Teachers are lazy wankers

The BBQ Pit
1

After working as a journalist for 20 years and then not working for about two years, I had to start thinking about what to do with the rest of my life. A lot of people told me that I should work as a teacher. So after considering this for a long time, I decided to switch jobs.
I like teaching.
That doesn’t mean that I love schools. But I realize that part of me becoming a reporter was that I enjoy telling stories, that I enjoy sharing knowledge.

Coming fall, I’ll be starting University again, to get my degree as a teacher, which will take a year. But as I’m currently “between jobs” (sarcasm directed towards self), I checked out if there was any temp job I could get. I found one, and I got it. Yay me.

Now, for the following part, I’m sure there are difs between countries, but as I’ve been to college in the US and Sweden, and lived with a college teacher in Spain, I think I can say that the details might change, but in general, the job stays the same.

So I asked the prinipal about my working hours. It’s a part time job (75%). Here it is:
Monday:
8-10 a.m. available in case students need to talk to me about… (whatever)
2-4 p.m. Talk with other teachers about the students.
Tuesday:
8-10 a.m. actual teaching
Wednesday:
8-11 a.m. actual teaching
Thursday:
8-11.30 actual teaching
11.30 -12.10 lunch
12.10 - 3 p.m. actual teaching
Friday:
8-11 actual teacing

Back to the title of the OP.
When I talked to the principal about my working hours, she commented " well, I see that Thursdays are gonna be tough. Long day. You start at eight and work to three with only half an hour of lunch."
Long day?
WTF.

This is a 75% job. It looks to me more like less than half time.

Oh, and I met another teacher, with tenure, today. He was complaining about the heavy workload.

note: each school year has the following breaks:

Spring break: 1 week
Easter break: 1 week
Summer Break: 10 weeks
Halloween/fal break: 1 week
Christmas/New Year break: 2 weeks

That’s 15 weeks of paid vacation for a teacher with tenure.

I’m happy for myself. I’m not getting a great pay check, but I’m getting a lot of freedom, a decent pay check, and the benefit of picking my own working hours.

And my coworkers complaint about how tough life as a teacher is…?

2

I would bet that being a teacher involves a lot more time and effort than you think. IANA teacher, but IAA TA. I’ve found that, for many of the courses I’ve taught, the time I spend on them outside the classroom (or lab, in my case) often way, way, way exceeds the time I spend actually teaching students during their lab period.

The schedule you’ve seen accounts only for your scheduled time on campus or in the school. There’s lots of other work to be done, but there’s no set time or place it has to happen in, though I’d guess that there are deadlines you’ll have to meet. There’s grading, making lesson plans, meeting with parents, meeting individually with students, any lab or other prep work, etc. And teaching for several hours straight can be really exhausting. That light 8 to 3 day on Thursdays will feel much, much heavier after you’ve gone through it a few times. Oh, and don’t forget–you may end up prepping way before you roll in at 8, and you may end up doing grading, tear-down, etc. into the evening.

Oh, and all those lovely holidays listed in your schedule don’t take into account mandatory teacher in-service or required continuing education credits. Or you may find that you need to use that time to grade, do lesson plans, etc.

I expect that lots of teachers will be posting here shortly. And I’m sure they won’t hesitate to fill you in on the absurdly, decadently relaxing professional lives they lead.*

*Note to the irony impaired–this sentence was sarcastic.

3

  1. There’s a big difference between a college professor and a elementary/middle/high school teacher. I was lucky in high school to have some incredibly dedicated teachers; one of them routinely was at school doing lesson plans, grading papers, etc, from 7AM-7PM.

  2. Yeah, a lot of professors are lazy. They often don’t even grade their papers; they sometimes write exams and stand up in front of classes and talk. Which makes me very thankful for my school: all discussion based classes (no lectures), my largest class has 18 students and 2 professors. All my other classes have less than 15 students.

4

Yep, we sure are. Never met a lazier, more no-account bunch in my life. Try and keep it on the QT, ok?

5

So, how lazy do you have to be to be a lazy wanker, anyway? You lose interest halfway through, disappointing your wang in mid-stroke? Yeesh, talk about a lack of focus.

6

Gosh yes, aren’t we, though?

I’m full-time teaching faculty at Florida State, in Computer Science. And I’m obviously a lazy bastard teaching three programming courses, managing a bunch of TAs (writing their lesson plans, checking their grading), making up assignments, writing grading specs and test cases for assignments (the TAs grade those), grading all the tests (3 per term per class) myself…

Oh, did I mention that I usually have 100-150 students per term? that’s the average. A couple years ago, I had 300 students in my classes in one term. That’s 300 students’ tests I graded, midterm and final in one course, and three tests per student (two term tests and final) in the other.

