing so doesn’t produce results? That’s nonsensical.
Look at <a href=”http://www.wmsvcsd.wnyric.org/budget2005/cost-perpupil.htm”>my local school district</a>. With less money per pupil, we got higher test scores. Where is that $4,000 per pupil going? Certainly not for Kleenex.
You also clearly misinterpreted my point about the American vs. German educational systems. What I meant to say was that if our education system produced better results, perhaps people would pay more to support it. A Catch-22 I suppose.
But honestly, Catholic schools are truly the foil for the “teachers/schools” need more money mantra. Given less money and a greater geographical diversity of students, our schools do more.
Of course, you don’t even need to Catholic school example. Look at your cost per pupil and school performance. Look at your salary requirements in similar economic regions across the country and look at the performance of the schools. How can you justify a raise when there’s no correlation between wealthier teachers and more edumacated students?
<em>Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders.</em>
I’m not sure what kind of connection you’re trying to make here, David, but I do think you should be cautious in making such an inadequate comparison. My lack of compassion for teachers’ unions claiming that an average of $48,000 per teacher is not enough to cover basic living expenses is a bit difference from my ire with people like Tom Cruise who would like to believe that mental illness is a twisted fairy tale. Here’s why. Teachers choose to teach and in doing so, they choose a decent lifestyle. They choose a state job with abundant benefits and 2-3 months off during the year. And they complain about the hardships of it.
In contrast, those with mental illness do not choose their afflictions and typically gain no benefit from being ill. However, it would be nice for those on disability to get $48,000 year because we’re a compassionate society. Unfortunately, most make do with less than $1,000 month, regardless of their location. So yes, I have a lot more compassion for those disabled by mental illness scraping by than I do for teachers whining about $48k a year.
And Dane, this comment is unbecoming of a gentleman such as yourself: <em>Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.</em>. Really darling. You aren’t Andrew ;) It is possible to disagree with me on the merits of my argument without resorting to this sort of thing. The fact that I once upon a time had a trust, all of which was spent long ago, really has no bearing on this argument at all.
Moreover, your contention that $48k is not enough to live in the community in which you teach is laughable. My sister and brother-in-law make less than $30k a year and they live in Santa Barbara, which is arguably one of the most expensive cities in the US to live in. The fact is, most people <em>could</em> live where they teach with their salaries, it’s just that they don’t want to deal with a lesser standard of living. I don’t blame them, but not wanting to live where you work is not the same as not being able to afford it.
Oh, and Dane, I wouldn’t go poking fun at people for non-existant trusts if I worked for my Daddy.
Teachers are some of the most overpaid whiners. No physical labor, great benefits, lots of time off, and most out of class room work is just busywork (grading papers, lesson plans, etc.) with flexible deadlines. Not to mention awesome job security.
But after spending so much time with whiny kids, I think many tend to pick up the same habits of thinking.
Dane and David - you have managed to shock *ME* ! And that’s quite an achievement …
“… exactly how much do nuns need to make ?”
I’m not Catholic, but *that* little comment is WAY beyond the Pale ! Especially from folk who are responding with such hostility when someone said approximately “How much do teachers need to make ?”
There are great teachers and there are abysmal teachers … that’s Life …
When those who consider teachers are underpaid are ready to actually HELP those teachers, they will champion the cause of discipline for kids … they won’t simply say that the Government must throw more money at teaching, or worse, “The nasty Booooosh Administration (or Ahhhhnuld) is cutting money from education !”
And they won’t whine about how private/Catholic/parochial/charter schools are not really comparable cuz the parents of kids there discipline their kids, so we gotta throw more money at public schools to compensate … what sort of stupidity does it take to say “We need more blood donations from you bunch who get rid of the things causing you to bleed so that we can give transfusions to our folk who keep walking on the broken glass and running with scissors!” ?
OY !
I went through an excellent school system in Scotland back in the umfleties … and, yes, it was fee-paying while partially being State-funded … my parents paid all of 10 Pounds Sterling per year as fees - a little less than the equivalent of a pack of cigaettes a day … and they made sacrifices to put myself and my brother through that school … and they didn’t whine that the Government should throw more money at the school - instead, they supported the teachers in giving appropriate discipline to the kids …
Over the years, I have learned that there don’t seem to be any good teachers that are underpaid … the best teachers may not receive very high salaries, yet they seem to be happy wit the compensation they get, because, between the salary they get, and the satisfaction of *knowing* that they have affected the lives of kids in positive ways, they feel well-paid …
By contrast, some of the worst teachers I have known are constantly whining about how teachers aren’t paid enough …
I don’t know the teachers who have commented here, so I do not know if the above fits them at all … I hope it doesn’t (from the ones complaining) …
OK - with that said - are teachers challenged ? Most of the time, yes … and the good ones rise to the challenge, and they (and their students) succeed …
Teaching is seldom an easy job - but it can be SO satisfying …
Just a thought - and a somewhat cynical yet realistic one, at that …
Some of the better teachers I have known have enjoyed making ends meet by supplementing their salaries by tutoring kids … and they charged the parents of the kids they tutored a ’sliding scale’ based on two things … parental income (make the rich pay) and kid-thirst-for-learning (when the kid wants to learn, they charge less to tutor ‘em) … if the kid couldn’t pay, the kid would often become a “teaching assistant”, helping the teacher to keep the slower kids in the class up to speed, and earning the extra teaching (and the extra and extraordinarily-useful experience) that way …
Remember, the expression that says “Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach” is usually uttered by those that can’t teach …
Me - I respect good teachers - and I try and teach bad ones …
First, it’s ten months, not 8. Most places also give time off for holidays, if I’m not mistaken. (We get one week for Xmas, not two, and I’m sure you didn’t complain when you got that vacation as a student.) You can whine about those two weeklong vacations and the two-month long vacation if you like. I’ve gone in some days at 7 AM and walked out at about 9 PM. I come home exhausted, and headaches are common. I nursed two migraines just this last week. We also work at home a lot, unlike a lot of jobs, and I use my Saturdays to catch up on correcting. It’s a chore just to try to keep Sunday as a day of rest. (Those Ancient Hebrews had a great idea there.) A lot of us also join extracurricular activities, which usually pay very small stipends for hours of work a day. I only get 1000 for Drama Club all year. Keeping your certification is a Sisyphean task. No sooner do you meet one requirement than you have to meet another. Next year, I have to do BEST, Beginning Educator Support and Training, which is going to take up my every waking moment for two months. Then there’s all the in-services and teacher conferences you have to attend for CEU’s, Credit Equivalent Units. The paperwork is unbelievable. There’s always something else to do. We also have to deal with students who don’t want to be there and unreasonable parents, who can’t understand why their darling son is failing just because he didn’t do any work, or why I could ask their daughter to write a composition in Spanish. You’ve got kids whining that their A isn’t a high enough A, and colleagues that burned out long ago trying to take you with them. I’ve read stories and heard them from friends of never being able to see their SO’s enough, who often don’t understand because they don’t work nearly as long hours. Even veterans. One Social Studies teacher I know in East Hartford, a gentleman with gray hair, tells his wife on Monday mornings, “See you on Friday.” There’s a reason so many teachers quit within the first five years. If you don’t love it, you’ll either quit or feel fatalistically trapped. What exactly do you think we do all day, Becky? Play games? If this job is so easy, why are there teacher shortages? Why is it so hard to attract them, and why do all the editorials say we have to pay our teachers more if we want to get more of them?
Pools?! Berlin High has no pool. The swim team has to go to another town. New books? You mean like the ones with the covers falling apart? My town just went through a budget crisis where it had to get rid of several extracurricular activities. It only just restored them this year.
You quote an average salary, which counts the older folk who have been working for decades. I made 41,000 this year, including Drama Club, in the state that pays teachers the highest. That’s just enough for food, rent, taxes, insurance, mandatory retirement savings and union dues, car payments, and a couple luxuries like cable and internet. I’m not raising a kid or sending him to college on that. You also have to keep in mind cost of living when you consider these salaries. I can’t get rent any cheaper here. In fact, prices are going up. If I ever do get married, we could probably afford a mortgage together, but hey, NOT ALL OF US ARE MARRIED! I’ll never afford a mansion, let alone a house the size I grew up in, let alone two houses in two different states. In a couple decades, I might manage to get 70K, which is still a whole lot less than my Dad makes, who also graduated with a Master’s. I talk to students who want to be teachers about what they can expect to make in their first year with a Master’s. Some of them can’t believe the things they wanted that they’ll have to do without.
Yeah, I’d prefer a paycheck that didn’t come from coercing people to pay my salary. That’s not the reality we live in.
To be perfectly honest, once my car’s paid off, I’d be comfortable with a salary of 30K. I could even do 25K if I’m willing to stick to just the things that keep me alive and out of jail: food, rent, taxes, and maybe insurance. But I’m not going to pretend I’m overpaid when I work so hard and so many other professionals pull down much more. Sorry if this came off harsh, but I really am tired of criticism from people who have no idea what they’re talking about and wouldn’t last a day in a high school classroom. Think to yourself a moment: why is it every single person who knows what they’re talking about disagrees with you?
“If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Since you are currently unemployed, perhaps you could be introduced to the world of teaching by joining <b>Teach for America</b>. You would gain an appreciation for the profession as a whole, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find a new career.
Ok Becky, you clearly don’t get it. Your comparison between public and private schools is laughable at best.
Catholic/private schools get students who are more concerned about their academic future. They get parents who are more willing to put time and money into their education. The are allowed to actually discipline students and remove students who are causing problems, of course there are fewer of those because of the selective nature of private schools. Smaller classes allow teachers to focus on individuals alot more.
And as Dane pointed out, exactly how much do nuns need to make?
In public schools you have to deal with more trouble some kids, kids who take away from other students ability to learn, something you don’t have to deal with in private schools. Part of the reason for this is that you aren’t given as much leeway in terms of discipline.
You also have less parental involvement and teachers have to take on a greater role. Now this is not necessarilly the fault of the parents, alot of them are less well off, or you have single parents of course.
Public schools also have to teach to every student, yes there are the occasional AP classes or challange classes, but in most classes (most of them over crowded) teachers can’t afford to offer more challanging curriculum for students who could handle it.
Oh and btw, you know those courses that someone above mentioned? Yeah teachers have to pay for those out of pocket in order to remain certified.
Every year teachers are asked to do more with less, and criticized for not doing a good enough job when they aren’t given the support they deserve. Year after year there are people like my dad who are hounded by parents for why their kids aren’t doing well, when its not the teachers fault. Year after year he has to deal with kids who don’t want to learn and get in the way of other people learning. He has to scrounge for supplies, and try and get by.
You think teachers just get up in the morning, teach, go home and thats their day? Yeah right. How about grading papers and preparing lesson plans? How about meetings at school with faculty, parents, and students? Extra classes to keep certification. Not to mention in service days, and days after students are out and before they start in the fall.
Yes they chose to do what they do, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated fairly. Gosh I guess all those poor workers in sweat shops should just keep their mouth shut cause they choose to work there after all.
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations. So before you go off about how unreasonable these teachers demands are, why don’t you get out there and meet some of them? Walk a mile in their shoes. Your ivory tower attitude is clearly out of touch with the reality around you.
