Hannathy said:
Most jobs today require college degrees.
Since only about 25% of the American adult population has a college degree, it must be hard to fill all those jobs. Now, if you say most
professional jobs require a degree, I'll agree with you.
Hannathy said:
Most teachers today are adequately paid like I said if it is so terrible why are there 50 qualified applicants for every job.
Hmmm. Maybe 49 of those qualified applicants should move to the South. We have a serious teacher shortage. In fact, we're forced to hire lateral entry people to teach the difficult-to-fill slots in science and math. It's not really good for the kids. And most of our foreign language teachers are in the Visiting International Faculty program; they're English teachers from other countries who come as "foreign exchange teachers".
As for salary, I just broke 40K this year (10 month contract); I have 15 years experience. Starting teachers make considerably less. Obviously if I didn't think it was "adequate" for the work I do, I'd go elsewhere -- actually though, if I had the choice, I'd take more respect and cooperation from parents before I'd take more money.
Hannathy said:
For example my childs 1rst gr teacher earns 48,000 per yr, she works 200 days has every holiday and weekend off. She is required to be at school 7 1/2 hrs/day, the kids are there 7hrs, she gets 45 min for lunch no playground or lunch room duty
Sounds fishy -- maybe it's a union state. I am officially "on the clock" from 7 AM to 3 PM (eight hours). I have a 30-min duty before school begins at 7:30. Most days I have 26 minutes free time for lunch; every few weeks I have lunch duty, which means I eat standing up in the lobby that week. I have a planning period (not a break period), in which I can complete my lesson planning, test/worksheet writing, xeroxing, calls to parents, etc., but I cannot complete my grading during that time frame.
The 200 days per year isn't that much less than other workers. 52 weeks in a year, most professional jobs provide 10 holidays and 10 vacation days, that takes us to 48 working weeks. 48 weeks x 5 days = 240 days for most workers. Yes, 240 is more than 200, but it's hardly the half-a-year that someone else mentioned.
You're an outsider; you don't know what's involved in a teacher's schedule. It'd be like me saying that nurses only work a few minutes out of every hour: they come in, glance at the patient, maybe give him some meds (which were prescribed by those hard-working doctors who really deserve all the glory for what goes on in the hospital), then the nurses go have coffee and chat for the rest of their shift. Obviously, that's not true, but someone who saw just a little bit of a nurse's job might believe it. Much of what nurses do is "invisible" to the patients, yet time consuming -- the same is true of teachers.
But back to what I do know: Teaching. Let's throw in a few more details: If your daughter's 1st grade teacher is sick, she has to come into school at 6 AM to leave lesson plans for the sub (if one is available, if not, other teachers will have to cover her class). Aside from sickness and a few other extreme circumstances (jury duty, being called up by the military reserve) she cannot take a day off while students are in class. She's required to provide extra help for students after school. In book-choosing years, she's going to have to attend several evening meetings to hear presentations from book companies (this one comes to mind because I've wasted quite a bit of time this year on textbook selection). Since she's an elementary teacher, she probably doesn't have many extra-curricular assignments, but we who teach older kids sure do! Every teacher has at least one club (or sport), every teacher must work a couple sports duties each year, and every teacher will end up chaperoning dances or other school events, and each homeroom teacher has end-of-the-year responsibilities that require an entire day's work.
I'd genuinely like to know: If her job is so cushy -- given that you have both degrees -- why don't you go take the easier job with the better benefits?
Oh, benefits. You are correct when you say that teachers have good benefits, but we
do pay for them. 7% of our salary is deducted for the state teachers' pension fund; that is a good bargain for us, but it's not free. And we're paying an arm and a leg for health insurance just like the rest of the country.
To the original poster: I like your math! But I have a total of 95 students in my three classes, not 20.
I really do like my job, even though it's difficult at times -- how many people do you know who can say that?
