but teachers only work 1/2 year , no? the school yr is 165 days approx, summers off, 2 week Christmas vacation off, spring week or 2 off, snow days, state and fed holidays, and the hours are 8-3 each day
...and when do you think they lesson plan and grade the work of their 120+ students?
People who are not teachers are really failing to understand that a teacher does not just roll out of bed at 7:30 and grab some coffee before teaching class at 8. You're probably still thinking about when you were a student and got upset that your teacher gave out homework even though none of the grown ups have homework. Well guess what, teachers have the most homework because to teach well you have to do so much planning and grading outside of your scheduled academic day. Did you think the lessons and assignments you did just appeared out of nowhere? What about when you got a graded assignment back?
The 54 hours a week average stat doesn't surprise me at all, and if anything the hours for first time teachers are definitely more on average because they will take longer to learn a curriculum/curriculum framework, and will have to make WAY more materials from scratch. Hard to retain those young first time teachers for this reason, if you're not really gonna hit your stride until several years in.
It's a job that is tough because a lot of the hours are high intensity/stressful/chaotic work, and there is not a clear separation between work and not work in a teacher's life, since you're usually taking work home with you. A veteran teacher I worked with described the school year as a series of sprints, not a marathon. You're not working steadily every week of the year, doing a slow burn with a few vacation days. Instead you are going balls to the wall effort-wise in a lot of short bursts throughout the calendar year with breaks in between. Not surprising that with the distance running bias on here, some of you would not understand how difficult a series of sprints is, and also most of you would not be able to hang as teachers at all.
Also the vast majority of teachers report that they often have to pay out of their own pocket for teaching materials, so keep that in mind when thinking about whether they get paid enough (they don't).
My day is from 8:08-3:22. I spend about 1 hour on average each night. I estimate that my total hous in a year are 75% of what my wife works in a crappy desk job. Neither of us are very happy in our jobs. I earn about $5k more per year than her and I have summers off which leaves her a bit unhappier than me.
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Social media brought out the worst in the senseless
Kids today are not like the kids of 50yrs ago. Sh!t there not even like the kids of 25yrs ago. Today they are scary lazy and dumb. It’s actually a frightening thought. Don’t get married or have any kids. My honest brutal opinion 👍👍
-State and federal policies that aren’t based in reality
Seems like the shortage has been caused by various societal/political entities. I understand that many have gripes with former teachers. We’ve all had bad ones. However, this is the most important profession in the world. Teachers shape the youth of tomorrow. What can we do to improve and get teachers in the classroom?
To answer your question, pay and support them a LOT more. Teaching is probably one of the worst professions in our country right now. You basically sign up for a career with near-poverty pay and abuse from all angles - literally no one wants to experience that.
But lol at right-wing d*uchebags' insistence that teachers are just lazy and ungrateful, when they literally make multiple times a teacher's salary in industry doing 10% of the work. And we wonder why no one in college now is even considering going into education.
I have taught in Richmond Va and Canberra Australia. Teaching is not easy....everyday is different and all it takes is for 1 student to have a bad day and all hell breaks loose.
I love my job and I am happy that I am relatively well paid in an executive position. From the moment I get to work at 8am until 4:30pm I am working. No long lunch breaks, no coffee breaks always getting things done. There is never a dull moment.
I work with teachers who are perfectionist and in this profession nothing is ever perfect. I love my job but for many it is too much and thus many leave the profession for other jobs that pay just as well without the internal pressure of shaping a young persons life.
If you teach you know what I mean. If you don't you will never have any idea what this great profession is like.
All my teachers friends would last 6 months in a high pressure corporate/engineering/business environment. I've witnessed this firsthand a couple of times...
Not sure where they are going to find other work.
You and your business friends wouldn't last six days in a teaching environment ...
Kids today are not like the kids of 50yrs ago. Sh!t there not even like the kids of 25yrs ago. Today they are scary lazy and dumb. It’s actually a frightening thought. Don’t get married or have any kids. My honest brutal opinion 👍👍
Because you're forced to enact policies that you disagree with and to teach things that you know not to be true, and then told that "it's not our place to push our values onto others". (Irony is seemingly lost on education departments.)