Rock On, Becky! I totally agree with you on this topic. I have ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPATHY for teachers that whine about their pay. And I have first hand knowledge about the life as a teacher. Unfortunately, I had to spend 2 months as a substitute teacher while I was searching for a real job. The teachers I worked with (about 50 total) NEVER worked 12 hour days, all looked forward to their ample time off, wasted at least a quarter of the class time with BS and ALL WHINED ABOUT THEIR PAY. Granted, teachers must deal with the occasional unruly kid and ignorant parent, but dont we all have people we must work with that we would rather not? I DONT SEE THE JOB AS A TEACHER AS BEING ALL THAT DIFFICULT, all things considered. Moreover, I remember well the education majors in college that had ample time to party and screw around while us engineering/CompSci majors burnt the midnight oil studying. I NEVER saw an education major stressing about hving too much coursework to do. They had it way too easy. It was obvious that there were two types of people in the College of Education: those that were passionate about teaching and those that had nothing better to do in college. And neither of those two types ever had serious work to do (compared to us in the engineering majors).
So, to summarize, I dont think teachers have rough jobs as teachers, and I know they didnt have it tough as college students. Therefore, why should they get paid what other professionals do? How can one expect a teacher to make as much as a Chemical Engineer or a programmer?
Nonsense…
The real problem with teacher salaries is that such salaries depend on the willingness of local taxpayers to pay those salaries. Frankly, I think in the abstract, if people were asked to list professions and then told to rank them in terms of how much money those people should be paid, I suspect that teachers would rank significantly higher than many other professions. Unfortunately, they as with most public employees have very limited ability to increase their salaries significantly since that would require either an increase in taxes or a decrease in the allocation of money to other places where our taxes are already going.
The one exception to this rule is of course our Congressmen (and women) in Washington. Since essentially they set their own salaries, they don’t really have this problem. Plus there are all the travel benefits, extensive vacations, and other perks. I suspect that Becky notwithstanding, most people if they simply had a choice of how to distribute a given amount of money between teachers and Congressmen, would opt to reduce substantially the amount going to D.C.
Teachers are some of the most overpaid whiners. No physical labor, great benefits, lots of time off, and most out of class room work is just busywork (grading papers, lesson plans, etc.) with flexible deadlines. Not to mention awesome job security.
But after spending so much time with whiny kids, I think many tend to pick up the same habits of thinking.
Dane and David - you have managed to shock *ME* ! And that’s quite an achievement …
“… exactly how much do nuns need to make ?”
I’m not Catholic, but *that* little comment is WAY beyond the Pale ! Especially from folk who are responding with such hostility when someone said approximately “How much do teachers need to make ?”
There are great teachers and there are abysmal teachers … that’s Life …
When those who consider teachers are underpaid are ready to actually HELP those teachers, they will champion the cause of discipline for kids … they won’t simply say that the Government must throw more money at teaching, or worse, “The nasty Booooosh Administration (or Ahhhhnuld) is cutting money from education !”
And they won’t whine about how private/Catholic/parochial/charter schools are not really comparable cuz the parents of kids there discipline their kids, so we gotta throw more money at public schools to compensate … what sort of stupidity does it take to say “We need more blood donations from you bunch who get rid of the things causing you to bleed so that we can give transfusions to our folk who keep walking on the broken glass and running with scissors!” ?
OY !
I went through an excellent school system in Scotland back in the umfleties … and, yes, it was fee-paying while partially being State-funded … my parents paid all of 10 Pounds Sterling per year as fees - a little less than the equivalent of a pack of cigaettes a day … and they made sacrifices to put myself and my brother through that school … and they didn’t whine that the Government should throw more money at the school - instead, they supported the teachers in giving appropriate discipline to the kids …
Over the years, I have learned that there don’t seem to be any good teachers that are underpaid … the best teachers may not receive very high salaries, yet they seem to be happy wit the compensation they get, because, between the salary they get, and the satisfaction of *knowing* that they have affected the lives of kids in positive ways, they feel well-paid …
By contrast, some of the worst teachers I have known are constantly whining about how teachers aren’t paid enough …
I don’t know the teachers who have commented here, so I do not know if the above fits them at all … I hope it doesn’t (from the ones complaining) …
OK - with that said - are teachers challenged ? Most of the time, yes … and the good ones rise to the challenge, and they (and their students) succeed …
Teaching is seldom an easy job - but it can be SO satisfying …
Just a thought - and a somewhat cynical yet realistic one, at that …
Some of the better teachers I have known have enjoyed making ends meet by supplementing their salaries by tutoring kids … and they charged the parents of the kids they tutored a ’sliding scale’ based on two things … parental income (make the rich pay) and kid-thirst-for-learning (when the kid wants to learn, they charge less to tutor ‘em) … if the kid couldn’t pay, the kid would often become a “teaching assistant”, helping the teacher to keep the slower kids in the class up to speed, and earning the extra teaching (and the extra and extraordinarily-useful experience) that way …
Remember, the expression that says “Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach” is usually uttered by those that can’t teach …
Me - I respect good teachers - and I try and teach bad ones …
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations.
David, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re pissing on the wrong tree here. If you want to be technical about it, I actually have taught in both public and private institutions. College is way different, but uh, it’s still teaching and getting a salary for it. So nyah. Besides, I’ve also taught pre-K and that’s a trip. Totally fun, but a trip.
Besides that, one my aunts teaches in inner city Buffalo, which stands up to all sorts of nasty stereotypes. I grew up less than 3 miles from her, so believe you me, I definately know her angst, which is only multiplied by the fact that she’s a music teacher and Lord knows that music is one of the first things to go when budget cuts are deep.
I’m not blind to the struggles that teachers have, but I think it’s laughable to say that $47k is not enough compensation to choose between “doing what you love and your family.” That’s ass. One of my very closest friends in this world grew up in a single salary, four person household. She and her sib went to private schools, played sports/did music stuff and all that jazz. And her dad rarely made significantly more than $40,000.
But anyways, back to David for one sec. I don’t really condemn people who don’t have first hand knowledge of mental illness for criticizing aspects of modern psychiatry etc. But I do think it’s unwise to put forth a strong opinion about what it’s like to be mentally ill without some kind of experience with it, either through loved ones or your own life. Do you see the distinction? I mean, if uh, Andrew, wanted to talk about the questionable impact of prozac on improving adolescent depression, that’s fine with me. If Andrew wants to start saying that bipolar disorder is a myth, well, that’s more problematic.
Again, however, I restate my position, which is that I don’t feel bad for teachers because they only make $47k.
Pretty much the only people who could legitimately complain about making $47k a year are doctors. Cuz you know, I don’t have a problem paying my doc a lot of money and fact is, a lot of GPs don’t make a whole lot more than that.
Nope. No sympathy here.
Oh, and just for the record, I was in Catholic school K-11 (mind you, I never had a 12th year, or else that would have been in Catholic school as well). I had a total of 5 nuns as teachers. My kindgarten teacher, history freshman and sophomore year of highschool, art and religion freshman year of highschool
Anywho, I never actually had a GREAT teacher. Sister Cathy, of kindergarten fame, was very kind, as were Sister Donna and Sister MarcyAnne. But Great teachers? Nope. I was chronically bored. The first amazing teachers I ran across were at USC. And I don’t think my experience is unusual.
You know, I can’t even remember the teachers I had my final year in high school.
Personally, I’m convinced that heroic teachers are a myth. Sure, some are alright, but life changing? Hell no.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
Alasdair, with regard to the nuns, as many if not most take vows of poverty or live in convents and have very little need for money I was pointing out that average salaries in Catholic schools might be lower.
Becky, its not wonder you are so down on teachers when you didn’t have any notworthy ones. I had some fantastic teachers who really inspired me in many areas of my life. People who I looked up to and helped me become who I am today. And there are people like that all accross the country.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
Bitter much? I’m sorry that your view of the world is so jaded that you must feel the need to blatantly judge other peoples lives en mass. Exactly what makes you a loser if a teacher changes your life? You really are perpetuating the stereo type of spoiled rich brats. Guess what, people can change your life, and teachers definitely can. I guess you don’t realize what alot of peoples lives are like outside your own sheltered little world, but they aren’t all as lucky as you are. Fortunately the world is filled with good people who aren’t so condescending and judgemental towards things they don’t understand.
Oh and TAing in college is not even remotely similar to making a living as a teacher.
First off, there’s no need to add to the already lengthy attacks on your ill-reasoned (and I dare say…ignorant) rant against teachers.
However, I would just like to point out that in your response to my eariler post (in which I made the obvious observation that your posts consistently lack class and tact) that you called me “baby.” Need I say more? C’mon! Jed Clapmpett has more class!
You and Howard Dean would make a good couple (sorry Brendan!). It seems to me that the both of you make these wildly offensive remarks just so that you can feed your ego–you get long responses to your posts; you get people worked up; I mean, in short, you get “air-time.”
And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong. You’ve given me (and most likely many others) a valid reason to think that you’re full of BS (for instance, do you remember when you claimed the pope was afraid to die about one week before his death? Nice job on that one)–that you post absurd comments just in order to get responses. And thus, you’ve lost your credibility…right along with Howard “yeeeaaaarg” Dean.
But I have to admit…it works. I actually get some sort of sick enjoyment from reading drivel such as yours and getting worked up. I guess that’s why Bill O’Riley and Sean Hannity make so much money…the conservatives love to hear them talk and the liberals love to hate to hear them talk. Well, I don’t “love” to read your garbage, but I do find a weird pleasure in reading it. I suppose reading your posts make me feel smarter (which is a feeling I could use after getting my grades back!)…and for that, I thank you
Becky- my K-12 teacher saved my life, because I was being physically assaulted at home. I’m an ND law student…. and I’ve been in gifted classes all my life.
Have a teacher help you when you are a vulnerable child does not mean you are a loser.
And I’ll chime in with everyone else…. you’re totally wrong on this subject.
<em>And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations.</em>
David, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re pissing on the wrong tree here. If you want to be technical about it, I actually have taught in both public and private institutions. College is way different, but uh, it’s still teaching and getting a salary for it. So nyah. Besides, I’ve also taught pre-K and that’s a trip. Totally fun, but a trip.
Besides that, one my aunts teaches in inner city Buffalo, which stands up to all sorts of nasty stereotypes. I grew up less than 3 miles from her, so believe you me, I definately know her angst, which is only multiplied by the fact that she’s a music teacher and Lord knows that music is one of the first things to go when budget cuts are deep.
I’m not blind to the struggles that teachers have, but I think it’s laughable to say that $47k is not enough compensation to choose between “doing what you love and your family.” That’s ass. One of my very closest friends in this world grew up in a single salary, four person household. She and her sib went to private schools, played sports/did music stuff and all that jazz. And her dad rarely made significantly more than $40,000.
But anyways, back to David for one sec. I don’t really condemn people who don’t have first hand knowledge of mental illness for criticizing aspects of modern psychiatry etc. But I do think it’s unwise to put forth a strong opinion about what it’s like to be mentally ill without some kind of experience with it, either through loved ones or your own life. Do you see the distinction? I mean, if uh, Andrew, wanted to talk about the questionable impact of prozac on improving adolescent depression, that’s fine with me. If Andrew wants to start saying that bipolar disorder is a myth, well, that’s more problematic.
Again, however, I restate my position, which is that I don’t feel bad for teachers because they <em>only</em> make $47k.
Pretty much the only people who could legitimately complain about making $47k a year are doctors. Cuz you know, I don’t have a problem paying my doc a lot of money and fact is, a lot of GPs don’t make a whole lot more than that.
