I’ve worked in the private sector and know other people that do too. Yes Mrs. Cad has had a few projects at work where she worked 60-70 hours in a week. This has happened a couple of times. For those people that claim that they *regularly *put in as much time as teachers I think that proves my point that you don’t understand what we do.
Next point: how much teachers spend for the priviledge of doing their job. Yes mechanics and technicians often buy their own tools but for teachers it is an ongoing expense that can get up to hundreds of dollars every year. RickJay, how much of your office supplies do you need to buy on your own?
See, I can play tit for tat all day. No, I don’t occasionally have to go to the school supply place and drop fifty bucks on stuff. I also don’t get as much vacation; a schoolteacher in Ontario gets more vacation and sick time than I get in four years. That part of their job is pretty cool. The part where they occasionally have to drop $50 at the supply store and can’t expense it, that’s not cool at all.
I don’t have to stay up late during report card season. However, I do frequently have to travel away from home - I do more travel in one year than most schoolteachers will do in twenty years - drudging through airports and staying in shit hotels. If you think it’s fun, try it. And I’m not even that bad off because my travel’s at least on this continent; my boss has to travel overseas 1-2 weeks a month and I don’t know how he stays sane.
Every job is hard. Some jobs have longer hours, but are more predictable. Some jobs have shorter hours but they’re more dangerous. Some jobs you NEVER work more than 40 hours a week, but you’re a labourer working very repetitive jobs for not much money. I mean, if you want short hours, not much responsibility, and easy tasks, go work at Burger King, they’re hiring. There is, however, a drop in pay. Some jobs pay incredibly well - if you make it to the top, and if you don’t you’re in serious trouble. Some jobs have fine hours and pay but are life-and-death stressful. Some jobs are low hours and good pay but require two postgraduate degrees and a mountain of student debt.
Do you really want to play the I’ve-got-six-you’ve-got-half-a-dozen game all day? If teaching is the hardest job ever why are people here literally lined up to do it? (And of course, if it’s the easiest job ever, as some people claim, why aren’t they going back to school to get a teaching certificate?) All jobs are hard.
The people who are imprisoned in the “public anything is bad” derp are of course going to have it in for teachers. Take them out of the equation for a moment.
The question is, do the Sane 75% respect teachers. For the most part, yes. We talk to them when we go to our kids’ parent-teacher conferences, we know they are good people doing a hard job in bad circumstances. We know they have to deal with all manner of idiocy from psychotic kids, negligent parents, and fundamentalist school board officials.
Teaching is one of those things where every person thinks they are an expert. I’d give them a raise just for having to deal with the public and not being able to tell them to STFU.
Having been a male teacher for a little while, I can say that while I was not overly concerned by the threat of accusations, I was told to be concerned by my colleagues. Both male and female teachers made it a point to explain how to handle situations like a female child running up to give you a hug and whatnot so that you could remain in the clear.
Perhaps your district is just better in that respect, but it definitely was an issue for me.
I’m coming in late to this thread to mention my observation is that the teaching profession is often disrespected by other degreed professionals. I really don’t understand this because teaching is a far more noble profession than many of the ones whose practitioners look down on it. But it’s not all that surprising that people act that way.
The point is not to compare jobs. As you say, every job is hard, every job has its good points and its bad points. The point is that all the time people who know nothing about it say that teaching is an easy job, and it most certainly isn’t.
To be fair, there are a lot of teachers who seem to feel that our job is *uniquely *shitty and poorly paid, and publicly making that claim doesn’t do the profession any good. It’s one of those vicious cycle things: people say teachers have easy jobs, teachers get defensive (because it’s not an easy job) and start to make comparisons, which is a mistake. Even if teachers get a raw deal, the more a teacher bitches about how miserable the working conditions are and the pay is compared to anything else, the more they look like a sucker for taking the gig. We think it makes us look noble and long suffering, but it just makes us look whiny and incompetent.
I am not saying teachers shouldn’t bitch. I bitch. But it’s silly to get morally indignant about our pay, or to feel like it’s singularly unfair. I mean, social workers go into crack houses to wrest babies out of their drugged-out mothers’ arms, and they do it for $30k a year. Soldiers leave their families and risk their lives for less than I make in a year. Orderlies in nursing homes and mental institutions deal with unspeakable tragedy and pain and abuse for $10/hour. Comparisons are useless here. The world isn’t fair. Salaries and wages certainly aren’t.
On a macro scale, I am happy to talk about how we get the teacher we pay for, and bitching about their incompetence and using that as a reason to lower compensation is a losing game, but I do my job because I love it and for me, the good parts are good enough to make the bad parts worth it. But I think that I am an outlier in a lot of ways, and that a lot of other potentially good teachers leave or never join the profession because it isn’t worth it to them. But that’s about improving the caliber of teachers, not balancing the cosmic scales.
