<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>DaveB wrote:</div>
In the paper over the weekend said that the median pay for St Paul teachers was $75,000/year (summers off, xmas break, spring break, other holidays). On top of that salary they receive excellent benefits.
Do you think they are any unemployed vets who would gladly teach kids these days for what equates to $125k/year? Do you think the kids would be as bold with a marine (heck, I would give them a gun too, but that’s just met) teacher?
I don’t teach in St. Paul but would love to make that kind of change. After the school year is our I also teach summer school. I take a week off right after school is out and a week for the 4th of July and then a week off before school starts. I still cannot come close to that 75,000 dollar mark and I have 15 years experience. I don’t understand where 125k/year gets equated. We don’t get unemployment benefits in the summer like construction workers do in the winter.
That being said I am comfortable with what I make. I knew going into it that I would sacrifice making a lot of money for being able to spend more time with my family. I feel a lot of people made the choice of making more money and then condemn teachers for what they make and the time off. Oh well each to their own I guess.
Violence in the classroom has increased recently and thank you for those of you that support teachers. Out side of these occurrences I still believe that the doom and gloom picture that gets painted for education may be unjustified. The things that these you people can accomplish after/during high school astounds me. We have fourth graders doing algebra, seniors graduating with AA degrees, and too many other achievements to acknowledge. The vast majority of students are not any different than you or I.
I’m also a teacher, and have been for the last ten years. I’ve taught in the most impoverished areas in Las Vegas, NV, and now in a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis that would be qualify as an urban setting. We educate students from some of the most difficult parts of the cities, and the challenges we are faced with are extraordinary. That being said, the lives the students are forced to confront when they leave the building for the day are also daunting and tragic.
I agree with Derreck, completely, and join him in thanking those that support teachers. Some of the things that students accomplish, even in the face of the struggles they have to endure at home, are, as he said, “astounding.” 99% of the teachers I have worked with are hard-working individuals that knew full well the financial sacrifices we would have to make to work in this profession. We believe in students and their capacity to succeed. To the comment someone made earlier about having a “Marine” work with these trouble students and employ a hard-handed form of discipline, I’ll say you couldn’t be more wrong. I have worked with men and women who were veterans, or teachers that tried to employ that very type of management, and it backfired horribly, leading to even more students failing.
The more challenging students need even more support, and some “tough love” at times. A drill sergeant approach is not the answer. A good teacher cultivates a mutual respect between themselves and the student. When that is achieved, both students and teachers can do incredible things. I know this because I, along with many of my fellow teachers, can work for a short time with a group of students that are often referred to as “difficult” in several comments sections of these types of stories and threads, and everyone can succeed with the right type of person leading the class.
I make $73,500/year. I also have a Bachelor’s degree, in addition to a Master’s degree plus another 30 credit. The sum total cost of these degrees and credits equates to about $60,000 in student loans. The public at large likes to forget, as the media likes to omit from their publications, that teachers have to pay for their own raises. Most of us get to school early and stay late, not to mention the work we bring home at night and on the weekends. Our summers are well-deserved, and usually not as long as people would have you think when you factor in summer school, professional development, and working on curriculum for the following year. If people want to complain about teachers, then that logic would follow that we are even more important roles to play in society. If people believe that, then we are grossly underpaid.
I’ll always believe in kids…adults, not so much.
