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Seriously. Given my lifestyle (secondary income in my household, no kids to support, etc.), teaching pays my bills. It doesn't afford extras, but it pays my bills. If I wanted extras (or if I wanted a drastically different lifestyle/wanted to have a large family who I'd then need to support, if my pay represented the sole income in my household, etc.), I'd work in some other field. But I teach because I like it enough to forego the extras.
Mine isn't a secondary income nor sole income. We both teach in elementary schools. I am entering my 19th year and my wife her 6th. The district credited her with 10 years of teaching in a private school, so she is paid the same as a teacher with 16 years. Since '93 we've gone from an apt., to a 2 bdrm condo, to a newly built single family house, and finally to a nice 40 year old. ~1800 sq. ft. home which is close to our schools. Nothing huge, but comfortable in a nice middle class neighborhood. She walks to work and I drive 1.5 miles now. One child. We bought this house for $428k in '09 and have put about $35k into upgrading it so far. We can pay our bills. Nothing extravagant, but we can take a day trip, or a couple of smart, budgeted vacations. We don't spend a lot on clothes, Kohl's is big for us with a 30% coupon, but probably go out to eat more than avg. An '07 vehicle is paid off and we have an '11 vehicle. A couple hundred dollars have gone into a college 529 over the past 10 years. Another couple hundred dollars go into a 403b which I started as a new teacher. It's not a ton, but it's something. The budget was very tight when I first started , but it has been better as I've stuck with it. The holiday time off with my son and wife in invaluable. I'm happy.
Don't bet on it. SO picked up a few credits prior to starting his master's, which was in a different content area than his bachelor's, at our local CC, which is generally well-regarded. Still a whole lot of bottom of the barrel students, and the pressure to teach to them. SO would go above and beyond, to try to make the experience more analogous to his master's classes, and got a lot of resentment from the "we only want to do the bare minimum and you're making us look bad" set. I wouldn't assume that you'll be getting any more motivated a crop at the CC level than you are at the HS.
Go ahead.... burst my bubble.... On the bright side, after 5 years teaching high school, I should be well prepared to teach the bottom of the class in CC. We'll see if I like it enough to stay....
ha ha...love it...at my district they added an extra lane, if you would get a cert in a needed area, for those topped out at a Masters plus 32. I did it, not for the additional hours, but for the additional lane...wow, people treated me like a brown nose leper! I was the first one to do it, and other teachers, were rather dismissive of it...but the following year most of the teachers in my department did it...they should have done the first year, when it was easy...the next year, it was much harder.
I worked as a high school teacher for over 30 years and made a lot of money and had a job I had to be there 183 days total. I was given 12 sick days a year to use as I pleased with 80% benefits for PPO and 100% for HMO medical insurance.
Remember the old saying," Those who can work---work; those who can't---teach." Today they even become school administrators.
Those teachers who stay after school and create work for themselves, or want to "look good" to the administration do it because they want to. I was organized and after a few years of teaching English and having the answer key anybody with common sense could teach standing on their head and teach a classroom of 36-38 students.
The most influence I had was coaching athletics to kids who choose to participate on the field versus those who had to show up in a classroom. I never rememembered from my high school days a great lesson plan by a teacher, but I sure remembered the athletic contests I participated in with the my friends who I grew up with.
Like I have stated before about 76% of American adults do not get a college degree. School is not about memorizing facts and being great at trivial pursuit. Teach college placement curriculum to the 30% who will get a college degree and let the other kids learn a skill, sociallize in school, play sports, join a club, teach consumer math and reading and be able to be a kid instead of pushing all of them to memorize a bunch of useless facts that will mean nothing when they are adults.
I worked as a high school teacher for over 30 years and made a lot of money and had a job I had to be there 183 days total. I was given 12 sick days a year to use as I pleased with 80% benefits for PPO and 100% for HMO medical insurance.
Remember the old saying," Those who can work---work; those who can't---teach." Today they even become school administrators.
Those teachers who stay after school and create work for themselves, or want to "look good" to the administration do it because they want to. I was organized and after a few years of teaching English and having the answer key anybody with common sense could teach standing on their head and teach a classroom of 36-38 students.
The most influence I had was coaching athletics to kids who choose to participate on the field versus those who had to show up in a classroom. I never rememembered from my high school days a great lesson plan by a teacher, but I sure remembered the athletic contests I participated in with the my friends who I grew up with.
Like I have stated before about 76% of American adults do not get a college degree. School is not about memorizing facts and being great at trivial pursuit. Teach college placement curriculum to the 30% who will get a college degree and let the other kids learn a skill, sociallize in school, play sports, join a club, teach consumer math and reading and be able to be a kid instead of pushing all of them to memorize a bunch of useless facts that will mean nothing when they are adults.
This amazes me when I hear it. How can you, possibly, think you had it all figured out, enough to use the same lesson plans down to the answer key in three short years?
This will be my fourth year and with the exception of keeping my power points and lab instructions, with clarifications to be added, I really haven't kept anything. This year, I plan on starting a book of formal lesson plans and keeping a teaching diary but I expect I'll be tweaking this for years to come. There's always room for improvement.
I would agree with you about teaching college prep to the top 30% BUT parents won't have that. The parents of the 70% will accuse us of limiting their kids by placing them on the lower track.
