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At least where I live, those days are counted toward the 180 days.
All professionals have to earn continuing education credits and are not paid for the time. You at least have time off off to get those credits. And all professionals have to sometimes work outside of work hours. Teachers are no different.
But if you start teaching at 22, you can retire at 55. That is not an option for anybody in the private sector. Even if you lost your pension, you still get cheap health insurance.
They can't be fired if the administration won't fire them.
No all professionals don't have continuing ed. Some do but not all.
You can't start teaching in my state at 22. You need a master's degree to get your permanent license in my state. Most schools won't touch you without it.
I know several people in the private sector who can retire at 55 with a pension. Not the case with state workers in my state. That cheap health insurance ends at retirement here.
There are people in all organizations that should be fired but haven't been.
No all professionals don't have continuing ed. Some do but not all.
Even so, teachers are not unique in needing continuing ed.
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You can't start teaching in my state at 22. You need a master's degree to get your permanent license in my state. Most schools won't touch you without it.
They can still retire at 55 if they start teaching when they are 24 or 25. And the “Masters” degree that they need is a joke anyway. In my state, teachers definitely can start teaching at 22 or even younger. I had one teacher who mentioned that she was 19 when she started teaching, and her obituary said that she taught for 33 years.
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I know several people in the private sector who can retire at 55 with a pension. Not the case with state workers in my state. That cheap health insurance ends at retirement here.
Very few private sector employers give pensions. What do these private sector 55 year old retirees use for health insurance?
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There are people in all organizations that should be fired but haven't been.
Even so, teachers are not unique in needing continuing ed.
They can still retire at 55 if they start teaching when they are 24 or 25. And the “Masters” degree that they need is a joke anyway. In my state, teachers definitely can start teaching at 22 or even younger. I had one teacher who mentioned that she was 19 when she started teaching, and her obituary said that she taught for 33 years.
Very few private sector employers give pensions. What do these private sector 55 year old retirees use for health insurance?
True.
Never said teachers were unique in requiring continuing ed. Very few teachers last to 55. Private sector employees who retire at 55 have to buy their insurance. Some are on spouse insurance plans. Others are through the ACA. Can't get Medicare yet so many can't retire at 55.
Never said teachers were unique in requiring continuing ed. Very few teachers last to 55. Private sector employees who retire at 55 have to buy their insurance. Some are on spouse insurance plans. Others are through the ACA. Can't get Medicare yet so many can't retire at 55.
But teachers get cheap health insurance for life, so basically all of them retire at 55.
Go to work for a day and boy this thread takes off. Just a couple of comments to add
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
Keep in mind that teachers only work 180 days a year, and they get benefits (tenure, pension, ability to retire at age 55, cheap health insurance for life) that are priceless, which most other professionals don't get, so their base salary should be lower than other professionals. I know they always say that they have to do work outside the classroom and on their days off. But that is true of every professional. Also, my experience clearly showed that paying teachers more didn't attract better talent. If anything, based on the people I know who are current teachers, they took it for the benefits and the full time salary for part time work (their own admission).
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Doing the math for my state: 200 contract days which equates to 1600 hours. The median salary in the district my kids attended is somewhere between $56K and $60K depending the source. So let's call it $57K. That comes to an hourly rate of $35.63 per hour. Not the greatest, but not bad given the cost of living in that area. Certainly competitive with a lot of positions with similar degree requirements in that area. With that said, I do think you are going off your rather unique area and most teachers aren't as blessed such pay and benefits.
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
That makes a lot of sense. But I do wonder why it is that my school (and perhaps others?) tend to have male science teachers coaching girls sports rather than boys sports. Plus, coaching takes away time from teaching, since the time that they'd spend coaching is the time that other teachers would spend trading and developing lesson plans. They clearly put their coaching ahead of their teaching. Looking back on it, aside from clashing with science teachers, I clashed with male teachers who coached girls sports. I guess it would be a combination of them tending to favor girls and favor athletes, so I checked neither of their boxes.
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Again, just my observation is it's more due to how schools approach girls sports than anything else. Coaches for the major boys sports, at least around here, are pretty much full time coaches. Girls sports don't get the same level of support so the coaches for those sports have to teach to justify having the coaching job. In fact, other than the top boys sports, most of the coaches are either part time or volunteer coaches who don't get paid at all.