Scan-Tron? Hell, no. They get some short answer, but also code-writing questions on tests. Which I grade and get to dig through to see if partial credit is merited.

lazy ass Monstre…

7

Fuck you too, Gaspode.

I earn 3500/ semester (I most certainly do not have any paid vacations) teaching Spanish at Madison. I plan the entire class, I do all the grading (tests - again, no scantrons - short answers, essay and verb conjugations), grade their compositions, plan all the activities, hold office hours - basically all the work a professor would do without the authority or salary.
To make ends meet, I either have to teach two classes (plus my own classes as a doctoral student), or, like this semester, go out and get another job. And for the summers, well, I’m usually s.o.l.

I work. A lot. Ever thought about having, I dunno, maybe TWO examples before you make a generalization?

8

Hi,Gaspode. I’ve been to Malmo! I didn’t go to any of the schools there, but I did go some some in Odense, Denmark. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no policemen visible in the hallways.

I noticed in your list was that teachers are paid in the summer months. I’ve never known of that happening in the States unless you are teaching summer school. Teachers are essentially laid off every summer.

One teacher that I know used to get a job sweeping the floor at the Ford Glass Plant when it was in operation in Nashville. He earned more money per hour sweeping the floor than he did teaching.

I taught 25 classes a week and had other responsibiities also such as forensics coach, club sponsor, department chairman, prom chairman, senior sponsor, fund-raising chairman, career day chairman, Nashville Institute for the Arts co-ordinator, substitute manual coordinator, Metropolitan Nashville Education Association Representative, Nashville Council of Teachers of English Member, school bus supervisor, field trip organizer, blah, blah, blah.

Then there was after school tutoring, grading papers, planning, parent conferences, faculty meetings, sports supervision and ticket sales, professional develoment, etc.

Then one day on the way home from school, I went by my doctor’s office for my annual physical exam. He put me in the hospital and didn’t even let me go home. He and the shrink he called in said that I shouldn’t go back to school anymore. So I didn’t.

I don’t think that anyone thought I was lazy. Ha!

9

I know some stuff doesn’t compare between countries, parts of countries, levels, types of education. Please note that the schedule I posted above includes administration time outside class.
And teachers I know are constantly complaining that the demands are bigger each year.
That might be so. But most teachers I know went straight from school to learning to be a teacher to working as one, never having been outside that world, I can only say that their perception of what a tough job is lacks some references. I only know that I’ll be able to do this job and continue studying comp.lt. at half time and still not end up doing as much work as I did as a full time journalist.

Zoe - does that go for all teachers, not being paid during the breaks?

10

Gaspode : a word of advice, honey: keep the “Teachers are lazy wankers” bit to yourself when you’re in the faculty room, OK? Otherwise we’ll be reading about your lynching in the papers.

It’s easy, right? You read up on what you have to teach, go in to class, spout off for a while, say goodbye to your students, and start again. Piece of piss.

If you can teach all day and not find that a heavy workload, you’re not doing it right. Check back in once you’ve tried it.

11

The Gaspode is right in one way. Teaching is a profession that can be attractive for lazy people, and it’s entirely possible to do the job without putting forth much effort.

It is not, however, possible to do the job well, or even competently without a lot of hard work. The time spent outside of class by a teacher who preps well equals the time spent in class.

I’ve worked for six different school districts. I get paid for the days I work. The only time I get paid for a day I don’t work is for the same holidays everyone gets paid for, sick days, and weather cancellations. Summers are unpaid, and I have to either save out of my salary or get a summer job to get through the summer. That’s not a vacation, it’s seasonal unemployment.

12

Don’t mention the paid sabbaticals…that raises all kinds of holy hell.

13

There is absolutly no point in trying to prove whether or not teaching is a tough job. and people who think it is the only tough job out there are clearly deluding themselves. However, the fact that it is not at all difficult to get a teaching position suggests that it really isn’t that great of a deal–if it were, people would be in heavy compitition for every avalible slot.

14

The Gaspode: After working as a journalist for 20 years and then not working for about two years

Mmm, gotta love those Swedish unemployment benefits, eh? Considering the following:

Wow! Five weeks paid vacation, paid sick/parental leave, legally mandated overtime and pension!

Maybe what’s going on here is simply that Swedes are lazy wankers, not Swedish teachers in particular?

(Semi-kidding; I personally think that mandating reasonable working conditions is a sign not of laziness but intelligence. However, I can’t resist pointing out the irony of seeing a poster from welfare-state Sweden complaining to a board composed largely of Americans that his teaching job is too cushy—and blaming it on the teaching profession as a whole! Wimp.)

