Bulls*it. My wife gets to her school before 7:30 and is regularly there until 5 or later. Then, she comes home, we have dinner, and she sits down to work for another couple of hours. Every day...including weekends. Just this week, we spent a couple of hundred dollars on supplies for her classroom. Yes, there is a deduction...but it's only $250 when we spend probably 4x that yearly. Yes, there's a summer break...that ends after about 6 weeks when she has to start professional development programs and is back in the classroom weeks before school starts. Yes, there is district paid health insurance...that is crap. Even on the top tier, we're out of pocket for a lot of stuff. Why shouldn't they have a solid retirement plan? They're forced to pay out a good chunk of their checks to TRA and we get kicked in the ass come tax time since she isn't paying into SS. Luckily, she will still get SS benefits as she was in the private sector for 15 years before becoming a teacher. This is all while trying to figure out how to properly teach kids AND manage all of the requirements for the STUPID amount of testing the republican government of this state has placed on them.
Based on the size of that, the fact that there was nothing that looked like it would even be mistaken for explosive material, C4, Nitro, TNT, black powder, or anything else.
I think it really depends on the state. Texas dgaf about educations so they pay ****ty and in general have a bad school system.
One more thing... That wonderful time off you speak of is to also make up for the time she doesn't get to spend with our kids during the school year. She doesn't get to go to any of the things they do during the day. She had to take unpaid time off just to go to our son's kindergarten graduation last May. That precious time off also is full of the doctor's appointments and other things that can't be done during the school year. Even with all of the reasons not to do it...she loves it and she is great at it. She has never been happier since she made this move. That doesn't mean the state and districts should get away with crappy pay and benefits.
Not really. Summer vacation started for the my wife's elementary school on June 5 this year. My wife worked in her classroom until June 29th. During July, she took a few required classes. She started back working in her classroom in early August - a little over a month later. Currently she is at her school at 7am and she doesn't leave until 5pm sometimes 6pm. She gets about 20 minutes for lunch and her "planning time" is filled with meetings. She has also had after school meetings 4 out of the 5 days this week and has worked EVERY Saturday in the last month. She has a masters degree in curriculum, and despite having taught at the same school for 20 years, she makes 54k. Yes, teachers have a good starting salary, but the pay raises are almost non-existent. Her biggest challenges to teaching are all the crazy requirements & meetings that take away from actual classroom teaching..and...The Parents. Parents are the largest roadblock that teachers have. Parents who are involved and respect the teachers will have kids that succeed in life and education. Parents who are not involved, or constantly blame teachers will have kids that will not succeed.
Some funny stuff about teacher's pay. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/22/948224/-Are-you-sick-of-highly-paid-teachers# Here's something from another article about teachers pay and time off. http://boilsdown.com/2015/01/19/why-teachers-deserve-their-summers-off/ The whole article points out a lot about teachers and summer vacation, and is worth a read. This image was there also.
We live in a society where we thing the value of Teachers is that they DO IT FOR THE LOVE OF KIDS or some such That being the case we do alot of stuff to interfere and destroy morale 1. We don't let teachers teach. We trust some Bureaucrat who has never been in the class room to make decisions 2. We don't support them. We blame them for EVERYTHING and hold no one else responsible or accountable for these kids. 3. We give them Too many responsibilities. -- After Sandy hook people wanted to Arm Teachers and make them responsible for Security. WTF? People actually are ok with that. . . then they are also baby sitters, Social Engineers, Jr Detectives, and psychologist. It is a BIG JOB with many responsibilities. Being a PHYSICISTS would not prepare you to be a teacher. you can harp on their 'knowledge of deep mathematics' but You don't need home run designated hitters. You need someone that can Pitch, play firstbase, catch and play out field while also batting for average. Rocket River NOPE . . I'm Not a Teacher
I'm rolling with imadrummer. I know those stories. I hear about them all the time from the first grade level.
No it's not up to a science teacher to recognize a bomb, but if a science teacher can see that a clock is a clock but could be mistaken for a bomb, I don't think the teacher should just tell the kid to put it in his bag and not say anything about it. That wasn't the right course of action in that instance. That was the point.
With the Amount of teachers losing their jobs over the summer I don't think job Security is there anymore Rocket River
Exactly. Teachers have to follow protocol. [Now if the teacher used the word BOMB she/he was a moron] Rocket River
People in the US talk about the value of education, but as a whole the US does not value education very highly.
Not saying AT ALL that parents are not a problem-- or even the biggest problem. I was just addressing a post about the type of problems on the teacher's side (subject matter competence vs. classroom management, pedagogy, etc.) and which of them is more important than the others. I suspect that how big a problem parents are depends on the specific families students are from. Both problem teachers and problem parents exist. The existence of one, and even the predominance of one, doesn't mean the other isn't a problem.
My post was written with only high school teachers in mind. And even that, the thread was more about "normal" high schools in which those sorts of problems are not affecting the classroom on average. Basically (I recall you live in kingwood) I went to kingwood high school back in the day and that's my frame of reference. So I'm thinking of the average teacher there and then thinking of all the education majors I've had to deal with. As far as the rest of what you're saying, I completely believe all of it. The education system needs a rehaul, but a lot of it has to do with a significant portion of society (parents) not valuing their child's education in the first place. Obviously the issue is complex and has many different variables that create various dynamics in different forms. That picture of Iceland's education sounds cool if that is actually a reality.
That's not convincing. To the average Joe I'm pretty sure the fact that it looks like every single homemade bomb in a film or television ever is what sticks out. Extending that point, I don't think the average science teacher (let's say at HISD) knows enough about circuits or explosive material to distinguish whether that's potentially something dangerous or not. How many education majors do you think have seen enough explosive materials or been in enough labs to 100% be able to say there's nothing potentially harmful there? I doubt very many.
Yes it is. However, look at the general perception of teaching. Also how many doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants would be better off teaching?
If you have kids, it might be important to you to have roughly the same schedule as they do so that you can spend time with them in the summer, during winter break, and after school. There are a myriad of reasons that different people choose different professions. I've known extremely intelligent people who went into teaching because they didn't feel like they wanted to work 60-70 hours a week or because they felt like they were giving back to the community, in addition to the considerations for people with children. Salary isn't everything, work-life balance is more important to many.