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
To be fair, I don't know whether my male colleagues have student loans or not. But I do know that they had to pay for college out of pocket, and they all commuted from local schools while working jobs. While my female colleagues had their STEM female scholarships and all went away to college and lived on campus and enjoyed life for 4 years. To be fair, I did go away to college and I did live on campus, since I had an academic scholarship, and I was able to enjoy life since I was able to AP out of most weedout classes, so this isn't a case of jealousy. But my track to college (academic scholarship, and AP out of weedout classe) no longer exists.
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I think the main item there is more and more colleges aren't accepting AP for the "weed out" classes because they have learned most AP classes simply don't cover the material to the depth needed for college. The kids who AP out of those entry classes aren't as well prepared as the kids who took them. The colleges my kids attended took slightly different approaches to that problem but neither really skipped weed out classes. One allowed AP for the mis gen-eds, but not the intense weed outs, while the other sort of allowed AP for the weed out classes but only if you took a substitute class from the same family. So in that case AP didn't really skip out on anything; just changed it.
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Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Highschool STEM educators can encourage girls all they want, but the parental factor can work against them. There are parents out there, who discourage their math-gifted daughters from going into engineering, say, for incredibly ignorant reasons. The home influence can outweigh anything educators can do in terms of guidance. Though that doesn't mean, that educators shouldn't try to guide talented girls into STEM fields.
Ruth, I can see that in some cases but it doesn't seem like many parents would be against STEM education. Where it seems the weed out occurs is mostly in middle school where the math gets harder and the subtle message is "girls can't do math." Convincing girls that they can actually succeed in algebra then Calc and the hard sciences seems to be the biggest barrier.
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Originally Posted by ss20ts
Teachers also have to set up their rooms before school starts and pack it up at the end of the year after school ends. They have training the week or 2 before classes begin in September as well. Additionally, they have to earn continuing education credits to maintain their license.
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To be fair, we should acknowledge that many, perhaps most professionals have also put a lot of unpaid time into setting up and moving offices. I've moved a lot of furniture around in my younger days on nights and weekends. Unpaid. Because everything had to be back up and running on Monday morning. And many professional do have continuous learning requirements every year to maintain their license or certification. Those aren't things unique to teachers and really don't help the argument about teacher hours.
There are physical jobs which wear out a body and teaching is one of them. It's totally different from a professorship which can continue way past retirement age. K-12 is exhausting.
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Originally Posted by ss20ts
Private sector employees who retire at 55 have to buy their insurance.
Also true.
Public school teachers salary and benefits depend on their state's teachers' union. Some states like District of Columbia and New York have great unions, but not every state does.
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
They can still retire at 55 if they start teaching when they are 24 or 25. And the “Masters” degree that they need is a joke anyway. In my state, teachers definitely can start teaching at 22 or even younger.
Most people graduate with a BA at age 22. No one begin teaching without a BA. Many states require a masters. Other states have certifications which are as time consuming as a masters
The masters in Teaching or Education isn't a joke anymore than a masters in English or International Relations. These aren't hard science degrees, but they are no means a joke. All of these masters degrees require a massive amount of writing. Most Teaching/Educaiton masters requires a year of unpaid student teaching.
The Federal government allows people to retire after twenty years with lifelong health insurance too.
Last edited by YorktownGal; 06-23-2022 at 07:36 AM..
Ruth, I can see that in some cases but it doesn't seem like many parents would be against STEM education. Where it seems the weed out occurs is mostly in middle school where the math gets harder and the subtle message is "girls can't do math." Convincing girls that they can actually succeed in algebra then Calc and the hard sciences seems to be the biggest barrier..
I've seen it as well. MS was my favorite grade range. Right around 7th grade it seems the girls want to be cheerleaders. Math proficiency at the higher level math shows up right away in the boys. Most of the girls just didn't seem interested in the higher level math.
I'm a retired software engineer (female) that got into teaching when I retired early.
And I did tell stories from work in class about the interesting projects I worked on and all the travel I got to do.
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