If you are wondering why education is going down the tubes…(long post)

[KrisM]

Okay, I get what you're saying here. Thanks for explaining. You're right in that, depending on the school and classroom setting, teachers can have a good amount of time when they're not directly interacting with students. However, even with that time, IME with DH and his teacher friends, they routinely have to spend quite a bit of time outside of school grading, emailing, prepping, etc. Technically there is time built in for them to get those things done, but that almost never happens. The few hours they have with free periods just isn't enough time to get it all done, since those periods are often busy with advising students, meeting with other teachers and admin, grading large numbers of essays, etc.
This thread is really showing how much teaching/teacher experiences can vary!

It is. It never occured to me that some teachers had to work in the lunch when the kids ate, since ours don't. I'm happy we seem to be in a better district, but I wish more teachers were.

My oldest in in 2nd grade and so far there isn't a lot of homework to correct. Kindergarten was 1-2 pages a week and 1st and 2nd is maybe 2-3 pages a week. We're only a month in, so 2nd could change. I'm sure higher grade teachers have a lot more work like that to do.

[cleo27]

it is ignorant and unkind to assert that teachers don't work hard or have serious professions.

I am late to this thread but I totally agree with this. I think teaching is such an important and demanding job, and it is so sad that there is so little respect toward the field.

I think it is easy to look at the schedule of hours and assume that makes up for how demanding the hours in the classroom are.

This thread is pretty depressing.

Cleo
Proud mom to DD, age 7

[larig]

Yes, that's what I was referring to. They have that time to check papers, prepare, etc. It was mentioned that there is no time during the day to do those things, so they are always working many hours at home. I was just pointing out that here, there is time in the day. I was comparing it to my DH's 9 hours at his work and his hour lunch that he is allowed to take. My school is 7 hours of kid-time. I added 2 hours to make it equivelant to a 40 hour work week that includes 1 hour lunch, which is common here. Of that 9 hours a day, my DH gets 1 hour free for lunch and the rest is work. Of that 9 hours for a teacher, there is 3.25 hours of non-kid time, including lunch, before and after school.

As a high school teacher my day started at 7:00. My first class was at 7:30. I had one 45 minute prep period during the day. I had one 25 minute lunch hour (the second half I monitored a 30 student home room). My teaching ended at 2:30. I taught 5 classes--4 different preps (AP calc BC, AP calc BC, Precalc honors, alg 2). I was also (for no pay) technology leader for the math dept. I could leave at 3:05. During my prep period and my lunch I often had AP calc students or precalc (my alg 2 kids were not beating down my door to get help) for help. My policy was if you wanted help, I'd make myself available, even if that meant eating lunch while we did math problems. So, the reality was that if I had the chance to spend time with students I used my school day for that--it was the priority, because that's when the kids are there. Even the teachers who didn't use their time in that way were unlikely to have finished their prepping in 45 minutes. Not when their teaching loads were like mine. Plus, it's not like we have secretaries to type up all of our correspondence and tests, that 45 minutes was often used dealing with parent phone calls and reading notes from parents or emails.

[BabyMine]

All I can say is take a week off and volunteer everyday at your school for at least 6 hours a day. You will come away with a much different idea of what teachers go through.

I don't pretend to know what a lawyer, surgeon, or other career does unless I have at least worked and trained in that field.

Teachers are teaching our children yet we pay entertainers and athletes more. We don't seem to have our priorities straight yet. Stand behind your teachers and fight for them because the way things are going we might not have any good ones around anymore.

Another thing I feel bad about is that the teachers have to buy the majority of the things you see that decorate the wall. Sometimes even the paper and crayons. I have never worked in a place that didn't provide all the items I needed to do my job but that isn't the case in schools.

My sister is a K teacher. She teaches inclusion and ESE. She has her Masters and some certificates. I could NEVER do her job without loosing it. She was born to be a teacher and is awesome at it. She works from 7-4/5pm. Then there are the planning days, parent meetings, and other things she needs to catch up on. She works in a title 1 school and spends 3-4k a year on her class because the parent can't provide the basic necessities. She once spent $500 on clothes for 2 sisters that always came to school in rags. The mother sold the clothes and bought drugs.

