Why These 18 Oklahoma Teachers Are Quitting Their Jobs

[Anonymous]

Many office jobs do not in fact make more than double, but many only have two weeks of vacation a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many office jobs do not in fact make more than double, but many only have two weeks of vacation a year.

"Office jobs" are typically over when you walk out the door for the evening. If you just want babysitters to monitor kids during the school day, then pay minimum wage and be done with it. If teachers are expected to work long days/hours, make their own teaching materials, attend after-school events, and work at home on the weekends (which teachers have traditionally done because most were women who had no other options), then salaries will need to increase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Contract time? Personal time? Other white-collar professionals in office or sales jobs work during “personal” time all the time! You give teachers a really bad and lazy name when you talk like that.

The point is that teachers work well beyond their contract hours, despite all of the people who claim that they work "9-3" and have "3 months of vacation time". If it were really that easy then you wouldn't have a teacher shortage all across the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Contract time? Personal time? Other white-collar professionals in office or sales jobs work during “personal” time all the time! You give teachers a really bad and lazy name when you talk like that.

The point is that teachers work well beyond their contract hours, despite all of the people who claim that they work "9-3" and have "3 months of vacation time". If it were really that easy then you wouldn't have a teacher shortage all across the country.

+1 and just wait 'til all those women aged 55+ start retiring

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Contract time? Personal time? Other white-collar professionals in office or sales jobs work during “personal” time all the time! You give teachers a really bad and lazy name when you talk like that.

The point is that teachers work well beyond their contract hours, despite all of the people who claim that they work "9-3" and have "3 months of vacation time". If it were really that easy then you wouldn't have a teacher shortage all across the country.

+1 and just wait 'til all those women aged 55+ start retiring

Here's just one article (WAPO), but there are plenty more that share info on the shortage of teachers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/09/americas-teacher-shortage-cant-be-solved-by-hiring-more-unqualified-teachers/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0a9c3acaa920

[Anonymous]

What most of you young people don't realize is that there was almost always a teacher shortage--until around 1970. If you had a teaching degree before that, you had no trouble getting a job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What most of you young people don't realize is that there was almost always a teacher shortage--until around 1970. If you had a teaching degree before that, you had no trouble getting a job.

Oklahoma integrated its public schools in the 1970s and all the white students fled to private schools. That was when funding for public education in Oklahoma plummeted. The Oklahoma legislature is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many office jobs do not in fact make more than double, but many only have two weeks of vacation a year.

"Office jobs" are typically over when you walk out the door for the evening. If you just want babysitters to monitor kids during the school day, then pay minimum wage and be done with it. If teachers are expected to work long days/hours, make their own teaching materials, attend after-school events, and work at home on the weekends (which teachers have traditionally done because most were women who had no other options), then salaries will need to increase.

I know about a bazillion teachers (in FCPS and outside the state). This does not happen nearly as much as some people on here say it does. It just doesn't. You know it. I know it. And that's fine. But, just stop with this.

[Anonymous]

9 hours a day is the average for most teachers per national studies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many office jobs do not in fact make more than double, but many only have two weeks of vacation a year.

"Office jobs" are typically over when you walk out the door for the evening. If you just want babysitters to monitor kids during the school day, then pay minimum wage and be done with it. If teachers are expected to work long days/hours, make their own teaching materials, attend after-school events, and work at home on the weekends (which teachers have traditionally done because most were women who had no other options), then salaries will need to increase.

I know about a bazillion teachers (in FCPS and outside the state). This does not happen nearly as much as some people on here say it does. It just doesn't. You know it. I know it. And that's fine. But, just stop with this.

PP here. No, I'm not wrong re the schools where I've worked for over 30 years as a (non-union) special education teacher and later as a school psychologist and administrator.

[Anonymous]

Most of the teachers I work with 8-10 hrs per day regularly. I don't have a curriculum to go by so I am writing lesson plans from scratch daily which is time consuming. Lots and lots of pointless meetings take up my 45 minutes of planning so I plan after school and sometimes on Sunday nights.

[Anonymous]

I won't speak for any other teacher. I get up at 5 a.m. I leave the house at 6:15 a.m. I arrive in my classroom at 6:45 a.m.
I prep materials, answer emails, make copies, do long range planning, etc.

8:00 a.m. kids arrive. I work through lunch 90% of the time. They leave at 3 p.m. I work in the building until between 4-5 p.m. I gather guided reading materials, I set out new math games, I prep the writing center, I replenish supplies, I call parents, I run an after school club, I analyze data.

About 3 days a week I have hour long meetings after school. And then there's often another 2-3 lunchtime, morning or prep time meetings each week. I'm working hard to ensure after the first 8 weeks of school, that I don't do more than 30 minutes of work at home each night, just to preserve family time.

I don't work on Saturdays. I do lesson plans for the week, which takes between 3-5 hours per week, on Sunday.

I teach kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

I'll count my blessings.

I get up at 6:40. I leave the house around 7:50 and arrive in my classroom around 8:00. Students arrive at 8:30 and school starts at 8:45. I almost never work through lunch. The students leave at 3:30 and I work in the building until 4:00 or 4:30, sometimes a little later. I add about an hour each night at home, but don't usually do anything on Friday nights or Saturdays.

We can't have any more than two, 1 hour meetings before/after school each month. At my school I think we had one all last school year. We are guaranteed a duty-free lunch and 240 minutes of teacher directed planning (no required meetings) each week. We do have one, 1 hour collaborative team meeting each week.

I teach elementary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll count my blessings.

I get up at 6:40. I leave the house around 7:50 and arrive in my classroom around 8:00. Students arrive at 8:30 and school starts at 8:45. I almost never work through lunch. The students leave at 3:30 and I work in the building until 4:00 or 4:30, sometimes a little later. I add about an hour each night at home, but don't usually do anything on Friday nights or Saturdays.

We can't have any more than two, 1 hour meetings before/after school each month. At my school I think we had one all last school year. We are guaranteed a duty-free lunch and 240 minutes of teacher directed planning (no required meetings) each week. We do have one, 1 hour collaborative team meeting each week.

I teach elementary.

Are you in a private school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll count my blessings.

I get up at 6:40. I leave the house around 7:50 and arrive in my classroom around 8:00. Students arrive at 8:30 and school starts at 8:45. I almost never work through lunch. The students leave at 3:30 and I work in the building until 4:00 or 4:30, sometimes a little later. I add about an hour each night at home, but don't usually do anything on Friday nights or Saturdays.

We can't have any more than two, 1 hour meetings before/after school each month. At my school I think we had one all last school year. We are guaranteed a duty-free lunch and 240 minutes of teacher directed planning (no required meetings) each week. We do have one, 1 hour collaborative team meeting each week.

I teach elementary.

Are you in a private school?

No, public. I doubt if many private schools would have the planning time protections we have.