In Ontario, teachers with 8 years of experience earn over 80,000 a year. Add on top of that the 13 weeks of vacation (Christmas, March Break and summer), the unprecedented benefits and the pension they will get, I have a hard time saying that they are underpaid here. Not to mention that they tend to retire at an average age of 57.
I you adjust the salary to make it a 48 week work year (4 weeks of vacation isn’t unheard of) with savings for a similar pension when you retire you would have to be making 135,000 a year to be comparable. Even if you exclude the fact that they get a lot of time off, you are still looking at 110,000 to be able to save for that kind of pension.
Pretty good money in my world. There are a lot of people working a lot harder for a lot less.
I have NEVER complained about what teachers get paid considering we work 185 vs 250 days per year and so since we work about 75% of the days our pay is pretty good. However, if teachers put in on average 10 hours then that makes up the difference. Also, when you compare pay, understand that in many states teachers are required to have master’s level credentialing classes so as professional shouldn’t our pay and conditions be equivalent to MBA’s and other professions that require master’s?
Lastly, how many other professions are you legally required to be responsible for the welfare of others? Do accountants or middle managers or IT tech have in loco parentis responsibility over their direct reports? If an emergency happens like a fire, can you legally (not necessarily morally) bug out? I can’t and in California the school could hold me for 72 hours at the school site before I check on the welfare of my family.
I’m not disputing that teachers in Ontario have a pretty good deal. The trouble new-grads have getting their first position suggests that there’s a surplus of candidates that think the job is attractive.
But it almost seems like cheating to point to the gross salary and the pension as two benefits; IIRC teachers have to put 11-12% of their gross into the pension plan, and these contributions are about half of the pension’s funding.
Holy cow. I want to move to Canada. How highly do you guys value arts education? I may need to look into emigration.
Manda Jo’s postings more or less reflect my opinions, and she is stating them far better than I would so I am going to stay out of the rest of this thread.
My biggest beef with teachers is the fact, here in British Columbia anyways, that they’ll spout off about how noble their careers are and how much they love “their” kids etc and then go on strike and lament how the students are paying the price.
Thinking back I can’t recall one teacher “making a difference” in my life.
I had a grade three teacher, japanese bitch, that made that year horrible for a lot of us and ruined me for school from then on, I left as soon as my Dad would sign alongside me for the Navy.
By “military school” do you mean a private high school with military uniforms, trappings, and discipline; or do you mean a specialized training school for active USN personnel? If the latter I suspect you had a much more willing audience than any teacher in any primary or secondary school.
I have no experience in the field so I can’t bring that kind of knowledge to this discussion. But I do remember my own experiences of public school and what I saw in myself and others. It often seemed that 95% of the students in any class would rather be doing something else, mostly because of boredom. A few classes I took in high school were the exceptions to this pattern, and rank among my happiest memories from that time in my life. Looking back, I think it was the teachers of those classes that made all the difference.
No, I understand that. But teachers do themselves few favours by turning it around and claiming their jobs are uniquely, amazingly difficult. That tends to piss people off and robs teachers of the sympathy they need in the public sphere.
Everyone thinks the job they aren’t doing is easier than it is.
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Holy cow. I want to move to Canada. How highly do you guys value arts education?
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At least in Ontario, you can forget becoming a teacher; there’s a backlog of applicants. I know qualified teachers who have been sitting on the supply list for years and years.
Nobody denies what that the labor market pays what it pays.
But you can’t say that in the same breath as saying that Ed students are dim, etc. If you want the best and the brightest, or even the above average, you have to compete for it on the labor market, and teaching isn’t doing that right now.
I see your point with the first part of your post but I disagree with this line. It’s already been pointed out that teachers receive a respectable amount of compensation. As to being forced to teaching to a state-imposed series of tests, that would be the MINIMUM level of achievement students are expected to achieve. Teaching to this level is a very low bar to aspire to. It was done as the end result of the damage caused by using a grading curve.
IMO teaching has been harmed with the increased educational load on teachers. It does not require a masters degree to teach a subject. What is required is a full understanding of the subjects to be taught. This is a testable criteria in the hiring process. Want a job teaching then prove you know the material.
When I went to school a math or science teacher would correct any misuse of English in the classroom. I now see teachers who cannot speak the language correctly. That’s a huge WTF in my book.
On an unrelated matter to my first post, I find the constant stories about student suspensions over any reference to a gun an indictement of the stupidity that is our educational system today. I’m glad I went to school in the era I did. I had a much higher opinion of the teaching profession than I do today.