Nope. No sympathy here.
Oh, and just for the record, I was in Catholic school K-11 (mind you, I never had a 12th year, or else that would have been in Catholic school as well). I had a total of 5 nuns as teachers. My kindgarten teacher, history freshman and sophomore year of highschool, art and religion freshman year of highschool
Anywho, I never actually had a GREAT teacher. Sister Cathy, of kindergarten fame, was very kind, as were Sister Donna and Sister MarcyAnne. But Great teachers? Nope. I was chronically bored. The first amazing teachers I ran across were at USC. And I don’t think my experience is unusual.
You know, I can’t even remember the teachers I had my final year in high school.
Personally, I’m convinced that heroic teachers are a myth. Sure, some are alright, but life changing? Hell no.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
Alasdair, with regard to the nuns, as many if not most take vows of poverty or live in convents and have very little need for money I was pointing out that average salaries in Catholic schools might be lower.
Becky, its not wonder you are so down on teachers when you didn’t have any notworthy ones. I had some fantastic teachers who really inspired me in many areas of my life. People who I looked up to and helped me become who I am today. And there are people like that all accross the country.
<i>Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.</i>
Bitter much? I’m sorry that your view of the world is so jaded that you must feel the need to blatantly judge other peoples lives en mass. Exactly what makes you a loser if a teacher changes your life? You really are perpetuating the stereo type of spoiled rich brats. Guess what, people can change your life, and teachers definitely can. I guess you don’t realize what alot of peoples lives are like outside your own sheltered little world, but they aren’t all as lucky as you are. Fortunately the world is filled with good people who aren’t so condescending and judgemental towards things they don’t understand.
Oh and TAing in college is not even remotely similar to making a living as a teacher.
June 24th, 2005 at 7:01:10 pm
Becky, try being a teach for a year and see if they pay you enough.
June 24th, 2005 at 7:04:54 pm
I might add that that’s $10,000 a year higher than the per capita income, and that also doesn’t include the ridiculous pension benefits. Two married teachers would be pulling down upwards of $90,000 and would be able to retire at 55 (50 in some states, or after 25-30 years, depending on the state). I would gladly take $90,000 for a family that’d be able to take their kids on road trips during the summer for weeks at a time.
June 24th, 2005 at 7:20:38 pm
Yes, try being a teacher for a year first. Keep in mind that the stat you list is AVERAGE salary. A first year teacher where I live makes $21,500 a year, bank tellers, restaurant employees and hotel front desk clerks make the same money! Keep in mind that the typical teacher works 9 1/2 months per year and puts in 13 hour days.
If you are not capable of making decent money with all the education you supposedly have, then you have really wasted your money!
June 24th, 2005 at 7:36:47 pm
I was about to say the samething Mike. In California, where the standards of living in much higher than elsewhere, a first-year teacher makes about $23,000 a year. That’s roughly 3000 a month,(assuming he/she does not teach durign the summer) rent in LA county is typically 1,200 a month for a 1 bed, 1 bath apt. Add in taxes and car insurance and gas money, that leaves very little money for verything else. Not to mention that most teachers spend their own out of pocket cash for classroom supplies for the kids. A tentured teacher in San Diego makes about $55,000 a year, that’s after about 15-20 years of teaching. That is well below the mean of comparable workers with the same level of education.
June 24th, 2005 at 7:48:30 pm
(supportive grin) Becky - I could have predicted at least some of the responses …
I have a good friend who was a teacher (6th or 7th grade) for about 6 months, who decided the second time he was assaulted by a kid in his classroom that enough was enough … (the school told him that it couldn’t do anything to discipline the kid - and he wasn’t allowed to, either) … so he is no longer heading to be a teacher …
He headed that way because of the satisfaction he experienced as a TA in my classes, when he saw the look of wide-eyed wonder when students realised that they had learned new things and were enjoying using the new skills … then he experienced the public school system …
AJ - would that “standards of living” were higher in California - sadly, it’s the COST of living that’s higher …
Me - I have difficulty feeling sorry for anyone who complains about not being able to support a family on what he earns - why did he start the family *before* he could support ‘em ?
June 24th, 2005 at 8:22:39 pm
12 hours a day? HAHAHA! I’d LOVE to meet that teacher. Really.
I’m the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
I have no sympathy for teachers at all.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
June 24th, 2005 at 8:24:58 pm
Becky, you never cease to amaze me.
Both my parents are elementary school teachers in the city. And no Andrew, they don’t make upwards of $90,000–try “upwards” of $70,000. They work long hours under incredibly stressful conditions in bad neighborhoods, and they make less combined than some of my undergrad friends who are making over 80 grand a year their first year out.
Becky, I don’t know what your background is, but I wish you knew what its like to grow-up in a household with two working teachers as parents.
Becky, your consistent lack of class and tact amazes me to no end…indeed, it amazes me so much that I have a terrible desire to match your drivel with my own tirade of verbal venom that would make even you look like an angel–but I suppose less is more.
Needless to say, thanks for getting my Irish and my heart-rate up…you’ve ruined what was otherwise a nice Friday evening!
Oh yeah, and for all of you would would just LOVE to be a teacher…go ahead, who’s stopping you? Oh, that’s right–probably the shitty salary and the lack of respect teachers receive on a daily basis
June 24th, 2005 at 9:13:23 pm
The beef, actually, what’s stopping me from being a teacher is a lack of opportunity. School districts here are laying off teachers, not hiring them. And, in an act of pure union-induced brilliance, I can teach in community colleges and local universities, but K-12 won’t hire me. I know, that makes a whole buttload of sense.
And baby, just because I think that the vast majority of teachers are underqualified and overpaid does not mean that I lack class or tact. It means that my powers of observation are perhaps less tainted than your own. Or perhaps, we have an honest disagreement.
The first few years of teaching, university or otherwise, are more challenging because lectures and lesson plans are being created, as opposed to evolving from older lectures. But boo-fucking-hoo. So you have to work hard. EVERYONE works hard. That girl who vacuums hotel rooms all day for $5.25/hr works hard too. The UCLA teaching assistant living on $14,500/year works HARDER than any other teacher (seeing as how they’re either taking classes or writing a thesis while simultaneously developing courses, teaching and grading while quite possibly raising children).
I mean, damn. $46,752. That’s more than I’ll ever make in a year, barring a lucky lotto ticket. You could definately raise a family for four comfortably with one partner making that much money. What else could a teacher do to make MORE money than that? What other, more remunerative career is just begging for those people?
Sounds to me like this union is about to kill the golden goose with PR like this.
June 24th, 2005 at 9:26:55 pm
Becky, two things.
First, congratulations on your 100th post, Joe and I welcome you to the tripple digits club.
Second, I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
June 24th, 2005 at 9:47:37 pm
Becky, there are a few things you bring up which seemingly support your case but, in fact, don’t.
First, you’re the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
That’s great, but most private schools have significantly higher success rates–for a variety of reasons–that are hardly representative. The nuns at your school don’t make much, but (if they’re like other nuns) aren’t supposed to and don’t need to.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Yes, that’s true, but tax deductible doesn’t mean reimbursable. Those teachers forced to buy school supplies are still without the money spent, they just donÃt have to pay taxes on it.
IÃve never met a teacher who worked only 8 months a year. In fact, almost every teacher I know spends about 3-5 weeks on vacation and the rest of the time attending classes & conferences, working on the next yearÃs lesson plans, coaching teams, and a few get part-time work for more income.
ThereÃs likely only a rare superteacher or two that work 12-hour days, thatÃs for sure. But that doesnÃt mean itÃs uncommon for many, perhaps most, teachers to be commonly working very long hours during the school year. In fact, the teachers I know average 9-10 hours a day for much of the school year. I really feel the hours they get ìoffî for summer & holidays probably drop the yearly work-hours for a teacher down to around the work-hours of a typical full-time employee.
Also, I think typically all American workers get ìThanksgiving, Christmas and typically, Easterî off because the first two are national holidays and the last is a Sunday.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:01:10 am
Becky, try being a teach for a year and see if they pay you enough.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:02:03 am
I have no sympathy for teachers at all.
Clearly.
My wife is a high school biology teacher; she’s at work by 6:45 AM. The kids are gone by 2:10, but she has to be around for ’staffings’ — meeting with administrators and parents and the like — as well as be available for students. Then there’s the grading. LOTS of grading. She has about 160 kids, and the grading is so much that she is often at work until 5 or 6 PM. Frequently she brings work home, which sometimes is offloaded to me (grading again).
She also has the duty of dealing with the kids who have been bused in from the east part of the county, which is not so affluent; one girl was out for two months or so while she had a kid, and more than one has been arrested. Security is called on a near daily basis. While in a wealthy county, it’s still an urban environment.
To your belief that they are underqualified, in her department there are two PhDs, and almost everyone has an MS. Most have done ‘real’ work in their respective fields prior to teaching. My wife, a microbiologist, has her Masters, and started life as a (published) researcher for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Now, she and her school may be the exception rather than the rule — her school was ranked 29th in the nation by Newsweek, if that matters at all — but teachers still work very hard. Your ‘8 months’ assumption is wrong; she actually works 10, because she’s there 1-2 weeks before the kids, and 1 week after. She also has to work 3 weeks during the summer writing curriculum, and has to maintain her certification by taking 6-9 credits every five years (which, OK, isn’t all that hard a req). BTW, most private school teachers aren’t required to be certified, so public school teachers aren’t the incompetent boobs you might believe them to be.
And an average of 46K/yr? Well, she doesn’t make that much. And we live in one of the most expensive parts of the country (Montgomery County, MD). We make far below the regional average. It’s quite tough, especially with the disrupted cash flow without any regular summer paychecks. Many teachers don’t even live in the county; they commute, some as far away as Pennsylvania or West Virginia (two states over!). Thankfully I make enough with two jobs that with her teacher’s salary we can live where we do.
So you’re an educated but unemployed woman living in Indiana while your fiance finishes law school; maybe I should make some unfair assumption that one day he’ll be making enough that you simply won’t have to work.
Cry me a river.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:04:54 am
I might add that that’s $10,000 a year higher than the per capita income, and that also doesn’t include the ridiculous pension benefits. Two married teachers would be pulling down upwards of $90,000 and would be able to retire at 55 (50 in some states, or after 25-30 years, depending on the state). I would gladly take $90,000 for a family that’d be able to take their kids on road trips during the summer for weeks at a time.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:10:29 am
The person requesting to meet a teacher that puts in 12 hour days… I would like to introduce you to my mother. Also, I would like to introduce you to the vast majority of teachers she has worked with during her career… Keep in mind that teacher also work weekends. And generally take various classes through the summer to maintain current certifications.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:17:51 am
Oh, and Becky, you have a very odd view of salary numbers to think that 40 some K a year is a lot. In most major metropolitan areas that is basically scrapping along — Most teacher cannot afford to live in the community that they teach in.
Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:20:38 am
Yes, try being a teacher for a year first. Keep in mind that the stat you list is AVERAGE salary. A first year teacher where I live makes $21,500 a year, bank tellers, restaurant employees and hotel front desk clerks make the same money! Keep in mind that the typical teacher works 9 1/2 months per year and puts in 13 hour days.
If you are not capable of making decent money with all the education you supposedly have, then you have really wasted your money!
