Something about teacher's pay...

Hmmm...

Most of all?

1. Teaching is immeasurable. You can't quantify when good teaching has occurred... you can only tell when it has or hasn't happened.

2. The public needs to embrace its teaching force. It needs to be prepared to not only compensate teachers for their efforts, but also respect the same efforts. It needs to encourage people to enter the profession and succeed- both professionally and personally- within it.

3. Teachers unions need to be prepared to negotiate a model of accountability into contracts. Exactly how 'accountability' might be measured... I'm not entirely sure (although I do have ideas I won't go into at this moment).

The public would likely go along with item 2 if they knew there were legitimate steps employers could take to support and/or relieve poor performers.

brianlux said:

Thirty Bills Unpaid said:

Hmmm...

Most of all?

1. Teaching is immeasurable. You can't quantify when good teaching has occurred... you can only tell when it has or hasn't happened.

2. The public needs to embrace its teaching force. It needs to be prepared to not only compensate teachers for their efforts, but also respect the same efforts. It needs to encourage people to enter the profession and succeed- both professionally and personally- within it.

3. Teachers unions need to be prepared to negotiate a model of accountability into contracts. Exactly how 'accountability' might be measured... I'm not entirely sure (although I do have ideas I won't go into at this moment).

The public would likely go along with item 2 if they knew there were legitimate steps employers could take to support and/or relieve poor performers.

Cheers!

Oh brother. This is ridiculous. Union members have *individual* negotiating power? Huh?

Free said:

what dreams said:

pjhawks said:

what dreams said:

brianlux said:

what dreams said:

First of all, I am a "she." I like being a "she," so please stop referring to me as a "he." As someone has pointed out, 80% of teachers are women, so statistically, at least one of you could have figured that out. Maybe you didn't get the probability lessons in your math classes. I don't know.

Secondly, I teach in a right to work state. There are no union contracts in my state. I will check the statistics on this as well, but I'm pretty sure that in most states, there are no union contracts. I know there are none in the south, and those are the worst states of all to be a teacher -- and perhaps not coincidentally, a student. I have no "tenure." I am subject to the same evaluation process that a brand new teacher undergoes, every single year, and 60% of the score on my job evaluation is tied to student outcomes. If I fuck up, I could be put on an action plan. If I don't improve, I can be fired. Easily. I don't get a lawyer who fights my termination while I still get paid. But as I pointed out, my students perform exceedingly well, consistently. So there will never be any reason to fire me. Why fire a great teacher -- because she doesn't answer a damn e-mail?

Thirdly, the working class, immigrant parents in my diverse community like me because they know their kids will both behave and learn in my classroom. They know their child is my number one priority, so the missed e-mails are a non-issue with them. The ones I answer right away are the ones from the affluent, white, jack-ass parents because, well, I know they will be jack-asses if I don't explain right away why their little cupcake got a B+ instead of an A. The kids, speaking of grades, don't need their papers back right away, because when they are working -- and I keep them working bell to bell -- I am walking around the room, in many cases sitting side by side with them, telling them exactly what they are doing right and what they need to revise. They know what they have learned or didn't learn before the damned papers are even marked because I TALK to them. Last year we had a new principal. One day she stopped me to let me know she liked what she was seeing in my classroom. She said, "You are always with kids. I never see you when you are not surrounded by kids. Is that a deliberate choice to always be present that way?" And I'm like, "Isn't that my job?"

As I said (and someone else echoed) -- what happens at my home after hours does not affect students. It's the relationships I build with them in the classroom. It's my thorough understanding of my content which, if I do *any* homework, it's that -- continuing to learn and grow in my chosen field. It's my ability to communicate my content in a way that makes sense to them. It's the creative application of my content in activities they enjoy. It doesn't require hours and hours of labor over the kitchen table into the wee hours of the morning to make that happen. In fact, it is exactly because I do live a balanced life that I have the energy to give everything I've got while I'm in the building.

