Teachers, what's the inside scoop? (masters degree, professions, county, college)
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As a teacher I worked 50-60 hours/week. (Teaching middle school involved more than teaching elementary school.) I survived (loved it, actually) it for 21 years. I knew other teachers who did about the same, and some teachers who managed to fit it all into 40 hours.
Most states require more than a bachelor's degree. Teachers usually have at least a fifth year, and many have higher degrees. States have continuing education requirements for teachers, so they're never really through. Not that all of it is worth anything, but it does require time and energy.
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
So am I fair in this assessment?
I'm a 3 year kindergarten teacher and I love it. I think it is a fantastic job for many reasons. I'm very content with what I make but I'm not a person who needs much to live on - single, no kids, etc - and I also on the higher end of the pay scale for my district because of the college credits I have. My first year, however, I was making 34,000, not 41,000. In the Bay Area of CA with a very high cost of living. I've always had good benefits and retirement stuff.
However.
I'm contracted to work a 7.5 hour day. In my district, being that I'm a primary teacher, our students are let out an hour earlier than the 4-8th graders on campus, so I'm lucky enough to have 2pm (when they go) until 3pm for clean up and preparation of the next day, when it is not interupted by meetings. In my previous district, I had one prep period a week - when the rotating teacher wasn't absent - and my students went home at the same time as the rest of the school (except that since mine were K's, I was stuck with them in my classroom if their parent decided to be 30 minutes, an hour late picking them up... *ahem*).
In this current district, the only time I actually leave at 3pm (my contracted time) is if I have an appointment or something that demands my departure then. I'm never actually done with my clean up and next day's prep by then. I try to limit myself to 4pm so I can get my poor dog out to pee, but often it drifts to 4:30, 5, or beyond. Plenty of folks still on campus at that time, it's not just me.
Once a month is a staff meeting. Countless IEP meetings, parent meetings, meetings with the speech therapist, etc.
Special events after school - most recently our Christmas concert which required me being on campus until 7pm.
If I averaged it all together, I'd say I'm probably on campus from 7:30 until 4:45pm each day kids are in session. I have a 40 minute lunch (some of which I use to prep for the afternoon - can't have all the science stuff laid out and ready in the morning if the kids will be there) and occasionally a 15 minute recess break (10 minutes by the time I walk them to and from the playground) but just as often I have the playground duty with them. I rarely make it to the bathroom until the school day is over, but luckily I have a good tank.
Most Sundays I go in for a couple of hours to get things together for the upcoming week, because I don't usually finish that on Friday afternoon.
Over this past summer I spent a lot of time fixing up my room, prepping for the upcoming year. If I added together the hours, I'd guess that it was at least 3 full workweeks of my (10 week?) break. I only had 2 days of workshops to attend this past summer. The year before when we adopted a new math curriculum, I had a 2 week training to attend over the summer. I've never taken another job over the summer, because to me those weeks to be able to prep my classroom, make doctor appointments I can't during the school year, and relax a bit are more valuable than more money.
If I'm ill (and I frequently catch kindergarten germs), most of the time it's so much harder to prep for a sub and feel guilty than it is just to go in and bear it. One thing I do wish was that my job was one where, if I were sick, I could stay home and not feel incredibly guilty about it, or rush in at 6am feeling terrible but needing to set something up for the sub.
It's hard work. You're on in a way that you are not in many other jobs. You can't get (visibly) irritable with 5 year olds. Sometimes I get to the end of the day, suddenly realizing I had a huge headache the entire day that I just didn't even feel until the last kid left because of the adrenaline required for keeping 23 kids engaged, not killing each other, etc. I worry about "my kids" incessantly during and after hours.
I wouldn't pick another job. But it's not because this one is a cinch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nemesis16
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
So am I fair in this assessment?