June 25th, 2005 at 12:31:37 am
Whoa David! You are so wrong on this: I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
Catholic schools may have smaller classes, but smaller classes also mean that there are fewer pupils per class to pay teacher salaries. The government does not support Catholic schools, so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts, we had the pleasure of getting a total of $50/per student for all school books we needed for the year. In terms of parental support, I think that our school was fairly normal. There was one girl in our class whose mom was basically a crack whore and decided that the gal was too much trouble and tried to get the state to put her in a PINS program. Our school has TAP (tuition assistance) for kids who couldn’t afford the money.
Brian, boohoo, teachers don’t have to work all summer and they don’t get paid! Oh the humanity! How do they survive with their bloated salaries over the rest of the year?
Scientizzle, most Americans actually don’t get Thanksgiving or Christmas off. They have to fight for it. The people who do work typically get higher pay, call it an xmas bonus to get $10/hr instead of $7.50. Go to the mall on Christmas eve and you’ll notice that there are hundreds of people working. That’s life.
Even those who get time off for Christmas usually get a week, not the 10-14 days teachers do. Moreover, in Catholic schools, we got two weeks for Easter.
Now, the public school kids had a one week fall break, 10 days for Christmas and 10 days for Spring Break. That’s one month of vacation during the school year.
Finally, Brian, I think your comment merely cements my belief. Your wife works 10 months a year. She has two months off. She probably gets a pension when she retires. You’ve got it good.
And if she doesn’t think she has it good, she can always go and do something else with her impeccable education.
My largest point is how much is enough? How much money do we need to give teachers so that they can “support their families?”
Wouldn’t we all love to make $80,000/year? Frankly, teachers aren’t doing a good enough job to deserve that much money. When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
And Brain, just for the record, Catholic school requirements for teachers differ from state to state. For example, in NY, all schools are bound by the NY Regents curriculum and, last time I paid attention, all teachers, private and public, were required to have a graduate degree in order to teach.
But anyway, how much is enough? How much should we pay for lackluster results?
June 25th, 2005 at 12:36:47 am
I was about to say the samething Mike. In California, where the standards of living in much higher than elsewhere, a first-year teacher makes about $23,000 a year. That’s roughly 3000 a month,(assuming he/she does not teach durign the summer) rent in LA county is typically 1,200 a month for a 1 bed, 1 bath apt. Add in taxes and car insurance and gas money, that leaves very little money for verything else. Not to mention that most teachers spend their own out of pocket cash for classroom supplies for the kids. A tentured teacher in San Diego makes about $55,000 a year, that’s after about 15-20 years of teaching. That is well below the mean of comparable workers with the same level of education.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:48:30 am
(supportive grin) Becky - I could have predicted at least some of the responses …
I have a good friend who was a teacher (6th or 7th grade) for about 6 months, who decided the second time he was assaulted by a kid in his classroom that enough was enough … (the school told him that it couldn’t do anything to discipline the kid - and he wasn’t allowed to, either) … so he is no longer heading to be a teacher …
He headed that way because of the satisfaction he experienced as a TA in my classes, when he saw the look of wide-eyed wonder when students realised that they had learned new things and were enjoying using the new skills … then he experienced the public school system …
AJ - would that “standards of living” were higher in California - sadly, it’s the COST of living that’s higher …
Me - I have difficulty feeling sorry for anyone who complains about not being able to support a family on what he earns - why did he start the family *before* he could support ‘em ?
June 25th, 2005 at 1:21:03 am
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders. You seem to lack first hand experience with actually public school teachers. Those of us who do have that experience can tell you story after story of why our teachers deserve better, but you seem to stubborn and obtuse to listen. But I’ll try and show you the error of your ways in any case.
so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts
Really? I would love to visit these schools. Most districts would love to just get new books and enough supplies, let alone swimming pools and basketball courts. You mention that teachers get tax breaks on school supplies they purchase, you do realize this is things like paper and pencils right? In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.
In the school district I grew up in we haven’t passed a construction bond in a decade. We have ONE high school with over 3,000 students and its not big enough for that. Every single elementary school in our district has 6-12 portables. Drama, art, music are all being cut further and further.
Sadly the latest bond proposal passed with over 59% support, except because of stupid Washington law bonds have to get 60% percent to actually pass.
When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
I’m frankly surprised you mentioned this. Do you realize how much more German (and most of these other school systems that people like you cite) school systems recieve in terms of support from taxes both local and government? See the people there are willing to invest in their education system.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
The men and women who teach in the public education system are by and large true American heros, right in the same vein as our military. They work in poor conditions, often putting themselves in physical danger on a daily basis for low pay, and poor support. We ask them to suceed but aren’t willing to give them the tools to do it. Since you seem to have some free time there in Indiana maybe you should think about volunteering in a local school, or better yet one in Chicago, then tell me teachers are overpaid.
June 25th, 2005 at 1:22:39 am
12 hours a day? HAHAHA! I’d LOVE to meet that teacher. Really.
I’m the product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.
I have no sympathy for teachers at all.
And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
June 25th, 2005 at 1:24:58 am
Becky, you never cease to amaze me.
Both my parents are elementary school teachers in the city. And no Andrew, they don’t make upwards of $90,000–try “upwards” of $70,000. They work long hours under incredibly stressful conditions in bad neighborhoods, and they make less combined than some of my undergrad friends who are making over 80 grand a year their first year out.
Becky, I don’t know what your background is, but I wish you knew what its like to grow-up in a household with two working teachers as parents.
Becky, your consistent lack of class and tact amazes me to no end…indeed, it amazes me so much that I have a terrible desire to match your drivel with my own tirade of verbal venom that would make even you look like an angel–but I suppose less is more.
Needless to say, thanks for getting my Irish and my heart-rate up…you’ve ruined what was otherwise a nice Friday evening!
Oh yeah, and for all of you would would just LOVE to be a teacher…go ahead, who’s stopping you? Oh, that’s right–probably the shitty salary and the lack of respect teachers receive on a daily basis
June 25th, 2005 at 1:57:53 am
OK, Becky, I’ll bite. Most of what you’ve said here has already been addressed (and, sorry Becky, I think you’re pretty off baseI was in public school in the same area you were in private school, and at the same time. What the heck are you talking about in terms of Fall Break? We had no such thing. We typically had about 7 days off in late December/early January (a normal year had us having school on December 23rd and resuming again around January 4th), 10 for Spring Break (the weeks before and after Easter), and a day or two in Regents Week in late January. Other than those, we had, um, federal holidays off. What is this Fall Break of which you speak?
June 25th, 2005 at 2:03:56 am
Also, one other thing, Becky: in NY you don’t need a Masters to teach K-12. Most teachers get one, as it increases their salary, but you can get hired without one. 2 of my frineds from my high school class are currently teaching back at home–one in French, one in Math–and neither has a Masters at the moment, though one is working on hers in night school.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:13:23 am
The beef, actually, what’s stopping me from being a teacher is a lack of opportunity. School districts here are laying off teachers, not hiring them. And, in an act of pure union-induced brilliance, I can teach in community colleges and local universities, but K-12 won’t hire me. I know, that makes a whole buttload of sense.
And baby, just because I think that the vast majority of teachers are underqualified and overpaid does not mean that I lack class or tact. It means that my powers of observation are perhaps less tainted than your own. Or perhaps, we have an honest disagreement.
The first few years of teaching, university or otherwise, are more challenging because lectures and lesson plans are being created, as opposed to evolving from older lectures. But boo-fucking-hoo. So you have to work hard. EVERYONE works hard. That girl who vacuums hotel rooms all day for $5.25/hr works hard too. The UCLA teaching assistant living on $14,500/year works HARDER than any other teacher (seeing as how they’re either taking classes or writing a thesis while simultaneously developing courses, teaching and grading while quite possibly raising children).
I mean, damn. $46,752. That’s more than I’ll ever make in a year, barring a lucky lotto ticket. You could definately raise a family for four comfortably with one partner making that much money. What else could a teacher do to make MORE money than that? What other, more remunerative career is just begging for those people?
Sounds to me like this union is about to kill the golden goose with PR like this.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:26:55 am
Becky, two things.
First, congratulations on your 100th post, Joe and I welcome you to the tripple digits club.
Second, I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:47:37 am
Becky, there are a few things you bring up which seemingly support your case but, in fact, don’t.
First, you’re the <i>product of the Catholic school system, where our teachers were honestly lucky to pull in $25,000/year. And wouldn’t ya know, our standardized test scores were always above average and in my school year, 99% of our class graduated.</i>
That’s great, but most private schools have significantly higher success rates–for a variety of reasons–that are hardly representative. The nuns at your school don’t make much, but (if they’re like other nuns) aren’t supposed to and don’t need to.
<i>And for the record, any money a teacher spends toward class supplies for their pupils is tax deductible. Just because some people are too ignorant to claim the deduction doesn’t mean that it’s not there.</i>
Yes, that’s true, but tax deductible doesn’t mean reimbursable. Those teachers forced to buy school supplies are still without the money spent, they just donÃt have to pay taxes on it.
IÃve never met a teacher who worked only 8 months a year. In fact, almost every teacher I know spends about 3-5 weeks on vacation and the rest of the time attending classes & conferences, working on the next yearÃs lesson plans, coaching teams, and a few get part-time work for more income.
ThereÃs likely only a rare superteacher or two that work 12-hour days, thatÃs for sure. But that doesnÃt mean itÃs uncommon for many, perhaps most, teachers to be commonly working very long hours during the school year. In fact, the teachers I know average 9-10 hours a day for much of the school year. I really feel the hours they get ìoffî for summer & holidays probably drop the yearly work-hours for a teacher down to around the work-hours of a typical full-time employee.
Also, I think typically <i>all</i> American workers get ìThanksgiving, Christmas and typically, Easterî off because the first two are national holidays and the last is a Sunday.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:53:53 am
I don’t have time to give a detailed response, but let me just say for the record that I disagree with Becky on this. I do think the teachers’ unions are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I certainly don’t think teachers are overpaid. I’m not certain whether they’re as vastly underpaid as some say they are, i.e. whether the pay that some would like to see them get is realistic, but I certainly think they deserve to get somewhat more.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:56:12 am
(and certainly not less, as you seem to misguidedly believe)
About the issue of vacations, in Newington we had both a February and an April vacation, but as I recall, the teachers would often have inservice days and other duties during those weeks. Don’t make the assumption that anytime the students are off, so are the teachers.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:02:03 am
<i>I have no sympathy for teachers at all.</i>
Clearly.
My wife is a high school biology teacher; she’s at work by 6:45 AM. The kids are gone by 2:10, but she has to be around for ’staffings’ — meeting with administrators and parents and the like — as well as be available for students. Then there’s the grading. LOTS of grading. She has about 160 kids, and the grading is so much that she is often at work until 5 or 6 PM. Frequently she brings work home, which sometimes is offloaded to me (grading again).
She also has the duty of dealing with the kids who have been bused in from the east part of the county, which is not so affluent; one girl was out for two months or so while she had a kid, and more than one has been arrested. Security is called on a near daily basis. While in a wealthy county, it’s still an urban environment.
To your belief that they are underqualified, in her department there are two PhDs, and almost everyone has an MS. Most have done ‘real’ work in their respective fields prior to teaching. My wife, a microbiologist, has her Masters, and started life as a (published) researcher for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Now, she and her school may be the exception rather than the rule — her school was <a href=”http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/bcchs/academics/newsweek.html”>ranked 29th in the nation by Newsweek</a>, if that matters at all — but teachers still work very hard. Your ‘8 months’ assumption is wrong; she actually works 10, because she’s there 1-2 weeks before the kids, and 1 week after. She also has to work 3 weeks during the summer writing curriculum, and has to maintain her certification by taking 6-9 credits every five years (which, OK, isn’t all that hard a req). BTW, most private school teachers aren’t required to be certified, so public school teachers aren’t the incompetent boobs you might believe them to be.