Also, you realise that for the most part you're fighting a losing battle. Kids learn how to learn well before entering a classroom (let alone a high school classroom), and if that skillset isn't developed early and constantly reinforced at home, there aint sh*t any teacher can do.
Add to this the instance on behavioural policies that actively sabotage the learning outcomes of well-behaved kids, and you've created the kind of emotionally draining environment that only the people who are half-arsing it can stand for long.
Crikey mate, I have no clue what they teach kids down under, but I dont think anyone teaches falsehoods to kids.
As for your nutty second paragraph, then whats the point of school?? So ask them about their home life and send them home because they wont amount to anything? Insane.
How do you think kids grow and learn?
I can't tell if you're incredibly naive, 14 years old, or both. Schools absolutely teach falsehoods to kids. If you think truth is the highest priority of education boards, I don't know what world you've been living in for the past 10 years.
Secondly, I don't think you know anything about human development, so I implore you to look into the "30 million word gap", the "language acquisition device" and the "zone of proximal development". You'll then understand that the damage is already done before a kid enters the classroom. If a kid is inadequately prepared for school during early childhood, then they'll never catch up. I've worked in a lot of schools where 14 year old kids not being able to read (and refusing to try) is the norm. If that's the case, you pretty much can't teach anything academic.
Why would anyone want to deal with a room full of little monsters every day?
My girlfriend spent several years getting into teaching (from scientist/biology jobs with master's degree) because it's one of the few jobs in her rural area. Low pay was one thing ($35K in a rural area). But the kids being monsters is why she quit after her first full year officially as a teacher, after previous years as a sub, full-time sub.
She told me that the classroom isn't like when we were kids in the '80s or '90s, where there were no disturbances in class, with maybe the rare kid being sent to the principal's office. It's full on crazy in a middle school or high school classroom (at least in this rural area), and the administration doesn't or can't back up the teachers. Kids will also lie and make up things to try to get the teachers or subs in trouble. What made her not continue this fall was a kid saying, "Suck my d..k" to her in front of the class.
Similar experience, a friend of mine is a nurse, after years of that she decided to get certified to teach. She said the blatant disrespect, and out right threats she received were something she was completely unprepared for. She bailed after 6 mo.
She is lucky. She actually had relevant job skills, so she had the option of leaving teaching, going back to nursing where she makes a LOT more money and isn't threatened by 16 year olds. A number of people in teaching aren't so lucky. They're kinda stuck.
Stories such as this don't help the perception of teachers. Granted, there aren't many worse jobs than an inner city school teacher, but when you have fewer students and declining test scores, you probably shouldn't b*tch and complain constantly as the Chicago Teacher's Union does.
All those inner city schools need is one of those teachers like in the movies. You know the white teacher shows up, and after taking a lot stuff from the students, they show the students how they too are tough and smart! So the students now respect him/her and they realize that school IS important, that English class is cool!
The students teach the teacher some really cool new dance moves and in the end they all do a big dance routine to a rap song.
Several entries mentioned that the environment in which teachers work is the culprit for the present teacher shortage. I must concur. It is not simply the pay that causes nearly one-third of teachers to leave the profession in five years. For those working outside the classroom it is inconceivable that a student could hit their teacher, knock him over a table in the middle of class, and return to that same classroom after a mere three day suspension. That teacher left the profession at the end of the year. a lack of administrative support/backbone is commonplace and causes teachers to question their career.
It is not just discipline. District policies concerning grading and graduation rates have spawned nightmarish policies. For example, several years ago a high school principal was informed by the district superintendent that all seniors will graduate (100% graduation rate!) The principal develops a plan and asks for all 12th grade teachers to compile a list of students with failing grades. Students on the list are subsequently removed from those classes and placed in alternative courses where they EASILY earn the required credits for graduation. The next year senior students who were actually passing all their classes ask senior teachers to add them to the principal's failing list. The classroom nightmare is no reality as students purposefully sabotage their grades to "take the easy way out of high school." Very few of those senior teachers returned to that school the next year.
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