I work for a specialized private school. My answers will be different than somebody who works in a public school...or a charter school...or a parochial school. I also do intensive one-on-one teaching with severely disabled kids. My answers will be different than those coming from an elementary ed self-contained classroom teacher, a middle school music teacher, a high school chemistry teacher, etc. But the point is, there are about a million different perspectives on what teaching is like, because positions, schools, jobs, etc. vary so much. So when you ask, "Is it really that difficult," you're obviously not going to get a uniform answer.
My answer is that teaching is as challenging as you want to make it. Some people do virtually nothing but the bare minimum to get by and retain their employment...just like in any other field. Others are genuinely dedicated to their job and what it means, and are concerned about giving it their all, and these educators DO challenge themselves. Just like in any other field. You've got your slackers and your achievers. Teaching is not hard for those who don't actually concern themselves too much with teaching. Teaching itself isn't hard, actually, for people who are great at doing it. It's more the juggling that's challenging, for the people who give it their all. Just like in any other field.
To respond to your assertions:
1. The salary you post is not indicative of what 4-year degree holders who are in education make, in my area. Starting salaries are lower. So is cost of living, which is usually the case in areas with lower starting teacher salaries. It really varies region to region, and depends on the demographic. For somebody who puts a lot of extra-mile, above-and-beyond type work into what they do, a starting salary of, say, 28K may feel like they're working pretty hard for not so much money. But somebody who's phoning their job performance in is probably stealing their 28K.
2. Likewise, hours vary. People who do the bare minimum put in less. People who are concerned with doing a good job put in the number of hours they need to to be the best teacher possible. Which is generally more than a standard 40 hour workweek.
3. I have no time scheduled into my school day for curriculum planning. I instruct all day long as long as students are present, except for 25 minutes of lunch. The students come at 8:50 and leave at 3:30. I do all my planning, paperwork, material making and gathering, etc. between 8 a.m. and 8:50, and from 3:30-4:30. But when students are in school, I'm teaching them. No prep period. That's what before and after school is for. That and IEP meetings, therapist meetings, staff meetings, parent meetings, school district meetings, trainings, certification sessions, working on progress reports, evaluations, etc.
4. I don't get summers off...my school runs year-round. Fine by me, I prefer to continue to get paid through the summer without having to drum up temp work like most other teachers.
Basically, yeah. The way I do it, it's a lot of work - the pay is pretty paltry, all things considered. I'm not complaining. It's work I enjoy and chose, with the knowledge the they pay is not as good as other sectors that can be less work (however, it should be noted that I came into teaching from another field that was also loads of work for little pay, comparatively...print journalism...also a labor of love, and one that took even more hours a week). Overall, for me, it's important enough work, and work that I enjoy enough that I'm okay with the tradeoff of low pay. There's still no need to sugarcoat that, depending on how you actually DO the job, yeah, you're probably gonna be undercompensated and basically be choosing to donate a lot of your time, essentially.
In general, people who do this job and do it well because they love it aren't loving it for the pay.
I work for a specialized private school. My answers will be different than somebody who works in a public school...or a charter school...or a parochial school. I also do intensive one-on-one teaching with severely disabled kids. My answers will be different than those coming from an elementary ed self-contained classroom teacher, a middle school music teacher, a high school chemistry teacher, etc. But the point is, there are about a million different perspectives on what teaching is like, because positions, schools, jobs, etc. vary so much. So when you ask, "Is it really that difficult," you're obviously not going to get a uniform answer.
My answer is that teaching is as challenging as you want to make it. Some people do virtually nothing but the bare minimum to get by and retain their employment...just like in any other field. Others are genuinely dedicated to their job and what it means, and are concerned about giving it their all, and these educators DO challenge themselves. Just like in any other field. You've got your slackers and your achievers. Teaching is not hard for those who don't actually concern themselves too much with teaching. Teaching itself isn't hard, actually, for people who are great at doing it. It's more the juggling that's challenging, for the people who give it their all. Just like in any other field.