And an average of 46K/yr? Well, she doesn’t make that much. And we live in one of the <a href=”http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/hpci_data/”>most expensive parts of the country (Montgomery County, MD).</a> We make far below the regional average. It’s quite tough, especially with the disrupted cash flow without any regular summer paychecks. Many teachers don’t even live in the county; they commute, some as far away as Pennsylvania or West Virginia (two states over!). Thankfully I make enough with two jobs that with her teacher’s salary we can live where we do.
So you’re an educated but unemployed woman living in Indiana while your fiance finishes law school; maybe I should make some unfair assumption that one day he’ll be making enough that you simply won’t have to work.
Cry me a river.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:10:29 am
The person requesting to meet a teacher that puts in 12 hour days… I would like to introduce you to my mother. Also, I would like to introduce you to the vast majority of teachers she has worked with during her career… Keep in mind that teacher also work weekends. And generally take various classes through the summer to maintain current certifications.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:17:51 am
Oh, and Becky, you have a very odd view of salary numbers to think that 40 some K a year is a lot. In most major metropolitan areas that is basically scrapping along — Most teacher cannot afford to live in the community that they teach in.
Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:31:37 am
Whoa David! You are so wrong on this: <em> I think you are completely off base about your criticism of teachers and their salaries. I could list a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me most is your comment about Catholic schools. Yes they might not make as much, but they are given smaller classes, better supplies, more community and parental support, ability to discipline more. Not to mention that the kids who are there are typically more interested in learning with supportive and/or more well to do families.</em>
Catholic schools may have smaller classes, but smaller classes also mean that there are fewer pupils per class to pay teacher salaries. The government does not support Catholic schools, so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts, we had the pleasure of getting a total of $50/per student for all school books we needed for the year. In terms of parental support, I think that our school was fairly normal. There was one girl in our class whose mom was basically a crack whore and decided that the gal was too much trouble and tried to get the state to put her in a PINS program. Our school has TAP (tuition assistance) for kids who couldn’t afford the money.
Brian, boohoo, teachers don’t have to work all summer <em>and</em> they don’t get paid! Oh the humanity! How do they survive with their bloated salaries over the rest of the year?
Scientizzle, most Americans actually don’t get Thanksgiving or Christmas off. They have to fight for it. The people who do work typically get higher pay, call it an xmas bonus to get $10/hr instead of $7.50. Go to the mall on Christmas eve and you’ll notice that there are hundreds of people working. That’s life.
Even those who get time off for Christmas usually get a week, not the 10-14 days teachers do. Moreover, in Catholic schools, we got two weeks for Easter.
Now, the public school kids had a one week fall break, 10 days for Christmas and 10 days for Spring Break. That’s one month of vacation during the school year.
Finally, Brian, I think your comment merely cements my belief. Your wife works 10 months a year. She has two months off. She probably gets a pension when she retires. You’ve got it good.
And if she doesn’t think she has it good, she can always go and do something else with her impeccable education.
My largest point is how much is enough? How much money do we need to give teachers so that they can “support their families?”
Wouldn’t we all love to make $80,000/year? Frankly, teachers aren’t doing a good enough job to deserve that much money. When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.
And Brain, just for the record, Catholic school requirements for teachers differ from state to state. For example, in NY, all schools are bound by the NY Regents curriculum and, last time I paid attention, all teachers, private and public, were required to have a graduate degree in order to teach.
But anyway, how much is enough? How much should we pay for lackluster results?
June 25th, 2005 at 6:21:03 am
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders. You seem to lack first hand experience with actually public school teachers. Those of us who do have that experience can tell you story after story of why our teachers deserve better, but you seem to stubborn and obtuse to listen. But I’ll try and show you the error of your ways in any case.
<i>so while the public schools got new books, swimming pools and basketball courts</i>
Really? I would love to visit these schools. Most districts would love to just get new books and enough supplies, let alone swimming pools and basketball courts. You mention that teachers get tax breaks on school supplies they purchase, you do realize this is things like paper and pencils right? In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.
In the school district I grew up in we haven’t passed a construction bond in a decade. We have ONE high school with over 3,000 students and its not big enough for that. Every single elementary school in our district has 6-12 portables. Drama, art, music are all being cut further and further.
Sadly the latest bond proposal passed with over 59% support, except because of stupid Washington law bonds have to get 60% percent to actually pass.
<i>When I look at the education my brother-in-law got in Germany and my education, well, let’s just say I’d pay his teachers a helluva lot more than I’d pay any of mine.</i>
I’m frankly surprised you mentioned this. Do you realize how much more German (and most of these other school systems that people like you cite) school systems recieve in terms of support from taxes both local and government? See the people there are willing to invest in their education system.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
The men and women who teach in the public education system are by and large true American heros, right in the same vein as our military. They work in poor conditions, often putting themselves in physical danger on a daily basis for low pay, and poor support. We ask them to suceed but aren’t willing to give them the tools to do it. Since you seem to have some free time there in Indiana maybe you should think about volunteering in a local school, or better yet one in Chicago, then tell me teachers are overpaid.
June 25th, 2005 at 6:57:53 am
OK, Becky, I’ll bite. Most of what you’ve said here has already been addressed (and, sorry Becky, I think you’re pretty off baseI was in public school in the same area you were in private school, and at the same time. What the heck are you talking about in terms of Fall Break? We had no such thing. We typically had about 7 days off in late December/early January (a normal year had us having school on December 23rd and resuming again around January 4th), 10 for Spring Break (the weeks before and after Easter), and a day or two in Regents Week in late January. Other than those, we had, um, federal holidays off. What is this Fall Break of which you speak?
June 25th, 2005 at 7:03:56 am
Also, one other thing, Becky: in NY you don’t need a Masters to teach K-12. Most teachers get one, as it increases their salary, but you can get hired without one. 2 of my frineds from my high school class are currently teaching back at home–one in French, one in Math–and neither has a Masters at the moment, though one is working on hers in night school.
June 25th, 2005 at 7:35:47 am
In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them. Not Kleenex!
Seriously though, don’t all schools do that? We always had to bring in Kleenex, 3 boxes in fall and 3 boxes after Christmas break. I remember that really well because we were very competitive about who brought in the prettiest tissue boxes. Puffs plus baby!
Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.
Actually David, this statement underlies a common American fallacy. As I said previously, Catholic schools tend to get better results than public schools in many areas; they also cost less per pupil and pay their teachers less. Why pump money into a system when doing so doesn’t produce results? That’s nonsensical.
Look at my local school district. With less money per pupil, we got higher test scores. Where is that $4,000 per pupil going? Certainly not for Kleenex.
You also clearly misinterpreted my point about the American vs. German educational systems. What I meant to say was that if our education system produced better results, perhaps people would pay more to support it. A Catch-22 I suppose.
But honestly, Catholic schools are truly the foil for the “teachers/schools” need more money mantra. Given less money and a greater geographical diversity of students, our schools do more.
Of course, you don’t even need to Catholic school example. Look at your cost per pupil and school performance. Look at your salary requirements in similar economic regions across the country and look at the performance of the schools. How can you justify a raise when there’s no correlation between wealthier teachers and more edumacated students?
Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders.
I’m not sure what kind of connection you’re trying to make here, David, but I do think you should be cautious in making such an inadequate comparison. My lack of compassion for teachers’ unions claiming that an average of $48,000 per teacher is not enough to cover basic living expenses is a bit difference from my ire with people like Tom Cruise who would like to believe that mental illness is a twisted fairy tale. Here’s why. Teachers choose to teach and in doing so, they choose a decent lifestyle. They choose a state job with abundant benefits and 2-3 months off during the year. And they complain about the hardships of it.
In contrast, those with mental illness do not choose their afflictions and typically gain no benefit from being ill. However, it would be nice for those on disability to get $48,000 year because we’re a compassionate society. Unfortunately, most make do with less than $1,000 month, regardless of their location. So yes, I have a lot more compassion for those disabled by mental illness scraping by than I do for teachers whining about $48k a year.
And Dane, this comment is unbecoming of a gentleman such as yourself: Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.. Really darling. You aren’t Andrew ;) It is possible to disagree with me on the merits of my argument without resorting to this sort of thing. The fact that I once upon a time had a trust, all of which was spent long ago, really has no bearing on this argument at all.
Moreover, your contention that $48k is not enough to live in the community in which you teach is laughable. My sister and brother-in-law make less than $30k a year and they live in Santa Barbara, which is arguably one of the most expensive cities in the US to live in. The fact is, most people could live where they teach with their salaries, it’s just that they don’t want to deal with a lesser standard of living. I don’t blame them, but not wanting to live where you work is not the same as not being able to afford it.
Oh, and Dane, I wouldn’t go poking fun at people for non-existant trusts if I worked for my Daddy.
June 25th, 2005 at 7:53:53 am
I don’t have time to give a detailed response, but let me just say for the record that I disagree with Becky on this. I <i>do</i> think the teachers’ unions are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I certainly don’t think teachers are overpaid. I’m not certain whether they’re as vastly underpaid as some say they are, i.e. whether the pay that some would like to see them get is realistic, but I certainly think they deserve to get somewhat more.
June 25th, 2005 at 7:56:12 am
(and certainly not <i>less</i>, as you seem to misguidedly believe)
About the issue of vacations, in Newington we had both a February and an April vacation, but as I recall, the teachers would often have inservice days and other duties during those weeks. Don’t make the assumption that anytime the students are off, so are the teachers.
June 25th, 2005 at 8:52:26 am
Becky, you have no idea…
First, it’s ten months, not 8. Most places also give time off for holidays, if I’m not mistaken. (We get one week for Xmas, not two, and I’m sure you didn’t complain when you got that vacation as a student.) You can whine about those two weeklong vacations and the two-month long vacation if you like. I’ve gone in some days at 7 AM and walked out at about 9 PM. I come home exhausted, and headaches are common. I nursed two migraines just this last week. We also work at home a lot, unlike a lot of jobs, and I use my Saturdays to catch up on correcting. It’s a chore just to try to keep Sunday as a day of rest. (Those Ancient Hebrews had a great idea there.) A lot of us also join extracurricular activities, which usually pay very small stipends for hours of work a day. I only get 1000 for Drama Club all year. Keeping your certification is a Sisyphean task. No sooner do you meet one requirement than you have to meet another. Next year, I have to do BEST, Beginning Educator Support and Training, which is going to take up my every waking moment for two months. Then there’s all the in-services and teacher conferences you have to attend for CEU’s, Credit Equivalent Units. The paperwork is unbelievable. There’s always something else to do. We also have to deal with students who don’t want to be there and unreasonable parents, who can’t understand why their darling son is failing just because he didn’t do any work, or why I could ask their daughter to write a composition in Spanish. You’ve got kids whining that their A isn’t a high enough A, and colleagues that burned out long ago trying to take you with them. I’ve read stories and heard them from friends of never being able to see their SO’s enough, who often don’t understand because they don’t work nearly as long hours. Even veterans. One Social Studies teacher I know in East Hartford, a gentleman with gray hair, tells his wife on Monday mornings, “See you on Friday.” There’s a reason so many teachers quit within the first five years. If you don’t love it, you’ll either quit or feel fatalistically trapped. What exactly do you think we do all day, Becky? Play games? If this job is so easy, why are there teacher shortages? Why is it so hard to attract them, and why do all the editorials say we have to pay our teachers more if we want to get more of them?