Just because the kids aren't in school doesn't mean the teachers aren't.

Thank you to all the teachers on this board. For some reason education takes the first hit when it comes to budget reductions. We should be fighting to put more money into education.

[LBW]

No one will ever convince me that teaching is hard. Period. Teachers here earn insanely high salaries relative to the amount of education they have -- and they get 3m of paid vacation annually (2m summer, 2w Christmas and 2w Spring Break), plus 6 pro-D days (and they want 5 more, but that ain't happening, as the media just busted a HS pro-D day that involved playing games at a dude ranch).

I know many many teachers IRL and they work 8:30 to 3, on a long day. Once they have a couple of years of experience and lesson plans, its just routine -- no prep involved, they just show up each day and teach. They get regular breaks through the day. They don't even have to mark at night b/c they get marking time during the work day. Every single person I knew in university who went into teaching did so b/c they did not get into any other professional school and they wanted buckets of vacation time -- nice motivation!

Trust me, as someone who has practiced law for almost 2 decades now, teaching is a cakewalk compared to litigation. I can't remember the last time I took a lunch or coffee break. I certainly don't get 3m holidays a year and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to take it due to crushing workloads.

I don't have anything against teachers making a fair wage for their relative schooling. But I definitely do not think that they are underpaid and overworked.

Sing it!

[Kindra178]

Where do teachers make 6 figures?

My son's k teacher makes over 80,000. I would guess she is teaching 20 years, maybe less. The k teacher in room one over makes well over 90,000. They each have 19 students. I think they deserve every penny. They both have MAs. We have extremely high property taxes. People here value education and pay for it.

I do not agree with Melissa that teaching is easy. Teaching is really hard. But being a lawyer is extremely demanding with little time off. You don't own your own time. Weekends, nights, vacations, mean nothing. And I mean nothing. There are no paid any days (sick, vacation, personal, national holidays, even jury duty). You are at your clients' and/or senior partners whim.

[spanannie]

My son's k teacher makes over 80,000. I would guess she is teaching 20 years, maybe less. The k teacher in room one over makes well over 90,000. They each have 19 students. I think they deserve every penny. They both have MAs. We have extremely high property taxes. People here value education and pay for it.

Just curious, how did you find out what your kids' teachers make? My kids go to a private school and I haven't seen it published. I'd love to know.

[JBaxter]

Just curious, how did you find out what your kids' teachers make? My kids go to a private school and I haven't seen it published. I'd love to know.

Ours are published yearly. Last year Nathan's 1st grade teacher made 75000. She had been teaching 25yrs w/ our school system and was at the top of the pay scale. There are steps in our county. I think she will only get cost of living from this point on. She was amazing. She had 26 1st graders and did a fantastic job.

[mudder17]

Yeah, I only know our elementary. It's a very small sample of teachers . We have paid aides for lunch and recess. Teachers have that time to eat, so 45 minutes, less walking.

I was also comparing to a typical of 9 hours a day, which is what many other professions do. So, that's another 112 minutes a day (560 a week) to reach that point. I know teachers do stuff before and after, but the during is less than my DH's during so I was trying to even it out by making them both 9 hours.

Well, and that's part of the point. If all districts were like yours (and I know ours is quite good as well), maybe the state of education WOULD be better. The teachers in my daughter's school are extremely creative and hard working, but they also know their job would be that much harder without the great support of the parents and yes, the tax payers who help fund the school. As I look around my daughter's school, I see an example of a place where education is working and working well. And yet, despite how "easy" it is for these teachers (in comparison to many many other districts), there is still no such thing as a 40 hour week for them. And even the most qualified and experienced of teachers make nowhere near 6 figures. And as much as these teachers LOVE teaching, they are definitely not doing it for the pay. If they worked just as hard and spent just as much time in another profession such as law or engineering or whatever, their salary WOULD be higher, even in these hard times.