C’mon over here, Gas! We need teachers! We’ll be happy to find you a teaching job that satisfies your work ethic! How does $18 K/year in an inner-city school with ten-hour days plus 10 hours/week of extra administrative paperwork sound to you? Oh, you also have to help “talk down” armed students threatening violence, and pay for classroom supplies out of your own salary. We’ll get you out of that lazy-wanker rut of yours in no time!

15

I cannot WAIT for you to actually be teaching. Go spend a few months in an elementary school and then get back to me, okay?

It should be fuuuun. :smiley:

16

I had a teacher related thread not too long ago, and never really got the answer to this question;

If a teacher makes X per year, do they not TRULY make X because of the summer ‘layoff’ or do they have to save from their checks during the working months the amount they will need to stay above the fiscal waters during the summer?

I am under the impression that the yearly comp of X is figured into the weekly (or bi-weekly) checks during the school season, so that the teachers will be properly compensated (as the published salary states) for the year.

Right or Wrong?

17

bj, are you asking whether teachers actually get paid the advertised salary of X per year, or just whether their salary payments come at irregular intervals throughout the year?

18

I’m an engineer/mathematician, but I’ve had various teaching experiences: I taught math classes in college, I teach technical classes to adults at work, and I’ve taught individual music lessons.

Currently, I volunteer one day a month through a program at the military Agency where I work. I go to a local middle school (grades 6-8) and give presentations on various applications of math to the real world. [hijack](I think this is a really good idea: lots of excellent math teachers haven’t had any professional math experience to pass along to students, but even the most mediocre mathematicians (e.g., me) can recount lots of real-world uses of math).[/hijack]

As much as I enjoy teaching, and as much fun it is to go in one day a month, at which time I get received better by the students because I’m a ‘novelty’, there is no way I would take the teachers’ place full-time. They work very hard, all damn day, and then go home and keep working.

A critical point: teaching adults (which college students usually are) is not the same thing as teaching kids.

I have no experience keeping middle school kids in order, and am amazed at how the teachers do it: they have to be Dirty Harry one minute, and nice enough to be liked the next.

And groups are different than one-on-one: I have taught music lessons to individual children, but when you get more than three or four kids together, I swear to God they’re a whole different species.

In my school days, special ed teachers had the very hard of teaching kids who were learning-disabled. Today, they’ve also been handed a fair number of kids who would have been labeled ‘discipline problems’ in the past. They now have to keep order and continue teaching the learning-disabled, while dealing with the occasional tantrum, fight or firearm.

The special ed teachers have it the worst. Gaspode, take one of their jobs for a month and get back to us.

PS: I know teachers are not the only people with tough jobs. But they aren’t lazy.

19

Yes. :slight_smile: What I’m asking is if teachers get the advertised salaries of $X, and if so, are the checks during the school year higher to reflect not getting a paycheck while being laid off?

20

The details depend on whether you’re talking pre-college, adjunct college or full professor college.

For elementary, Jr. High and High School:
They get paid the advertised amount (well, after union fees, mandatory retirement savings and all the usual suspects are taken out, of course) Most schools have an option of taking your annual salary in 26 payments (one every other week year round) or 18 payments (one every other week during the school year.) But it’s the same total amount. According to the AFT, the average beginning teacher’s salary for the 2003-2004 school year was $30,496. This was a 3.3% raise from the previous year. Health insurance premiums (which are required if you’re a teacher - you cannot opt out) rose 13% in that same year, however. Here’s a bunch of numbers, if you like that sort of thing.
**
Adjunct college or university faculty:
Teachers who are “part timers” (put in quotes because many “part-timers” teach more hours a semester than “full timers”) are paid per class, and only while the class is going on. Payment varies widely. At some of the community colleges around here, the going rate is $1000 for a one semester course. The highest I’ve heard of personally is aurelian’s $3500. My husband is currently making $3200 at DePaul University. He’s been teaching there for 8 years, so he’s on the highest end of the pay scale there. There are no benefits, no retirement plan, no 401K, no health care, no bonuses, no contracts and no job security. He cannot, at DePaul, teach more than 6 classes per year, so the maximum he can make there is $19200 annually. Most adjunct faculty teach at more than one college, to pastiche a living wage together. At Columbia College, he makes $1100 per class, and is required to pay union dues out of that pay.
**
Full “Professor” at a college or university:
This is the one I know least about, although I pray that soon I’ll know more! :wink: These guys have a set-up similar to the OP. There are several (usually between 5-8) classes to teach a year. These guys do get benefits, as well as the potential to apply for paid sabbaticals. (Um, it’s pretty hard to actually GET a paid sabbatical, however.) They also have a contract which can give them some level of job security. I’m not going to look up salaries here, as they vary so widely as to make the averages useless. They also have the option of splitting their pay up to cover just the academic year or the full calendar year.