Pools?! Berlin High has no pool. The swim team has to go to another town. New books? You mean like the ones with the covers falling apart? My town just went through a budget crisis where it had to get rid of several extracurricular activities. It only just restored them this year.
You quote an average salary, which counts the older folk who have been working for decades. I made 41,000 this year, including Drama Club, in the state that pays teachers the highest. That’s just enough for food, rent, taxes, insurance, mandatory retirement savings and union dues, car payments, and a couple luxuries like cable and internet. I’m not raising a kid or sending him to college on that. You also have to keep in mind cost of living when you consider these salaries. I can’t get rent any cheaper here. In fact, prices are going up. If I ever do get married, we could probably afford a mortgage together, but hey, NOT ALL OF US ARE MARRIED! I’ll never afford a mansion, let alone a house the size I grew up in, let alone two houses in two different states. In a couple decades, I might manage to get 70K, which is still a whole lot less than my Dad makes, who also graduated with a Master’s. I talk to students who want to be teachers about what they can expect to make in their first year with a Master’s. Some of them can’t believe the things they wanted that they’ll have to do without.
Yeah, I’d prefer a paycheck that didn’t come from coercing people to pay my salary. That’s not the reality we live in.
To be perfectly honest, once my car’s paid off, I’d be comfortable with a salary of 30K. I could even do 25K if I’m willing to stick to just the things that keep me alive and out of jail: food, rent, taxes, and maybe insurance. But I’m not going to pretend I’m overpaid when I work so hard and so many other professionals pull down much more. Sorry if this came off harsh, but I really am tired of criticism from people who have no idea what they’re talking about and wouldn’t last a day in a high school classroom. Think to yourself a moment: why is it every single person who knows what they’re talking about disagrees with you?
“If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.”
June 25th, 2005 at 9:17:41 am
Becky:
Since you are currently unemployed, perhaps you could be introduced to the world of teaching by joining Teach for America. You would gain an appreciation for the profession as a whole, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find a new career.
June 25th, 2005 at 9:24:13 am
Ok Becky, you clearly don’t get it. Your comparison between public and private schools is laughable at best.
Catholic/private schools get students who are more concerned about their academic future. They get parents who are more willing to put time and money into their education. The are allowed to actually discipline students and remove students who are causing problems, of course there are fewer of those because of the selective nature of private schools. Smaller classes allow teachers to focus on individuals alot more.
And as Dane pointed out, exactly how much do nuns need to make?
In public schools you have to deal with more trouble some kids, kids who take away from other students ability to learn, something you don’t have to deal with in private schools. Part of the reason for this is that you aren’t given as much leeway in terms of discipline.
You also have less parental involvement and teachers have to take on a greater role. Now this is not necessarilly the fault of the parents, alot of them are less well off, or you have single parents of course.
Public schools also have to teach to every student, yes there are the occasional AP classes or challange classes, but in most classes (most of them over crowded) teachers can’t afford to offer more challanging curriculum for students who could handle it.
Oh and btw, you know those courses that someone above mentioned? Yeah teachers have to pay for those out of pocket in order to remain certified.
Every year teachers are asked to do more with less, and criticized for not doing a good enough job when they aren’t given the support they deserve. Year after year there are people like my dad who are hounded by parents for why their kids aren’t doing well, when its not the teachers fault. Year after year he has to deal with kids who don’t want to learn and get in the way of other people learning. He has to scrounge for supplies, and try and get by.
You think teachers just get up in the morning, teach, go home and thats their day? Yeah right. How about grading papers and preparing lesson plans? How about meetings at school with faculty, parents, and students? Extra classes to keep certification. Not to mention in service days, and days after students are out and before they start in the fall.
Yes they chose to do what they do, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated fairly. Gosh I guess all those poor workers in sweat shops should just keep their mouth shut cause they choose to work there after all.
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations. So before you go off about how unreasonable these teachers demands are, why don’t you get out there and meet some of them? Walk a mile in their shoes. Your ivory tower attitude is clearly out of touch with the reality around you.
June 25th, 2005 at 10:55:39 am
Rock On, Becky! I totally agree with you on this topic. I have ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPATHY for teachers that whine about their pay. And I have first hand knowledge about the life as a teacher. Unfortunately, I had to spend 2 months as a substitute teacher while I was searching for a real job. The teachers I worked with (about 50 total) NEVER worked 12 hour days, all looked forward to their ample time off, wasted at least a quarter of the class time with BS and ALL WHINED ABOUT THEIR PAY. Granted, teachers must deal with the occasional unruly kid and ignorant parent, but dont we all have people we must work with that we would rather not? I DONT SEE THE JOB AS A TEACHER AS BEING ALL THAT DIFFICULT, all things considered. Moreover, I remember well the education majors in college that had ample time to party and screw around while us engineering/CompSci majors burnt the midnight oil studying. I NEVER saw an education major stressing about hving too much coursework to do. They had it way too easy. It was obvious that there were two types of people in the College of Education: those that were passionate about teaching and those that had nothing better to do in college. And neither of those two types ever had serious work to do (compared to us in the engineering majors).
So, to summarize, I dont think teachers have rough jobs as teachers, and I know they didnt have it tough as college students. Therefore, why should they get paid what other professionals do? How can one expect a teacher to make as much as a Chemical Engineer or a programmer?
Nonsense…
June 25th, 2005 at 11:54:16 am
The real problem with teacher salaries is that such salaries depend on the willingness of local taxpayers to pay those salaries. Frankly, I think in the abstract, if people were asked to list professions and then told to rank them in terms of how much money those people should be paid, I suspect that teachers would rank significantly higher than many other professions. Unfortunately, they as with most public employees have very limited ability to increase their salaries significantly since that would require either an increase in taxes or a decrease in the allocation of money to other places where our taxes are already going.
The one exception to this rule is of course our Congressmen (and women) in Washington. Since essentially they set their own salaries, they don’t really have this problem. Plus there are all the travel benefits, extensive vacations, and other perks. I suspect that Becky notwithstanding, most people if they simply had a choice of how to distribute a given amount of money between teachers and Congressmen, would opt to reduce substantially the amount going to D.C.
June 25th, 2005 at 12:35:47 pm
<em> In some of my classes they asked us each to bring a box of kleenex at the beggining of the year because the school couldn’t afford to buy them.</em> Not Kleenex!
Seriously though, don’t all schools do that? We always had to bring in Kleenex, 3 boxes in fall and 3 boxes after Christmas break. I remember that really well because we were very competitive about who brought in the prettiest tissue boxes. Puffs plus baby!
<em>Nothing pisses me off more than people who complain about how lackluster the American education system is and then aren’t willing to put the money into it to make it competitive. No Child Left Behind? Great, create stupid standards based on standarized tests, penalize schools who don’t meet those standards, but don’t give them the money they need to do it.</em>
Actually David, this statement underlies a common American fallacy. As I said previously, Catholic schools tend to get better results than public schools in many areas; they also cost less per pupil and pay their teachers less. Why pump money into a system when doing so doesn’t produce results? That’s nonsensical.
Look at <a href=”http://www.wmsvcsd.wnyric.org/budget2005/cost-perpupil.htm”>my local school district</a>. With less money per pupil, we got higher test scores. Where is that $4,000 per pupil going? Certainly not for Kleenex.
You also clearly misinterpreted my point about the American vs. German educational systems. What I meant to say was that if our education system produced better results, perhaps people would pay more to support it. A Catch-22 I suppose.
But honestly, Catholic schools are truly the foil for the “teachers/schools” need more money mantra. Given less money and a greater geographical diversity of students, our schools do more.
Of course, you don’t even need to Catholic school example. Look at your cost per pupil and school performance. Look at your salary requirements in similar economic regions across the country and look at the performance of the schools. How can you justify a raise when there’s no correlation between wealthier teachers and more edumacated students?
<em>Your contempt for those people who take the thankless jobs trying to do their best to prepare the next generation of children for the future is appalling Becky, your lack of compassion is astounding. Especially from someone who complains about the lack of compassion from people who don’t have first hand knowledge of people with mental disorders.</em>
I’m not sure what kind of connection you’re trying to make here, David, but I do think you should be cautious in making such an inadequate comparison. My lack of compassion for teachers’ unions claiming that an average of $48,000 per teacher is not enough to cover basic living expenses is a bit difference from my ire with people like Tom Cruise who would like to believe that mental illness is a twisted fairy tale. Here’s why. Teachers choose to teach and in doing so, they choose a decent lifestyle. They choose a state job with abundant benefits and 2-3 months off during the year. And they complain about the hardships of it.
In contrast, those with mental illness do not choose their afflictions and typically gain no benefit from being ill. However, it would be nice for those on disability to get $48,000 year because we’re a compassionate society. Unfortunately, most make do with less than $1,000 month, regardless of their location. So yes, I have a lot more compassion for those disabled by mental illness scraping by than I do for teachers whining about $48k a year.
And Dane, this comment is unbecoming of a gentleman such as yourself: <em>Most of the time you manage to not show yourself to be a trust fund brat. This is, unfortunately, not one of those times.</em>. Really darling. You aren’t Andrew ;) It is possible to disagree with me on the merits of my argument without resorting to this sort of thing. The fact that I once upon a time had a trust, all of which was spent long ago, really has no bearing on this argument at all.
Moreover, your contention that $48k is not enough to live in the community in which you teach is laughable. My sister and brother-in-law make less than $30k a year and they live in Santa Barbara, which is arguably one of the most expensive cities in the US to live in. The fact is, most people <em>could</em> live where they teach with their salaries, it’s just that they don’t want to deal with a lesser standard of living. I don’t blame them, but not wanting to live where you work is not the same as not being able to afford it.
Oh, and Dane, I wouldn’t go poking fun at people for non-existant trusts if I worked for my Daddy.
June 25th, 2005 at 1:29:11 pm
Teachers are some of the most overpaid whiners. No physical labor, great benefits, lots of time off, and most out of class room work is just busywork (grading papers, lesson plans, etc.) with flexible deadlines. Not to mention awesome job security.
But after spending so much time with whiny kids, I think many tend to pick up the same habits of thinking.
June 25th, 2005 at 1:33:36 pm
Dane and David - you have managed to shock *ME* ! And that’s quite an achievement …
“… exactly how much do nuns need to make ?”
I’m not Catholic, but *that* little comment is WAY beyond the Pale ! Especially from folk who are responding with such hostility when someone said approximately “How much do teachers need to make ?”
There are great teachers and there are abysmal teachers … that’s Life …
When those who consider teachers are underpaid are ready to actually HELP those teachers, they will champion the cause of discipline for kids … they won’t simply say that the Government must throw more money at teaching, or worse, “The nasty Booooosh Administration (or Ahhhhnuld) is cutting money from education !”
And they won’t whine about how private/Catholic/parochial/charter schools are not really comparable cuz the parents of kids there discipline their kids, so we gotta throw more money at public schools to compensate … what sort of stupidity does it take to say “We need more blood donations from you bunch who get rid of the things causing you to bleed so that we can give transfusions to our folk who keep walking on the broken glass and running with scissors!” ?