To respond to your assertions:
1. The salary you post is not indicative of what 4-year degree holders who are in education make, in my area. Starting salaries are lower. So is cost of living, which is usually the case in areas with lower starting teacher salaries. It really varies region to region, and depends on the demographic. For somebody who puts a lot of extra-mile, above-and-beyond type work into what they do, a starting salary of, say, 28K may feel like they're working pretty hard for not so much money. But somebody who's phoning their job performance in is probably stealing their 28K.
2. Likewise, hours vary. People who do the bare minimum put in less. People who are concerned with doing a good job put in the number of hours they need to to be the best teacher possible. Which is generally more than a standard 40 hour workweek.
3. I have no time scheduled into my school day for curriculum planning. I instruct all day long as long as students are present, except for 25 minutes of lunch. The students come at 8:50 and leave at 3:30. I do all my planning, paperwork, material making and gathering, etc. between 8 a.m. and 8:50, and from 3:30-4:30. But when students are in school, I'm teaching them. No prep period. That's what before and after school is for. That and IEP meetings, therapist meetings, staff meetings, parent meetings, school district meetings, trainings, certification sessions, working on progress reports, evaluations, etc.
4. I don't get summers off...my school runs year-round. Fine by me, I prefer to continue to get paid through the summer without having to drum up temp work like most other teachers.
Basically, yeah. The way I do it, it's a lot of work - the pay is pretty paltry, all things considered. I'm not complaining. It's work I enjoy and chose, with the knowledge the they pay is not as good as other sectors that can be less work (however, it should be noted that I came into teaching from another field that was also loads of work for little pay, comparatively...print journalism...also a labor of love, and one that took even more hours a week). Overall, for me, it's important enough work, and work that I enjoy enough that I'm okay with the tradeoff of low pay. There's still no need to sugarcoat that, depending on how you actually DO the job, yeah, you're probably gonna be undercompensated and basically be choosing to donate a lot of your time, essentially.
In general, people who do this job and do it well because they love it aren't loving it for the pay.
OT, but how do you like year round school? And how many classes a day do your students take? I'm really curious as to the work load when you teach year round. Do you take more time in class for what would have been homework or do you teach more material?
I think I'd prefer year round schools except if I had to do it at the pace I now work during the school year, I'd burn out. Personally, I hate the totally on/totally off feel of the 10 month school year. I'd rather work year round and have a more sane pace. Perhaps a shorter work day so I have more time for prep. (Our school day is only 35 minutes longer than yours so no real difference there except you don't get a prep hour. It sounds like you're doing year round with less prep time.)
Would you mind giving more details of what working year round as a teacher is like? How many days per year do you work? With no prep, you'd have about 25 more minutes student contact time than I do per day and that much less time to prep. How many hours prep do you do per week?
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
So am I fair in this assessment?
How do you define difficult work? Work that takes a lot of time? Work that takes a lot of energy? Work that causes stress? Another consideration is whether work that you love is difficult to you, regardless of the answers to the above questions.
The time your work takes, the energy it requires, and the stress it may cause varies widely from person to person. It will depend greatly on how these things are managed, and it will depend on the personal "gifts" one brings to the work.
It appears that your "assessment" is that teachers are a bunch of lazy whiners. You would be able to find lazy whiners a-plenty in any field you care to choose, so it seems to me that you are simply in the mood to bash teachers.
There are far more dedicated teachers than there are not. It would be nice if praise and criticism were dished out in a manner that was more in line with reality.
I agree that teachers complain a lot. I like teaching, so I guess if they don't like it they could go somewhere else.
I don't know if having summers off and taking a side job delivering pizzas is really a perk. I could see the job interview where the principal says, "I know the pay is kind of low, but Pizza Hut is hiring for summer!!! You can work alongside the students you are teaching."
I agree that teachers complain a lot. I like teaching, so I guess if they don't like it they could go somewhere else.
I don't know if having summers off and taking a side job delivering pizzas is really a perk. I could see the job interview where the principal says, "I know the pay is kind of low, but Pizza Hut is hiring for summer!!! You can work alongside the students you are teaching."
