Last semester, I taught the discussions for a course in engineering economic analysis-- in other words, basic finance. Though lectures were taught by a full-time faculty member, it was his first semester teaching the subject, and he left a lot of students a little confused; about a third of the class eventually stopped going to lecture. That left me having to draw up my own lesson plans, and essentially teach a “mini-lecture” each class period to help fill in the gaps in my class’s knowledge. Grading took surprisingly long-- usually ten hours a week, and I let my students work in small groups for assignments.
This semester’s looking to be even longer. My appointment was upped to the 66% level-- that is, I’m expected to work on my TA duties 26.67 hours a week, in addition to my research and my own graduate-level classes. The course I teach was retooled over winter break into a broader-based competitive manufacturing class, so all of the lesson plans will be new. Each week, lecture will be taught by a different professor, based on their areas of specialization. Honestly, I’m looking forward to the change; finance is a pretty dull area to teach.
Except that things hadn’t gone quite as planned. First, the professor in charge of coordinating the course had double bypass surgery while travelling in Singapore about a week before the semester began. (He’s doing fine, and plans to be back in his office in a few weeks.) In his absence, nobody in the department seems to know what’s going on. Adjunct faculty have asked me what should be on their lesson plans. And class starts Monday.
Jobs held by aurelian since she started working (earning a paycheck) 11 years ago:
Deli clerk, grill monkey
Hostess
Waitress
Room Service runner and doing set-up
House cleaning
Tutor
Barista
Burrito roller
Cocktail waitress
Sub sandwich clerk
Waitress (again)
Call center worker
Webpage designer
Oh yeah, and TA
Have I ever had a 9-5 that involved business suits and a commuter train? No. But even though I went straight from high school to undergrad to grad, I have worked outside academia. Hell, that’s why I stay, despite the bureaucratic clusterfucks and pontificating Republicans.
WTF? Which planet do you live on? Here in parts of California, teachers are getting laid off due to budgetary issues, then they have to wait months to see if they will be re-hired. Talk about cooking the books - the district has to balance its budget, so it dumps a bunch of teachers. When there is a legitimate opening, the applicants are lined up around the block. Sure, you might get “lucky” and get hired right out of school for an inner city job that pays squat and requires you to be bi-lingual (and semi-lingual in Hmong, Russian, Vietnamese). Be prepared to pass through a metal detector everyday and the possibility that your life will be threatened on a regular basis.
Maybe I just know exceptional teachers. They are dedicated, definitely not lazy, buy school supplies with money out of their own pocket, work extra jobs during the summer break, and spend extra (non-compensated) time at home correcting and planning lessons. I suggest that everyone go spend a full day in an elementary school classroom and see what the teacher is dealing with. It’s not like it used to be when we were growing up.
Are things different in Sweden? My SIL is a teacher, and her day does not stop just because the bell rings. She’s frequently up until late at night, grading papers and preparing lesson plans.
That’s on top of keeping house, and being a wife and mother.
Zoe, some districts now allow you the choice of spreading your salary throughout the year. It’s the same amount of money, just split up into smaller, more numerous paychecks.
I teach at the college level, in addition to my other duties at the college I work at, and my routine week involves 44 hours of work Monday - Thursday. One eight hour day, and three 14 hour days.
Wait you say, that adds up to 50 hours a week, not 44 right? Yes, actually it does. I spend fifty hours a week at work over four days, but the times I’m not actually in a class or doing explicitly scheduled meetings/network administration aren’t counted as working hours. That accounts for 6 hours a week that I’m at work, but not getting paid for being there.
Nor does it include the work I have to take home, the special events that I go to and don’t get paid for, the meetings that I get called in on Fridays (normally a day off) for, the emails and phone calls I answer at home from advisees, and a bunch of other stuff.
I’ve earned three weeks paid vacation by virtue of 3 years full time employment there, but can only take them during between quarter breaks, of which there are two which last two weeks each. On the week that there are no classes but I don’t have vacation time to use, I’m at work planning lessons, submitting proposals for new courses to the Dept. of Education, scheduling meetings with students who need additional course counseling during the break period, fixing network problems, upgrading networks, managing the Unix servers, etc. I also have no TAs and must do all my own exam writing and all my own grading.
Is it possible to do the job and be lazy? Yes, I’m sure it is. But like said above, it’s not possible to do the job well and be lazy.
Sugaree, it sounds as though he’s just gotten the job, and hasn’t actually been on it any length of time at all yet. So I’d take his comments about the workload with a shaker and a half of salt. I think once he gets going he’ll realize that the four hours he’s paid to be there for consultations with kids and other teachers isn’t nearly going to cover his paperwork and such that his opinion may shift a bit.
I’m impressed, though–very few people are actually willing to Pit themselves as being lazy wankers. He does lose points, though, for not actually calling himself a lazy wanker.
Gad! Why do people act like teaching in “the inner city” is a fate worse than death, or as if a shortage in the “inner city” is somehow not a shortage, because it’s not a real option for people who grew up middle class? I teach in the “inner city”, I walk through metal detectors every day. I teach students from Afganistan, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and every Latin American country from Mexico to Peru. And it’s not because I couldn’t get a “real teaching job”.