OY !
I went through an excellent school system in Scotland back in the umfleties … and, yes, it was fee-paying while partially being State-funded … my parents paid all of 10 Pounds Sterling per year as fees - a little less than the equivalent of a pack of cigaettes a day … and they made sacrifices to put myself and my brother through that school … and they didn’t whine that the Government should throw more money at the school - instead, they supported the teachers in giving appropriate discipline to the kids …
Over the years, I have learned that there don’t seem to be any good teachers that are underpaid … the best teachers may not receive very high salaries, yet they seem to be happy wit the compensation they get, because, between the salary they get, and the satisfaction of *knowing* that they have affected the lives of kids in positive ways, they feel well-paid …
By contrast, some of the worst teachers I have known are constantly whining about how teachers aren’t paid enough …
I don’t know the teachers who have commented here, so I do not know if the above fits them at all … I hope it doesn’t (from the ones complaining) …
OK - with that said - are teachers challenged ? Most of the time, yes … and the good ones rise to the challenge, and they (and their students) succeed …
Teaching is seldom an easy job - but it can be SO satisfying …
Just a thought - and a somewhat cynical yet realistic one, at that …
Some of the better teachers I have known have enjoyed making ends meet by supplementing their salaries by tutoring kids … and they charged the parents of the kids they tutored a ’sliding scale’ based on two things … parental income (make the rich pay) and kid-thirst-for-learning (when the kid wants to learn, they charge less to tutor ‘em) … if the kid couldn’t pay, the kid would often become a “teaching assistant”, helping the teacher to keep the slower kids in the class up to speed, and earning the extra teaching (and the extra and extraordinarily-useful experience) that way …
Remember, the expression that says “Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach” is usually uttered by those that can’t teach …
Me - I respect good teachers - and I try and teach bad ones …
June 25th, 2005 at 1:52:26 pm
Becky, you have no idea…
First, it’s ten months, not 8. Most places also give time off for holidays, if I’m not mistaken. (We get one week for Xmas, not two, and I’m sure you didn’t complain when you got that vacation as a student.) You can whine about those two weeklong vacations and the two-month long vacation if you like. I’ve gone in some days at 7 AM and walked out at about 9 PM. I come home exhausted, and headaches are common. I nursed two migraines just this last week. We also work at home a lot, unlike a lot of jobs, and I use my Saturdays to catch up on correcting. It’s a chore just to try to keep Sunday as a day of rest. (Those Ancient Hebrews had a great idea there.) A lot of us also join extracurricular activities, which usually pay very small stipends for hours of work a day. I only get 1000 for Drama Club all year. Keeping your certification is a Sisyphean task. No sooner do you meet one requirement than you have to meet another. Next year, I have to do BEST, Beginning Educator Support and Training, which is going to take up my every waking moment for two months. Then there’s all the in-services and teacher conferences you have to attend for CEU’s, Credit Equivalent Units. The paperwork is unbelievable. There’s always something else to do. We also have to deal with students who don’t want to be there and unreasonable parents, who can’t understand why their darling son is failing just because he didn’t do any work, or why I could ask their daughter to write a composition in Spanish. You’ve got kids whining that their A isn’t a high enough A, and colleagues that burned out long ago trying to take you with them. I’ve read stories and heard them from friends of never being able to see their SO’s enough, who often don’t understand because they don’t work nearly as long hours. Even veterans. One Social Studies teacher I know in East Hartford, a gentleman with gray hair, tells his wife on Monday mornings, “See you on Friday.” There’s a reason so many teachers quit within the first five years. If you don’t love it, you’ll either quit or feel fatalistically trapped. What exactly do you think we do all day, Becky? Play games? If this job is so easy, why are there teacher shortages? Why is it so hard to attract them, and why do all the editorials say we have to pay our teachers more if we want to get more of them?
Pools?! Berlin High has no pool. The swim team has to go to another town. New books? You mean like the ones with the covers falling apart? My town just went through a budget crisis where it had to get rid of several extracurricular activities. It only just restored them this year.
You quote an average salary, which counts the older folk who have been working for decades. I made 41,000 this year, including Drama Club, in the state that pays teachers the highest. That’s just enough for food, rent, taxes, insurance, mandatory retirement savings and union dues, car payments, and a couple luxuries like cable and internet. I’m not raising a kid or sending him to college on that. You also have to keep in mind cost of living when you consider these salaries. I can’t get rent any cheaper here. In fact, prices are going up. If I ever do get married, we could probably afford a mortgage together, but hey, NOT ALL OF US ARE MARRIED! I’ll never afford a mansion, let alone a house the size I grew up in, let alone two houses in two different states. In a couple decades, I might manage to get 70K, which is still a whole lot less than my Dad makes, who also graduated with a Master’s. I talk to students who want to be teachers about what they can expect to make in their first year with a Master’s. Some of them can’t believe the things they wanted that they’ll have to do without.
Yeah, I’d prefer a paycheck that didn’t come from coercing people to pay my salary. That’s not the reality we live in.
To be perfectly honest, once my car’s paid off, I’d be comfortable with a salary of 30K. I could even do 25K if I’m willing to stick to just the things that keep me alive and out of jail: food, rent, taxes, and maybe insurance. But I’m not going to pretend I’m overpaid when I work so hard and so many other professionals pull down much more. Sorry if this came off harsh, but I really am tired of criticism from people who have no idea what they’re talking about and wouldn’t last a day in a high school classroom. Think to yourself a moment: why is it every single person who knows what they’re talking about disagrees with you?
“If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.”
June 25th, 2005 at 2:14:19 pm
I just got dumber reading all those posts…can I have my 15 minutes back?
June 25th, 2005 at 2:17:41 pm
Becky:
Since you are currently unemployed, perhaps you could be introduced to the world of teaching by joining <b>Teach for America</b>. You would gain an appreciation for the profession as a whole, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find a new career.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:19:49 pm
PS - Teachers rock, and should be paid like lawyers.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:24:13 pm
Ok Becky, you clearly don’t get it. Your comparison between public and private schools is laughable at best.
Catholic/private schools get students who are more concerned about their academic future. They get parents who are more willing to put time and money into their education. The are allowed to actually discipline students and remove students who are causing problems, of course there are fewer of those because of the selective nature of private schools. Smaller classes allow teachers to focus on individuals alot more.
And as Dane pointed out, exactly how much do nuns need to make?
In public schools you have to deal with more trouble some kids, kids who take away from other students ability to learn, something you don’t have to deal with in private schools. Part of the reason for this is that you aren’t given as much leeway in terms of discipline.
You also have less parental involvement and teachers have to take on a greater role. Now this is not necessarilly the fault of the parents, alot of them are less well off, or you have single parents of course.
Public schools also have to teach to every student, yes there are the occasional AP classes or challange classes, but in most classes (most of them over crowded) teachers can’t afford to offer more challanging curriculum for students who could handle it.
Oh and btw, you know those courses that someone above mentioned? Yeah teachers have to pay for those out of pocket in order to remain certified.
Every year teachers are asked to do more with less, and criticized for not doing a good enough job when they aren’t given the support they deserve. Year after year there are people like my dad who are hounded by parents for why their kids aren’t doing well, when its not the teachers fault. Year after year he has to deal with kids who don’t want to learn and get in the way of other people learning. He has to scrounge for supplies, and try and get by.
You think teachers just get up in the morning, teach, go home and thats their day? Yeah right. How about grading papers and preparing lesson plans? How about meetings at school with faculty, parents, and students? Extra classes to keep certification. Not to mention in service days, and days after students are out and before they start in the fall.
Yes they chose to do what they do, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated fairly. Gosh I guess all those poor workers in sweat shops should just keep their mouth shut cause they choose to work there after all.
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations. So before you go off about how unreasonable these teachers demands are, why don’t you get out there and meet some of them? Walk a mile in their shoes. Your ivory tower attitude is clearly out of touch with the reality around you.
June 25th, 2005 at 3:55:39 pm
Rock On, Becky! I totally agree with you on this topic. I have ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPATHY for teachers that whine about their pay. And I have first hand knowledge about the life as a teacher. Unfortunately, I had to spend 2 months as a substitute teacher while I was searching for a real job. The teachers I worked with (about 50 total) NEVER worked 12 hour days, all looked forward to their ample time off, wasted at least a quarter of the class time with BS and ALL WHINED ABOUT THEIR PAY. Granted, teachers must deal with the occasional unruly kid and ignorant parent, but dont we all have people we must work with that we would rather not? I DONT SEE THE JOB AS A TEACHER AS BEING ALL THAT DIFFICULT, all things considered. Moreover, I remember well the education majors in college that had ample time to party and screw around while us engineering/CompSci majors burnt the midnight oil studying. I NEVER saw an education major stressing about hving too much coursework to do. They had it way too easy. It was obvious that there were two types of people in the College of Education: those that were passionate about teaching and those that had nothing better to do in college. And neither of those two types ever had serious work to do (compared to us in the engineering majors).
So, to summarize, I dont think teachers have rough jobs as teachers, and I know they didnt have it tough as college students. Therefore, why should they get paid what other professionals do? How can one expect a teacher to make as much as a Chemical Engineer or a programmer?
Nonsense…
June 25th, 2005 at 4:54:16 pm
The real problem with teacher salaries is that such salaries depend on the willingness of local taxpayers to pay those salaries. Frankly, I think in the abstract, if people were asked to list professions and then told to rank them in terms of how much money those people should be paid, I suspect that teachers would rank significantly higher than many other professions. Unfortunately, they as with most public employees have very limited ability to increase their salaries significantly since that would require either an increase in taxes or a decrease in the allocation of money to other places where our taxes are already going.
The one exception to this rule is of course our Congressmen (and women) in Washington. Since essentially they set their own salaries, they don’t really have this problem. Plus there are all the travel benefits, extensive vacations, and other perks. I suspect that Becky notwithstanding, most people if they simply had a choice of how to distribute a given amount of money between teachers and Congressmen, would opt to reduce substantially the amount going to D.C.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:22:15 pm
I never said anything regarding the catholic school education, so leave me out of that fight.
Becky, do you or do you not still own the house that you bought free and clear with your trust fund?
With that I am going to withdraw from this conversation before…
June 25th, 2005 at 6:29:11 pm
Teachers are some of the most overpaid whiners. No physical labor, great benefits, lots of time off, and most out of class room work is just busywork (grading papers, lesson plans, etc.) with flexible deadlines. Not to mention awesome job security.
But after spending so much time with whiny kids, I think many tend to pick up the same habits of thinking.
June 25th, 2005 at 6:33:36 pm
Dane and David - you have managed to shock *ME* ! And that’s quite an achievement …
“… exactly how much do nuns need to make ?”
I’m not Catholic, but *that* little comment is WAY beyond the Pale ! Especially from folk who are responding with such hostility when someone said approximately “How much do teachers need to make ?”
There are great teachers and there are abysmal teachers … that’s Life …
When those who consider teachers are underpaid are ready to actually HELP those teachers, they will champion the cause of discipline for kids … they won’t simply say that the Government must throw more money at teaching, or worse, “The nasty Booooosh Administration (or Ahhhhnuld) is cutting money from education !”
And they won’t whine about how private/Catholic/parochial/charter schools are not really comparable cuz the parents of kids there discipline their kids, so we gotta throw more money at public schools to compensate … what sort of stupidity does it take to say “We need more blood donations from you bunch who get rid of the things causing you to bleed so that we can give transfusions to our folk who keep walking on the broken glass and running with scissors!” ?