That's funny. My school is all for teachers having second jobs until it conflicts with something they do at night. Then they are supposed to come first.
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
So am I fair in this assessment?
1. Teachers where I live start at 35K.
2. Official working hours -- when you are physically required to be in your classroom and/or on school property -- go from roughly 7 AM to 2 PM; however, most teachers (out of necessity) must arrive earlier and stay later.
For example, I arrive at approximately 6:30 AM each day in order to do the following:
* Ensure my lesson objectives, activities, and homework are clearly written on my board as per administrative requirement. They must change each day.
* Answer faculty email
* Answer administrative email
* Answer parental email. We are required to respond by phone or email within 24 hours of contact.
* Post any alterations to the schedule (e.g., testing, assemblies)
* Administer make-up tests or work to students before school, if needed
* Collect xeroxing
* Collect mail. We are required to check our boxes twice a day.
I leave long after 2:00 each day in order to do the following:
* Grade papers
* Add grades to the computer grading system
* Check tardies and write referrals
* Phone parents who requested to be phoned because they don't like, don't have, or don't want to be contacted by email. This takes approximately 20 minutes per call if the parent is home. Parents typically repeat information two or three times, e.g., "But Billy has always gotten an A in English...Every other year, Billy's received an A in English...He's always gotten As in English, you know." This increases the time of the call.
* Supervise clubs or activities, including club meetings and/or matches
* Clean up my classroom (our janitorial staff has been cut and the floors are routinely left unvacuumed, which causes a perceptibly negative effect on classroom behavior. Sounds absurd, but it is true.)
* Plan my lessons
* Update my class website
* Update my class calendar
* Email parents
* Write midterms and finals
* Write curricular models (e.g., a departmental handbook) for our department
* Meet after school with the rest of the faculty
* Meet after school with others in my department
* Meet with parents for a conference
* Meet with the counselor/SPED folks for IEP issues
* Meet with the dean for discipline issues
* Meet with my administrator
NOTE: Though meetings do not occur every day, it is rare to have a week in which there is not at least one or two. We are required to meet with other colleagues weekly, for instance.
NOTE: I am not compensated for the time it takes to grade papers. If I have 150 students (a fairly common load) and each paper takes two minutes to grade, on average, then grading a paper assignment takes five unpaid hours. This is true for English, history, sociology, psychology, law, and any other teaching area for which writing is crucial. In the sciences, planning and assembling labs takes a great deal of time. P.E., music, and art are the only disciplines I can think of which do not require a great deal of "extra" time to grade students' work. Math requires evaluating the process by which the student arrived at her answer -- the famous "show your work" takes on meaning because of this -- and science requires teachers to plan, assemble, set up, and grade laboratory work. This is not compensated beyond the base salary. There is no "overtime."
3. I get 96 minutes per day to make lesson plans. Lesson plans are required to be submitted electronically one week in advance. Two are preferred.
In addition to being cross-referenced with district educational standards for each objective, the lesson plans must also list objectives, activities, homework, and the learning strategies one is using, which takes a decent amount of time.
4. During the summer, I plan ahead, preparing semester-long units with handouts, tests, website links, activities, essay or writing assignments. I also work with drama students to understand and prepare for the first school play. I update my website, revise and restructure activities that have worked less well, read about better ways to teach, and attempt to improve accordingly.
I also take classes as required to maintain my teaching certification. I pay for these.
As for side jobs, few people want to hire teachers for the summer knowing that they will only be working a summer and already have another job. Some teachers teach summer school.
Is being a teacher really that difficult? During my k-12 years, I've always heard teachers complaining about lack of pay and hard work. Is this an exaggeration or the truth?
Teachers where I live with a BA/BS start at like $41k. Plus, their hours are roughly 7 hours of working a day. Add into the fact that like 3 of these hours are dedicated to supposed "curriculum planning". They also from my knowledge receive all the breaks that students get and don't work over the summer which allows them to pick up more money working side jobs.
So am I fair in this assessment?