Lastly, I know I am not the norm, because I've been teaching for 23 years. Statistically, 23 years is not the norm. Our current teaching corps is very young. Young new teachers have to learn how to create this balance and command of the classroom (and thankfully for my district, like I said, I am a mentor teacher and trainer). Until they do learn this lesson, they will always be stuck in their ridiculous role of carrying home the teacher bag and wasting their time on low-yield practices, and probably miserable in their job. I know most teachers look at me like I'm crazy when I say "Don't bring work home." Many do it because they can't let go of the martyr complex that society has imposed on our profession. I'm not a martyr, but I do love my job. If I had burnt out and quit at year 5 because of all the other bullshit, I would never have had the honor of knowing so many talented and lovable kids, helping their families to send them out into the world as functional, critically thinking readers and writers.

So my final word in this entire thread (since apparently I write too much for some brains to deal with)? All the Frees of the World can kiss my ass. From what I can tell, with all their negativity about everything, they have impacted NOTHING, and never will. I can hold my life's work up to theirs and dance circles around them when it comes to making a positive impact on public education. Nothing any of them can say about my salary, my hours, my contract, or my competence will ever change that fact.

what dreams, I really SO much like a LOT of what you wrote here. I just wish to fucking hell (please don't use my language in your class, ms dreams) we could all have conversations like this over coffee, beer or whatever rolls your socks because what really matter here the most is that all of us seem to have a concern about education and if we put our heads together we might untangle one more piece of the twisted puzzle sculpture that is modern society. And all this is not just about the teachers, it's not just about the kids, it's about everything that all of us do and touch and visa versa.

We do too much jabbing at each other. Mostly we all do that. Me? I do. Guilty? Yeah.. When we do that, we're just kids again calling names and throwing chalk.

Interesting thread. I figured it would die on page one.

P.S. Here's an aside: I hate the red "Post edited by..." letters. They scream at me for having had to edit in the first place rather than give me a gold star for doing so.

Death to the little red letters!

Thank you, Brian. Like I said, I am not a martyr. Unlike Jesus, I will not turn the other cheek when someone jabs first, especially when someone attacks my integrity as a professional. Funny how you never reprimand your buddy Free when he attacks people -- always first.

yet not once have you addressed to 50 to 70 less days a year you work than other professionals. again no one is questioning that teachers work hard or are important. the numbers don't lie. less days equals less pay and that is what the original post and study was about. 23% less pay but 50 to 70 less days per year. seems a fairly easy concept to understand to me. not sure why pointing it out is somehow at attack on teachers and their credibility but sure seems like that is what has happened.

It's true. We get paid per diem. I said that. What's there to address? If we had more days in our contract, we would get paid more. There's nothing more to say. I don't create the contract. I have no negotiating power whatsoever. I don't see what your point is. My point was that teachers should work to contract and stop providing the public with free labor. For that I received a bunch of snarky feedback about how I must not be very good at what I do. F that.

Goodbye. Not getting sucked into this.

That's not true, at least in my state. Each individual has negotiating power when it's contract renewal time. You also said you get paid close to 100k, so... You would get paid much more if you didn't have all that time off?

I have never said I get paid close to 100 grand. I'm not sure where you read that, but it wasn't me.

brianlux said:

Thirty Bills Unpaid said:

Hmmm...

Most of all?

1. Teaching is immeasurable. You can't quantify when good teaching has occurred... you can only tell when it has or hasn't happened.

2. The public needs to embrace its teaching force. It needs to be prepared to not only compensate teachers for their efforts, but also respect the same efforts. It needs to encourage people to enter the profession and succeed- both professionally and personally- within it.

3. Teachers unions need to be prepared to negotiate a model of accountability into contracts. Exactly how 'accountability' might be measured... I'm not entirely sure (although I do have ideas I won't go into at this moment).

The public would likely go along with item 2 if they knew there were legitimate steps employers could take to support and/or relieve poor performers.