Someone above mentioned that it's not just teachers who are suffering. For example, my DH, who works in the government, has not had a COL increase in the past couple years. So it's happening all over. But with teachers, it seems like it's always been the case.

When I was teaching, and I taught in the city, so in a different district from the one my girls are in, and it was not uncommon for me to spend 60-80 hours a week on teaching alone. I had 2 masters (MS in Chemistry and MAT in science), both from very good schools, and I was offered a teaching salary that at the time blew me away, not because it WAS an awesome salary, but because it was higher than average, where average is very poor. But I went into teaching knowing I was not going to get paid that much because that's not why I went into teaching. When I had kids, I quit teaching, not because I couldn't afford to continue doing it, financially--we could have pulled it off. But most of my salary would have gone into childcare, and even more importantly, I would not have had ANY time to spend raising my kids because I'd still be spending 60-80 hours a week on teaching. Anyone who has kids and thinks teaching is not as hard as other jobs such as litigation (for example) is either in a very unusual (and not very good, imho) school district or just.does.not.get.it.

Does anyone think parenting is easy? Does any parent have friends who think parenting is easy? What would you say to them if they told you that? They just.don't.get.it.

[Pyrodjm]

No one will ever convince me that teaching is hard. Period. Teachers here earn insanely high salaries relative to the amount of education they have -- and they get 3m of paid vacation annually (2m summer, 2w Christmas and 2w Spring Break), plus 6 pro-D days (and they want 5 more, but that ain't happening, as the media just busted a HS pro-D day that involved playing games at a dude ranch).

I know many many teachers IRL and they work 8:30 to 3, on a long day. Once they have a couple of years of experience and lesson plans, its just routine -- no prep involved, they just show up each day and teach. They get regular breaks through the day. They don't even have to mark at night b/c they get marking time during the work day. Every single person I knew in university who went into teaching did so b/c they did not get into any other professional school and they wanted buckets of vacation time -- nice motivation!

Trust me, as someone who has practiced law for almost 2 decades now, teaching is a cakewalk compared to litigation. I can't remember the last time I took a lunch or coffee break. I certainly don't get 3m holidays a year and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to take it due to crushing workloads.

I don't have anything against teachers making a fair wage for their relative schooling. But I definitely do not think that they are underpaid and overworked.

It's a cake walk because the hours are shorter? From this statement alone I will take it that you have never be responsible for educating a group of children.

As a special ed teacher with a graduate degree, that has ALWAYS had to create her own curriculum, I'm disgusted with this thread. Perhaps our hours aren't as long a a lawyer's and the fact that we don't HAVE to go to prestigious schools in order to be qualified for most positions is what get to people.

To say that teachers only work, 8-3, don't bother to update curriculum and never work on there own time in is foolish. There may be a few lazy, tenured, very experienced teachers that can get away with this at there schools but this is not the case for most educators. I can think of a few unsavory characteristics about lawyers that I could list that probably don't apply to the majority. Teachers make a fraction of what lawyers (in the US) make. To say the job is easier because they spend less time on the clock shows ignorance.

These are careers that involved VERY different skills sets. I can do things many people can't. I work with the children most don't even want to acknowledge exist in the educational system. It amazes me that because you think I get more time "off" my job is easier than yours. Here in NYC, Sanitation workers get unlimited sick days, full pension after 20 years, and a few other perks. Transportation workers and other in civil service workers don't dare say that they have it harder because the sanitation workers work less.

You CHOSE to get a job that prevented you from having vacations, free time, etc. in exchange for a fabulous paycheck. That is fine. But because of your crappy schedule and high stress you can't acknowledge that there are other challenging, difficult and rewarding jobs with better schedules in other fields that deserved to be paid well for what they have chosen to do? We not asking for a LAWYERS salary, just a decent one. I was looking into teaching in Florida about 6 years ago, starting salary with a master's and 4 years experience was under $38k a year. I don't care what you want to believe, Floridian children aren't THAT easy to teach.