Our starting salaries in Anchorage are $43K- $54K, depending on education.
We elementary teachers have to be at school at least 15 minutes before the kids who are there 8:50-3:30, so that's 7 hours we have to be in school. We get 45 minutes for "lunch." We have 4 hours per week of planning time during "pull-outs" of health, art, PE, music & library. Our district just increased PE to 1 1/2 hr. per week to attack the obesity issue. Plus, they made health a pull-out to give elementary teachers planning time more equitable with middle & high school teachers, a union demand. So our kids now get health 1/2 hr. per week. Art is 1 hr. every other week. Music is 1 hr. weekly. Library is 1/2 hr. weekly.
Most kids don't make it to school until after 9 am. Plus, it takes our kids 10 minutes to get in & out of snow pants, gloves, boots, etc. to get out & in from recess!
I am actually teaching about 5 hours per day.
We get paid per diem for working 182 days.
Our principal lets us leave on our 3 report card work days & do report cards wherever we choose. We have 4 days to get ready for students before school starts in August. We get all the holidays with the kids.
I try to keep my holidays free for rejuvenation, which has helped me to keep teaching 20+ years without burning out. This winter break, I am skate skiing daily & reading a lot. After teaching the same grade for many years, I have my plan already designed with weekly tweaks, of course.
IMHO, the first few years of teaching are the hardest!
OT, but how do you like year round school? And how many classes a day do your students take? I'm really curious as to the work load when you teach year round. Do you take more time in class for what would have been homework or do you teach more material?
I like working year-round. As for the class load, it depends on the student and their IEP mandates and school goals (if you recall, all our students are developmentally disabled and/or have severe behavioral issues, and their education is entirely individualized 1:1. My current student averages four work sessions (i.e. classes) in the a.m. and five in the p.m., depending on what other activities are scheduled for a particular day, as many of our students have various therapies and hands-on life skills and social skills instruction where they may be out in the community practicing a given skill. On those days, the desk work schedule is less adhered to. But, again, it depends on the student and his/her programs. Most of our students don't do homework, for the most part, because the instruction is so intensive. We do teach more material, go through more curriculum, and practice more skills by going summerlong, and one of the main reasons for is that the majority of our students are exceedingly routine-dependent, and taking the summer off would undo a ton of their progress...this can happen with any student, but in particular for those with autism spectrum disorders and other pervasive developmental disabilities. The summer session isn't compulsory, but upwards of 90% of our student population does attend.
The setup has its pros and cons, but it does work well for the population we serve. It can be extraordinarily intense, IMO, in comparison to many traditional ed setups. Shen you are one-to-one, you are (and must be) "on" ALL. THE. TIME. You are doing actual, active teaching every moment students are there. The only time I'm not actively teaching by myself is when my student has speech and occupational therapy, and even at that rate, I'm working alongside the therapist, learning how to implement their procedures myself with my student for when we're one on one. Many of our students aren't at the point where they can do much by way of independent deskwork, yet, so there isn't even time where they're working on their own that you can catch your breath.
Because we're year-round, we do have some embedded breaks. We generally have New Year's Day, MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Fourth of July (typically gets made a long weekend, if it falls right), Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the preceding Wed. and following Friday, and a few days at Christmas (five this year) off. We also have a spring break that lasts five days, on average, and our summer session is flanked by two week-long breaks to keep it distinct from the regular school year...generally five days at the end of May/beginning of June, and five days in mid-August. Because we work year-round, we are allowed to use vacation days throughout the year as they are accrued. We have floating subs who assist when people are taking their vacation days.
In terms of prep time, I generally do about 40 minutes every morning before the students arrive, and stay anywhere from one to two hours after they leave...more if progress reports are due, if new programming is being done for a new IEP, or what have you. But basically, I bookend my day with a couple of hours of prep before and after students are around. Being 1:1 means that the type of prep you do is quite different that what you do for a standard classroom session. Easier in some regards and harder in others, IMO.
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3 hr. planning per day is a myth!