Again, no union in my state . . . And we have accountability measures in place to support and relieve poor performers.

Thirty Bills, I think you would agree that what makes this conversation so difficult is that the nation is all over the map regarding contracts, salaries, etc. Articles about national salary averages mask gross disparities between rural/urban and suburban districts. The averages are skewed because teachers are getting younger and they get paid less. There are union states with labor protections and then there is the rest of us. Some localities fund through property taxes, others through a school tax. Each state funds its schools at a different percentage of its revenues, which affects how much a locality has available for salaries. It's a mess. It's why I can't stand getting into conversations with people about it, because the public has no idea what the problem is. They think it's about summer vacation. It's just not.

Thank you for finally sharing with me (us?) that you are a teacher. It helps to know who we are talking to. I didn't know. Sorry.

brianlux said:

^^^ Yeah, I don't know where this summer vacation thing comes from though I'm sure some teachers, in some districts actually take the summer and go play tennis and loll on some Caribbean Island. Good for them, I guess. But what do I know? The idea of summer vacation is but a faded memory of long ago.

are you trying to deny that schools are closed in the summers?

pjhawks said:

brianlux said:

^^^ Yeah, I don't know where this summer vacation thing comes from though I'm sure some teachers, in some districts actually take the summer and go play tennis and loll on some Caribbean Island. Good for them, I guess. But what do I know? The idea of summer vacation is but a faded memory of long ago.

are you trying to deny that schools are closed in the summers?

Not sure about where you live but here in Colorado a lot of schools are open for summer programs, summer school, administration issues, etc.

Every teacher I know works during the summer.....
Summer school
Summer camps
Private tutoring
Etc

It seems many are stuck on my saying leave at 2:40. They missed the words "on most days" in patentheses.

This summer, I worked five paid days at school at a significantly reduced hourly wage (not my per diem) helping administrators plan our teacher leadership training. I'm in charge of the training on grading, after spending last year as the school rep on the division's policy revision committee, which I only did because 1) my principal appointed me because she said I would bring a common sense perspective, and 2) they paid me extra -- but not much -- to sit through those deadly meetings listening to teachers argue about all the wrong things. Common sense (mostly) prevailed.

I worked four July days planning my department-wide calendar for the year and one August afternoon meeting with another department chair about various school programs.

I had my 8th grade teachers over for dinner at the beginning of August. We had a four hour meeting to plan our first unit. I have three young teachers in the 8th grade, all three at three years of experience. (Imagine the year they were all brand new.) They are putting in many more hours than I will because they just don't know their stuff yet. Give it a few more. One is already talking about quitting (and then we'll waste money training another one instead of changing things to retain this one). Another wants to have a baby and when her baby is born, those students will be stranded with an unqualified sub for a while, if she even comes back. Many don't, so we recruit and train again.

I will get a $500 stipend next June for being department chair. It will work out to about .000000075 an hour. Since it's technically not free labor, I don't mind, and I enjoy helping new teachers become really great ones.

It is absolutely essential that we solve our human resource problem in education, and I really, really, really wish the public would argue about the right things as well so that common sense prevails.

PJHawks...

Earlier, I went through the task of making the following comparison for you. Did you note anything? You should have noted days worked compared to pay. Do you remember when you kept insisting all other professions work a minimum of 50 days more and therefore get paid more?

Province of BC:

Nurse entry wage (excluding OT) $63,000
Teacher entry wage $44,000

Nurse max wage (excluding OT) $99,000
Teacher max wage $83,000

Nurse days of work 3-4 days per week... opportunities for OT... plus holidays (52 weeks X 3.5 days= 183 days)
Teachers days of work as per collective agreement 187 per year

* I'm thankful our nurses get what they do. They offer a wonderful service to us and I appreciate them and the stresses and challenges they face on a daily basis. I'm not offering this comparison for any other reason than to model for PJHawks a useful comparison for discussion's sake.

** Information taken from government PDF files.