I teach two levels of chemistry. My college prep classes are stuffed to the gills. I can't fill the consumer level classes and LORD help me if I suggest a child who is in my college prep class belongs in the consumer level class. Even in the face of a student failing, parents will argue that their child belongs in the college prep class...they just need it to be easier, or a second chance or some kind of modification...
The problem with tracking kids like this is they tend to live down to your expectations. I'm not saying that trying to force them all onto a college prep track is the right thing but putting a child on the low track can become a self fulfilling prophecy. I don't know what the answer is here.
I don't believe that is true. Many children in Special Education are able to move out of SPED classes, and onto regular education classes, they are not "tracked" into SPED for life. Same with kids in lower level classes, they take the class, and can choose to take the more difficult one or not, most often, they choose not to, because they know their level of comfort, and don't want to study a subject 3 hours a night to get it...but it is not because they have this self fuliflling prophecy.
I don't believe that is true. Many children in Special Education are able to move out of SPED classes, and onto regular education classes, they are not "tracked" into SPED for life. Same with kids in lower level classes, they take the class, and can choose to take the more difficult one or not, most often, they choose not to, because they know their level of comfort, and don't want to study a subject 3 hours a night to get it...but it is not because they have this self fuliflling prophecy.
It doesn't matter what you believe. It's what the parents believe that matters. I've seen more parents pushing their child onto a higher track than I have parents admitting their child might belong on a lower one.
If you need proof, just look at the baby Einstein and the Your Baby Can Read programs. They've been shown to not work yet new parents continue to send in their money. Parenting has become a competitive sport and a child in the G&T program is the prize. Parents just have to believe their child is a star at something. Otherwise, they didn't win the parenting game.
The number of parents who brag on their kids that I've met astounds me. If I believed what parents told me, then well over half of the kids out there are geniuses!!! Nobody seems to have an average kid. They're either destined for the G&T program or special ed (so special they require special accomodations). Now I don't mean to put anyone down who had kids on either extreme but in the parenting olympics you either want the best kid or an excuse for why your child can't ever really compete but is just wonderful for anything they happen to actually accomplish. No one says they want their child to be a janitor or to work at McDonald's (you can have a decent career there you know) when they grow up. Parents unrealistic expectations are the problem here. It is only after the fact, when a child is actually facing failure that they turn and blame the system for not having a track just for their child. You'd think parents would have some inclinations as to their child's ability long before that.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-27-2011 at 08:13 PM..
No, I thought that you were talking about the students...the parents...that is a whole other issue...and on that one, I do agree with you.
I've come to the conclusion that what parents want is an education that appears rigorous, so others will be impressed, but insures their child gets an A. Translation: bragging rights. It's not about what kids learn or how well prepared they are for college, it's about rank. If their child gets a B, then the class was too hard or the teacher no good. It's never because their child simply got a B. I've had parents come right out and ask me to change grades. They have all kinds of excuses for why their child deserves a better grade. What baffles me is how we ever got to the parent olympics. Somewhere between the 70's, when I was a kid, and now, parenting became a competitive sport. When I was a kid, parents didn't compare kids, a B was a good grade and choosing a trade was a good thing.
Because I have a child on the G&T track, I've met a lot of wannabe's. If I had a dime for every time a parent asked what *I* did to push her forward, I'd have a lot of dimes. *I* didn't do anything. She was born this way and it's a good thing she got the parents she has. Otherwise she would have been pushed much harder (she's kind of lazy but that is her choice I'm not going to ride her for better grades or more advanced classes. As long as she's on track, we're ok.) What's really bad is the impact this has on kids like her sister. Dd#1 is more average. She sees that the world adores kids like her sister. She thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. We have so many parents proclaiming their child is special that kids today don't realize that most kids are pretty darned average and average is ok.
Back in the 60's and 70's it was acceptable for your child to go do trades school. In fact, parents were proud of their child going to trade school. Now it's like the consolation prize. It's better than being a burger flipper. What's odd is that when you look at overall life satisfaction, those in the trades come out on top. They often have fulfilling jobs that require some kind of expertise that their customers don't have, they make a decent wage and they, usually, don't take their work home with them.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-28-2011 at 03:57 AM..
How far $45,000 goes in a small community is different than how far it goes in a large community. Yet, there are definitely large communities where the same job pays similarly. The public districts where I live do, and it's a metro of several million.
I grew up on a farm outside a village of 350. Teacher pay goes much further in my hometown area than it does in my current urban area.
It's also likely that at the time your mother was teaching, her state was not broke, like many are, now, and school districts were not cutting costs due to statewide budget cuts as they are at this particular time in history.
But that was my point...if some small, and I mean SMALL town could afford to pay her this much, then a larger city who gets a lot of tax from homeowners should be able to pay their teachers more.
She taught in WA state.
But I've been hearing about low teacher pay since she was a teacher and I wonder how that little, tiny, rinky dink town could afford to pay her that much...I'm not sure if you grasp what I mean by "small". It wasn't 50,000 people, it wasn't 10,000 people, it wasn't 5,000 people. It wasn't even half of that! But that town could pay her that, then why can't a city, who has much more revenue, unable to pay teachers more?
As I said, she went to school every summer, gone for the entire week, to educate herself and make herself worth more. She never sat around during the summer time. She took that opportunity to better herself.
This is not to say that no other teacher has done that...but I think it might be good for some of them to do that. Maybe their pay will go up?
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On the bright side, after 5 years teaching high school, I should be well prepared to teach the bottom of the class in CC. We'll see if I like it enough to stay....