There are many places where teaching positions stay vacant because no one is avalible to fill them. This may not be true everywhere or for all postions, but there are a lot of teaching positions out there that people are not fighting for. The fact that these positions continue to exist is pretty good evidence that it isn’t a fabulous deal, perfect for a “lazy wanker” that has no desire to break a sweat and only really wants summers off–if it was that good of a job, the inner city positions (which are often higher paying than the suburban ones) would be filled by people moving across the country looking for a place to be lazy.
Teacher pay is a strange thing. In Washington, K-12 teacher’s contract to work for the year, and get to choose how they are paid–bi-monthly for 9 months, or bi-monthly for 12 months. Teachers contract for all different pay rates depending on the school district. The state has set salary levels, IIRC it’s now $28,000 for a first year teacher. Teachers with masters degrees get better pay; I believe the state base pay if $45,000 or so.
But, each school district can pay the teachers in excess of that base amount (if they have the money). Where I live most teachers make the base salary plus additional for additional responsibilities–coaching, advising the debate teams, stuff like that. The school districts in the more affluent areas generally pay their teachers base plus whatever the teachers can negotiate–sometimes several thousand dollars a year above the base rate. School districts that can levy lots of additional money can pay teachers more. They do have mandatory retirement deductions and health insurance premiums that go up every year. However, in Washington you can opt out of school district/higher ed health insurance if you have other health insurance (usually through a spouse/domestic partner; sometimes through an additonal employer).
In Washington, a K-12 teacher is required to work a 7.5 hour day (with paid lunch and one paid planning period). Students are required to be in school 180 days a year. I believe teachers are required to work at the school 183 days per year (it may be 187 by now–the state has been trying to increase it, with the teachers fighting tooth and nail).
In theory, this means the teachers are at the school longer than the students. In practice, in our school district, parking lots are basically empty the minute the students are gone. I was never able to contact a teacher before or after school class hours in any of the school districts my children attended. They would call me back during planning periods.
I used to be a student; I know that some teachers are great and work hours outside of their scheduled school day. Until a couple of years ago, I also was a parent of two school age daughters. I had many problems with teachers (and administrators) during those years.
As a former employee of our state’s teachers retirement agency, I know that a lot of K-12 teachers are out of touch with the non-school world. They used to call and ask us if we were open during school breaks–as if we didn’t have to work year round just because they wouldn’t be at the schools! I’m not sure how they thought they were going to get their retirement checks if we had the summer off…
Teachers are like any other profession. The good ones put in a lot of effort; even working extra unpaid hours. The crappy ones skate by and give everybody else a bad name. Unfortunately, although we hear a lot of the “I only contract for a year at a time” crap, it is very hard to get rid of a teacher who has been at a district for a while. They do have union protections.
We do not have a teacher shortage in Washington; we have a shortage of people who want to work in the lower paying districts. Teachers apply by the hundreds for positions in the nicer districts–my sister-in-law is a teacher who had trouble finding a job where she wanted to work due to the competition. I understand wanting to work close to where you live/wanting the best pay/not wanting to get assualted in the classroom. However, I don’t like the teachers organizations telling voters that we don’t have enough teachers when that is not true; we have the teachers, just not the jobs they want.
You know who really gets over-paid in the school system? The administrators. But that’s a whole 'nother rant there.
I’m a college professor, and before I hear any more criciticsm about the “easy” work load of a professor, let me call your attention to the phrase “publish or perish.”
Hint: it’s not a fucking joke.
Myself, I’m dreading my third-year review. I should have enough professional activity to show for it, but let’s face it: posts to the SDMB aren’t going to cut it.
I’m starting to know the feeling. We had one of the publishing house reps in at work last week and they and administration have gotten on this lovely idea that writing our own texts would be wonderful.
I wonder when I should fit that in as I have no TAs or research assistants to speak of.
Public k-12 schoolteachers are salaried employees. We work a fixed contracted number of days–at my current school district it’s 186–and recieve the base salary and benefits described on the salary schedule. Pay is distributed evenly throughout the pay period.
I’ve worked at two types of districts. At the first, base pay was divided into twelve equal amounts and distributed once a month throughout the fiscal year (August to September). Thus, during the school year, while I was working, each monthly paycheck was reduced by 1/6 to provide for a paycheck in July and August. Teachers who get paid year round for a traditional school year are getting paid less than what they’ve earned during the school year to compensate.
At the other schools, as at my current school, I got paid only during the months I was working–September through June. My base salary is split into ten equal payments for those ten months. Thus, I get paid for the time I work, and must find some means to support myself during the summer months.
Hey aurelian, are you at UW-Mad or another school in town? My dad is an educator at MATC-MAD and his wife works at Edgewood College. We’re an education FAMILY!
I adore Madison. Wave to Shakti and The Soap Opera for me, and that great little Afgahni restaurant - oh, and the Blue Marlin. God, I miss Madison.
Kimstu, I know it’s tongue in check, but all those benefits only look good on paper. In real life, they’re not too hot. It’s a topic for anothet thread though. (And BTW, my severence package was very good, and paid for by a private company: 18 months of full pay and keeping all benefits).