OY !
I went through an excellent school system in Scotland back in the umfleties … and, yes, it was fee-paying while partially being State-funded … my parents paid all of 10 Pounds Sterling per year as fees - a little less than the equivalent of a pack of cigaettes a day … and they made sacrifices to put myself and my brother through that school … and they didn’t whine that the Government should throw more money at the school - instead, they supported the teachers in giving appropriate discipline to the kids …
Over the years, I have learned that there don’t seem to be any good teachers that are underpaid … the best teachers may not receive very high salaries, yet they seem to be happy wit the compensation they get, because, between the salary they get, and the satisfaction of *knowing* that they have affected the lives of kids in positive ways, they feel well-paid …
By contrast, some of the worst teachers I have known are constantly whining about how teachers aren’t paid enough …
I don’t know the teachers who have commented here, so I do not know if the above fits them at all … I hope it doesn’t (from the ones complaining) …
OK - with that said - are teachers challenged ? Most of the time, yes … and the good ones rise to the challenge, and they (and their students) succeed …
Teaching is seldom an easy job - but it can be SO satisfying …
Just a thought - and a somewhat cynical yet realistic one, at that …
Some of the better teachers I have known have enjoyed making ends meet by supplementing their salaries by tutoring kids … and they charged the parents of the kids they tutored a ’sliding scale’ based on two things … parental income (make the rich pay) and kid-thirst-for-learning (when the kid wants to learn, they charge less to tutor ‘em) … if the kid couldn’t pay, the kid would often become a “teaching assistant”, helping the teacher to keep the slower kids in the class up to speed, and earning the extra teaching (and the extra and extraordinarily-useful experience) that way …
Remember, the expression that says “Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach” is usually uttered by those that can’t teach …
Me - I respect good teachers - and I try and teach bad ones …
June 25th, 2005 at 7:14:19 pm
I just got dumber reading all those posts…can I have my 15 minutes back?
June 25th, 2005 at 7:19:49 pm
PS - Teachers rock, and should be paid like lawyers.
June 25th, 2005 at 10:22:15 pm
I never said anything regarding the catholic school education, so leave me out of that fight.
Becky, do you or do you not still own the house that you bought free and clear with your trust fund?
With that I am going to withdraw from this conversation before…
June 25th, 2005 at 11:17:48 pm
And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations.
David, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re pissing on the wrong tree here. If you want to be technical about it, I actually have taught in both public and private institutions. College is way different, but uh, it’s still teaching and getting a salary for it. So nyah. Besides, I’ve also taught pre-K and that’s a trip. Totally fun, but a trip.
Besides that, one my aunts teaches in inner city Buffalo, which stands up to all sorts of nasty stereotypes. I grew up less than 3 miles from her, so believe you me, I definately know her angst, which is only multiplied by the fact that she’s a music teacher and Lord knows that music is one of the first things to go when budget cuts are deep.
I’m not blind to the struggles that teachers have, but I think it’s laughable to say that $47k is not enough compensation to choose between “doing what you love and your family.” That’s ass. One of my very closest friends in this world grew up in a single salary, four person household. She and her sib went to private schools, played sports/did music stuff and all that jazz. And her dad rarely made significantly more than $40,000.
But anyways, back to David for one sec. I don’t really condemn people who don’t have first hand knowledge of mental illness for criticizing aspects of modern psychiatry etc. But I do think it’s unwise to put forth a strong opinion about what it’s like to be mentally ill without some kind of experience with it, either through loved ones or your own life. Do you see the distinction? I mean, if uh, Andrew, wanted to talk about the questionable impact of prozac on improving adolescent depression, that’s fine with me. If Andrew wants to start saying that bipolar disorder is a myth, well, that’s more problematic.
Again, however, I restate my position, which is that I don’t feel bad for teachers because they only make $47k.
Pretty much the only people who could legitimately complain about making $47k a year are doctors. Cuz you know, I don’t have a problem paying my doc a lot of money and fact is, a lot of GPs don’t make a whole lot more than that.
Nope. No sympathy here.
Oh, and just for the record, I was in Catholic school K-11 (mind you, I never had a 12th year, or else that would have been in Catholic school as well). I had a total of 5 nuns as teachers. My kindgarten teacher, history freshman and sophomore year of highschool, art and religion freshman year of highschool
Anywho, I never actually had a GREAT teacher. Sister Cathy, of kindergarten fame, was very kind, as were Sister Donna and Sister MarcyAnne. But Great teachers? Nope. I was chronically bored. The first amazing teachers I ran across were at USC. And I don’t think my experience is unusual.
You know, I can’t even remember the teachers I had my final year in high school.
Personally, I’m convinced that heroic teachers are a myth. Sure, some are alright, but life changing? Hell no.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
June 26th, 2005 at 12:07:56 am
Alasdair, with regard to the nuns, as many if not most take vows of poverty or live in convents and have very little need for money I was pointing out that average salaries in Catholic schools might be lower.
Becky, its not wonder you are so down on teachers when you didn’t have any notworthy ones. I had some fantastic teachers who really inspired me in many areas of my life. People who I looked up to and helped me become who I am today. And there are people like that all accross the country.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
Bitter much? I’m sorry that your view of the world is so jaded that you must feel the need to blatantly judge other peoples lives en mass. Exactly what makes you a loser if a teacher changes your life? You really are perpetuating the stereo type of spoiled rich brats. Guess what, people can change your life, and teachers definitely can. I guess you don’t realize what alot of peoples lives are like outside your own sheltered little world, but they aren’t all as lucky as you are. Fortunately the world is filled with good people who aren’t so condescending and judgemental towards things they don’t understand.
Oh and TAing in college is not even remotely similar to making a living as a teacher.
June 26th, 2005 at 12:55:23 am
Becky, Becky, Becky
First off, there’s no need to add to the already lengthy attacks on your ill-reasoned (and I dare say…ignorant) rant against teachers.
However, I would just like to point out that in your response to my eariler post (in which I made the obvious observation that your posts consistently lack class and tact) that you called me “baby.” Need I say more? C’mon! Jed Clapmpett has more class!
You and Howard Dean would make a good couple (sorry Brendan!). It seems to me that the both of you make these wildly offensive remarks just so that you can feed your ego–you get long responses to your posts; you get people worked up; I mean, in short, you get “air-time.”
And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong. You’ve given me (and most likely many others) a valid reason to think that you’re full of BS (for instance, do you remember when you claimed the pope was afraid to die about one week before his death? Nice job on that one)–that you post absurd comments just in order to get responses. And thus, you’ve lost your credibility…right along with Howard “yeeeaaaarg” Dean.
But I have to admit…it works. I actually get some sort of sick enjoyment from reading drivel such as yours and getting worked up. I guess that’s why Bill O’Riley and Sean Hannity make so much money…the conservatives love to hear them talk and the liberals love to hate to hear them talk. Well, I don’t “love” to read your garbage, but I do find a weird pleasure in reading it. I suppose reading your posts make me feel smarter (which is a feeling I could use after getting my grades back!)…and for that, I thank you
June 26th, 2005 at 3:52:17 am
Becky- my K-12 teacher saved my life, because I was being physically assaulted at home. I’m an ND law student…. and I’ve been in gifted classes all my life.
Have a teacher help you when you are a vulnerable child does not mean you are a loser.
And I’ll chime in with everyone else…. you’re totally wrong on this subject.
June 26th, 2005 at 4:17:48 am
<em>And I’m not going to back down from my comment about your hypocrsy in condeming those who are critical of mental health without first hand knowledge and your criticism of teachers without any first hand knowledge of your own, cause guess what I have first hand knowledge of both situations.</em>
David, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re pissing on the wrong tree here. If you want to be technical about it, I actually have taught in both public and private institutions. College is way different, but uh, it’s still teaching and getting a salary for it. So nyah. Besides, I’ve also taught pre-K and that’s a trip. Totally fun, but a trip.
Besides that, one my aunts teaches in inner city Buffalo, which stands up to all sorts of nasty stereotypes. I grew up less than 3 miles from her, so believe you me, I definately know her angst, which is only multiplied by the fact that she’s a music teacher and Lord knows that music is one of the first things to go when budget cuts are deep.
I’m not blind to the struggles that teachers have, but I think it’s laughable to say that $47k is not enough compensation to choose between “doing what you love and your family.” That’s ass. One of my very closest friends in this world grew up in a single salary, four person household. She and her sib went to private schools, played sports/did music stuff and all that jazz. And her dad rarely made significantly more than $40,000.
But anyways, back to David for one sec. I don’t really condemn people who don’t have first hand knowledge of mental illness for criticizing aspects of modern psychiatry etc. But I do think it’s unwise to put forth a strong opinion about what it’s like to be mentally ill without some kind of experience with it, either through loved ones or your own life. Do you see the distinction? I mean, if uh, Andrew, wanted to talk about the questionable impact of prozac on improving adolescent depression, that’s fine with me. If Andrew wants to start saying that bipolar disorder is a myth, well, that’s more problematic.
Again, however, I restate my position, which is that I don’t feel bad for teachers because they <em>only</em> make $47k.
Pretty much the only people who could legitimately complain about making $47k a year are doctors. Cuz you know, I don’t have a problem paying my doc a lot of money and fact is, a lot of GPs don’t make a whole lot more than that.
Nope. No sympathy here.
Oh, and just for the record, I was in Catholic school K-11 (mind you, I never had a 12th year, or else that would have been in Catholic school as well). I had a total of 5 nuns as teachers. My kindgarten teacher, history freshman and sophomore year of highschool, art and religion freshman year of highschool
Anywho, I never actually had a GREAT teacher. Sister Cathy, of kindergarten fame, was very kind, as were Sister Donna and Sister MarcyAnne. But Great teachers? Nope. I was chronically bored. The first amazing teachers I ran across were at USC. And I don’t think my experience is unusual.
You know, I can’t even remember the teachers I had my final year in high school.
Personally, I’m convinced that heroic teachers are a myth. Sure, some are alright, but life changing? Hell no.
Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.
June 26th, 2005 at 5:07:56 am
Alasdair, with regard to the nuns, as many if not most take vows of poverty or live in convents and have very little need for money I was pointing out that average salaries in Catholic schools might be lower.
Becky, its not wonder you are so down on teachers when you didn’t have any notworthy ones. I had some fantastic teachers who really inspired me in many areas of my life. People who I looked up to and helped me become who I am today. And there are people like that all accross the country.
<i>Course, in my mind, if a K-12 teacher changes your life, you’re probably a loser to begin with.</i>
Bitter much? I’m sorry that your view of the world is so jaded that you must feel the need to blatantly judge other peoples lives en mass. Exactly what makes you a loser if a teacher changes your life? You really are perpetuating the stereo type of spoiled rich brats. Guess what, people can change your life, and teachers definitely can. I guess you don’t realize what alot of peoples lives are like outside your own sheltered little world, but they aren’t all as lucky as you are. Fortunately the world is filled with good people who aren’t so condescending and judgemental towards things they don’t understand.
Oh and TAing in college is not even remotely similar to making a living as a teacher.
June 26th, 2005 at 5:55:23 am
Becky, Becky, Becky
First off, there’s no need to add to the already lengthy attacks on your ill-reasoned (and I dare say…ignorant) rant against teachers.
However, I would just like to point out that in your response to