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Youre right. I was not a good teacher & I know that & I left. Funny thing was the school did think I was good but my heart wasnt into it & that wasnt fair for the children.
Ok i understand many states have teachers that dont get paid raises. That is for any & all professions. Many co’s just dont have the revenue to give raises even COL raises.
You keep going back to this, "but that's true for other professions" line. I never said it wasn't. I never said all others get annual raises. A lot of people aren't saying others get something that teachers don't, but you keep going back to that.
The difference is I'm not looking taking select examples and applying it across the board. You take an example or two for pay and benefits (LI, your own experience for a year) and then make a blanket statement such as:
Everything else a teacher gets is amazing.
just realize how sweet the profession does have it... b/c the benefits, pensions, summers off, tenure etc etc is dope.
What do you consider to be "dope" benefits? Not all states have tenure. Teachers contribute a % of their pay into the state pension plans. What % is good? What % is great? If a teacher making $40k a year is paying $700/month for family health insurance is that still "dope"? How about $800? When a teacher retires after 35 years and has to pay between $500-$700/month for an individual or twice that amount for two people, is that considered to be amazing?
Please spare the "they knew what they were getting into" response to this. Focus on the "Everything else a teacher gets is amazing" claim.
Love the comment at the start of this thread to quit and do something else. That's one of the biggest problems in education today, and other low paying jobs that are important but no one wants to do. Crap wages drive away the best and brightest and leave behind the very few truly dedicated and those who can't do anything else.
Are you able to write off things you buy with your personal $$ as a tax write-off? I work for a small co. I have to also buy my own supplies. I CANNOT write these things off as tax expenses nor does my co re-emburse me for them.
I’m not able to write them off either. Same rules apply for you as for me with tax write offs.
Teaching was not for me. I found it boring & really tbh not challenging enough.
The benefits were sweet. The pension, the job security for life (after tenure) was sweet...
I just wasnt happy doing it. I didnt feel excited or challenged to come to work everyday.
I didnt teach on LI. The $$ wasnt great but i wasnt there for the $$.
Everything else a teacher gets is amazing.
So again it isnt about the $$.
My state is an at-will employment state. I can be fired @ any time for any reason. After a teacher gets tenure it’s extremely hard to fire them... but teaching is such a bad gig though right?
All I am saying is that instead of teachers complaining they arent being paid enough, just realise how sweet the profession does have it... b/c the benefits, pensions, summers off, tenure etc etc is dope.
But teachers wont acknowledge that... they only focus on the lousy pay
Pension is great? You must have a crappy plan of you think education pension is great.
Youre right. I was not a good teacher & I know that & I left. Funny thing was the school did think I was good but my heart wasnt into it & that wasnt fair for the children.
Ok i understand many states have teachers that dont get paid raises. That is for any & all professions. Many co’s just dont have the revenue to give raises even COL raises.
The only reason i am paid well now is bc i am a hustler lol. Unfortunately I gave up a lot of holidays & time with my family so that i could work & get recognized & move up the ranks.
I love what i do & i would be saying the same thing whether i was paid poorly or not.
My co likes me, i do get raises but people who work in businesses are always worried about layoffs. That rarely happens with teaching.
Personally i would prefer job security over anything else. My job has none. Luckily im good at it & i make them profits so they keep me around.
I wanted to enjoy teaching. Meh. Wasnt my thing.
Layoffs rarely happen in education? It’s obvious you are well removed from the profession.
That's true anywhere. Those factors would include age of staff (districts with older teachers will skew high) being the most common.
Unless there's somewhere that's really an outlier Step 1, or whatever step, is Step 1 no matter whether it's elementary, middle or high school if degree and/or experience level are equal.
I’ve taught in two states and in both states pay is dictated by degree and years.
My wife taught math and I taught elementary. We both would have made the same amount (except I had a masters and more years).
Layoffs rarely happen in education? It’s obvious you are well removed from the profession.
Read her older posts. She is. Out of date information. I don't know of a single Long Island district that offers merit pay. That issue has been debated for the past 40 years. Pay is based on years of "credited" service plus educational level. It doesn't matter what kind of score the teacher got on the Danielson scale. Other states outside of the northeast, with or without unions, will arbitrarily decide that teacher salaries are going to be frozen at a specific step and they remain at that level for years no matter how many years the teacher has been teaching. Job for life because of tenure? NYC teachers have to wait a minimum of 18 months to get a hearing in Brooklyn if they wish to fight termination because there is such a huge back log of teachers with tenure being dismissed. Maybe they deserve it, maybe not, but tenure only guarantees due process, not a job for life. NYC teachers do pay very little for their medical insurance and $70 per month for dental and prescriptions, but it's only GHI, while Long Island teachers contribute 12% of their salary (15% for the family plan) for Blue Cross medical insurance. It's definitely not free.
One thing not mentioned, there are several states, including CA and CT, that give teachers a pension, but they do not deduct SS so upon retirement, teachers only collect a pension, no social security. If the teacher had a previous career outside of teaching where s.s. was deducted or their spouse had s.s. and they want to collect spousal benefits, they are screwed by the Windfall tax.
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