I’m sure being a teacher can be really tough, for lots of reasons. There are schools in Sweden too, where kids show up armed. Teaching history to 15 year old hormone bombs isn’t easy in any school, not even the best. And I’m sure I’m gonna be very tired for the first couple of weeks, finding my way around the place, learning all names, fitting in, being tested by the students.
That’s not the point though, and I won’t budge: The constanr whining from teachers about how tough their jobs are, is something that’s been bothering me for a long time. Back then, I was outside looking in. Now, when I got my first glimpse from the inside, it sure seems as if all my presumptions are correct: Teaching is a job, like any other, sometimes tough, sometimes soft. The amount of whining, though, is nowhere near being justified, as compared to the workload people face in other jobs, without whining.
And yes, I’ll keep my moth shut by the water cooler, which is the reason I came here to vent.
Where exactly does this “constant whining” happen, except during contract affirmation time, labor disputes and threads like these where someone denigrates teachers? That is, except in the exact same contexts where **any **profession is entitled to some “whining” about their salary and benefits being non-commesurate (sp?) with their job duties?
It’s not “whining” if it’s in the appropriate context of public relations (when the public has to approve tax increases to pay for your raise, you need to let them know why you need a raise!), or labor negotiations or fighting ignorance and defending your honor, sirrah!
I’m a grad student, and this semester i’m teaching a course at a local college to earn some cash and get add some more teaching experience to my CV.
I’m getting $3,300 which is, as you say, at the upper end of what one can expect to receive for teaching a course. Like you, i’ve heard of people earning less than half that much.
The class meets once a week for three hours. There are fifteen meetings during the semester, making about 45 hours of in-class time for the course. I am also expected to be on campus and available for consultation at least one hour a week but, like most people here, i am actually available for two hours. That’s another 30 hours for the semester. So, i start out with 75 hours worth of obligations. If this were all i had to do, i’d be looking at something like $44 per hour for the semester, which is pretty decent money.
But i haven’t yet included the time that i will spend grading papers and exams. With twenty students in the class, each writing one short paper (3-4 pages), one longer paper (8-10 pages) and one exam, even if i figured on budgeting only i hour of grading per student, that would be another 20 hours for the course. Of course, it will end up being considerably more than that, because i like to write detailed, helpful comments on students’ papers. So now we’re at a (very conservative) estimate of 95 hours, or about $35 per hour.
Of course, lots of people would, quite rightly, consider $35 per hour to be pretty decent money. I mean, if you work a 40 hour week at that rate, you’re looking at about $70k a year, which is comsiderably better than the national average. But, of course, i haven’t yet even begun to allocate time for weekly lesson preparation. This is the first time i’m teaching this particular course and, while i have plenty of material and a good idea of the general outline of each lecture, i still have to sit down and make sure i have a lecture and a class discussion planned out each week, which can take anywhere from a few hours to 10+ hours, depending on which week it happens to be and how much material i have prepared already.
Even if i had taught this course before, though, i would still have to budget a reasonable amount of time each week for class prep. I know tenured professors who have been teaching the same course for years who still spend a couple of hours (often more) preparing for each class, because they like to update and modify their class plans to take account of new developments in the field, or take a new approach to teaching the material. And even teachers who use essentially the same material still generally need to sit and think about what they’re going to say and how they want to lead the discussion.
With the amount of prep i have to do this semester (given that it’s my first time teaching this course), i’m budgeting a total of 15-20 hours per week for this course, which means an hourly rate of about $11-14 per hour. And if i run into any unexpected problems, this figure could go down. Not a great deal for someone with an MA and well on the way to a PhD. And remeber, as WhyNot says, there are people out there who already have their PhDs who are being paid even less for a similar amount of work.
I’m not complaining about what i’m being paid. The money is enough to help pay the bills, and the experience will be invaluable when i finish my dissertation and go on the job market. But i don’t think the amount of work i’m doing, for the amount of money i’m getting, makes me lazy.
I also have plenty of friends who teach in the public schools (elementary and secondary), both here in the US and back in Australia. It seems to me that what Kaitlyn says is right on the money. In many school systems, it is indeed possible to be a lazy teacher, to do the absolute minimum amount of work, and still get by. But if you’re a teacher who’s even vaguely concerned about the welfare and education of your students, and who has any sense of professionalism, then you’re going to be working a lot harder than many people realize. I can’t remember how many times i’ve been to my teacher friends’ places and they’ve had to cut the visit short because of all the grading or other out-of-class work they had to do.
These “teachers are lazy” threads pop up from time to time on these boards, often enough that i no longer get angry about them It’s just a little sad, is all.
I get paid on the last business day of the month–12 paychecks a year. The published salary scale is divided by 12 to get the monthly salary. It doesn’t matter if I work 20 days in the month or 3, my monthly check will be the same. I have worked for districts that pay 9 times during the year. That means you receive your final check on June 30th and don’t receive the next one until September 30th. The published annual salary is divided by 9.
Here’s an example with easy figures:
District A pays $36000/year
12 monthly checks of $3000
District B pays $36000/year
9 monthly checks of $4000
