Why These 18 Oklahoma Teachers Are Quitting Their Jobs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a few administrators visit my classroom from my school and other schools this year. I used to teach 5th grade and was moved down to first this year. They wanted to know why my center activities weren't more "visually engaging." They said I should have laminated and colored activities for the students instead of black and white paper/pencil work. I said, "That sounds like a great idea. I don't happen to have the money for that." They were speechless. Maybe teachers need to speak up more about the unrealistic expectations placed on them. Little by little I have slowly made center activities this year but I cannot afford to have different center activities in color and laminated every week my first year in a grade. My colleague spends thousands each year making colored and laminated activities as well as printing books in color. That should be a choice, not an expectation.

This is my 25th year teaching in an elementary school. I have never spent more than $100 and rarely do I spend more than what my PTA will reimburse, which is currently $80. I have a difficult time understanding why some spend so much of their own money. It seems to me that just enables the district to not make the purchases.

Not all schools have PTAs. My school doesn't have one and this year we aren't getting any BOY supplies. So if students don't bring in supplies (I normally only get supplies from 70% of the class), we have to buy them or do a Donors Choose. Every few years, we get random donations. Two years ago, we got a ton of masking tape? A few years before that, we got a ton of lined paper except it was college rule which doesn't work well with little kids. Not everyone has what you have PP.

The school should provide for you what is needed to teach. They don't have to if you provide it for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like until they work 8 hours a day 2080 hours a year like others they just aren't going to get the respect or pay they deserve.

To work 2080 hours a year, someone would have to work 8 hours a day, M-F for 52 weeks. So no vacation or days off of any kind?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Reducing your comments to simplistic petulance isn't going to win anyone over to your side. As exemplified well by a 9-day walkout that got the teachers exactly nothing.

Why don't you convince us why the students need higher paid teachers? The subject matter won't change.

Are you referring to the one in West Virginia or the one in Oklahoma?

Why do patients need well-paid doctors? Medicine doesn't change. Why do clients need well-paid lawyers? The law doesn't change.

Your argument doesn't hold water. Overcompensated doctors and hospitals are why we are in a healthcare crisis and pretty much every American family is one accident away from bankruptcy or an embarrassing GoFundMe plea.

Being a litigious society isn't seen as a desirable outcome either and most people avoid using lawyers unless absolutely necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. She wrote that in the 70s and women can be engineers now. Except some women seem to the think they can opt for low-level careers and get paid high salaries and/or opt out of the workforce completely but still think they can have their cake and eat it too.

I don't understand. You're not arguing in favor of low salaries for teachers, are you?

My arguments in regards to teachers:

- Equal pay for equal work regardless of seniority or gender
- Better discretionary funding for supplies and increased school resources - i.e. each school should purchase $750/year in supplies for every classroom.
- Better school funding for activities and electives like Art/Languages/STEM classes

In a LCOL area I think a salary of $40,000 - $60,000, adjusted minus the 2-3 months of leave, they take is sufficient. In a HCOL area I think a salary of $60,000 - $85,000, adjusted minus the 2-3 months of leave they take, is sufficient.

If that doesn't work for you, get a degree in a different field.

Oh, ok, you are arguing in favor of low salaries for teachers. Why do you think low salaries for teachers are a good thing?

- 8 - 12 weeks of leave a year
- 5 - 6 hour mandated work days
- Non-specialized educational achievements (minus the one Chemistry teacher with an MSc)
- Repetitive job performance

8-12 weeks of "leave", or time not under contract?
5-6 hour mandated work days? I am mandated to be at work for 7.5 hours, a half hour of which is lunch. You are at least an hour short.
Repetitive job performance? Obviously you have not planned elementary math workshops or guided reading groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Reducing your comments to simplistic petulance isn't going to win anyone over to your side. As exemplified well by a 9-day walkout that got the teachers exactly nothing.

Why don't you convince us why the students need higher paid teachers? The subject matter won't change.

Are you referring to the one in West Virginia or the one in Oklahoma?

Why do patients need well-paid doctors? Medicine doesn't change. Why do clients need well-paid lawyers? The law doesn't change.

Your argument doesn't hold water. Overcompensated doctors and hospitals are why we are in a healthcare crisis and pretty much every American family is one accident away from bankruptcy or an embarrassing GoFundMe plea.

Being a litigious society isn't seen as a desirable outcome either and most people avoid using lawyers unless absolutely necessary.

Umm. Medicine and the law change all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did we get here?

Its always been there.

I don't think that's true. Something has changed.

The only thing that has changed is that Teacher was previously one of the few respectable positions a woman could obtain pre-1950s. That salary was never enough to live alone, it just gave a wife something to commit to other than sitting at home. Teachers made $60 - $70 month in California in the late 1800s. The railroad attendants they were married to? $130 - $140 mo.

Now women have gone on to other more esteemed professions and the ones left behind think they should be paid more (adjusted with inflation) when that was never an objective of the education system or the state governments.

Often married women were strongly encouraged to retire. Teaching it was a job for unmarried women or widows.

And it was very deliberate that they hired women because they knew they would work for cheaper than men out of necessity and not having more options

[Anonymous]

Democrats have proposed that teacher raises be funded by rolling back the GOP tax cuts for The 1%. But as long as the GOP controls congress it will be a no go because you know, priorities.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/dems-want-scrap-tax-cut-130041028.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1

The days of women doing heavy lifting and other invisible labor behind the scenes for little or no money are over.

Really? I think its just begun. The resurgence in the ridiculous pride of being a SAHM hasn't been seen at this levels since the pre-1980s women in the workforce movement.

Yes, it's easy for a person to believe that history didn't begin until they were born, but this belief is factually incorrect.

Here's Peggy Seeger singing "Gonna Be An Engineer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGVxBb5uYk

So that song is all about a woman who wants to be an engineer but does not get paid equally because she's a woman and her husband wants her to give up her job when she has children.

[Anonymous]

I don't know why people want their children's teachers to be underpaid and not have the materials that they need.

Of course they are probably the kind of parents who blame the teacher every time their child gets in trouble

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That video is so sad but the US just doesn't care about public education.

some states do; some states want low taxes which hurts public education for sure. It's just a choice their citizens make.

And the people in the video chose to become teachers. Don't go into a field without researching it. We ultimately have to be responsible for our decisions. Blaming others doesn't help anyone.

If you were from Oklahoma or knew anything about the state, you’d realize it hasn’t always been this way there.

[Anonymous]

* the teachers in the video are going to be very sad once they start their new jobs and realize that all most all professionals jobs require you to work way beyond your job description! with additional hours non compensated especially when you are new, funding is always an issue and budgets get cut,

* class sizes were often bigger back in the previous decades. I went to Catholic school in the 80s. We had 34 kids per class, 2 classes per grade. Public schools in my fairfax county neighborhood did not have smaller class sizes.

* most teachers I have encountered suffer from a basic lack of understanding of how to use technology at all,or efficiently. They have difficulty use the data input systems, can't figure out how to run reports and on a more basic level many can't figure out their own classroom technology. My kids teacher said over and over that the laptops were "broken" bc they would not turn on. No they weren't broken. I pointed out that the battery was not charged so she needed to use it with the charger. Amazingly they turned on! She was truly amazed and she was really young so not an age thing. The laptops were on a charging cart which I pointed out May or may not get plugged in. The individual chargers were stored on a self on the cart.

- most teachers believe they need a ton of supplies. They don't. Neither do the kids. Reduce supply requests to what is actually used.

[Anonymous]

PP- In defense of the teacher you mentioned, most classrooms might have a few outlets in total. Mine has 3 outlets. So the individual chargers are pretty much useless when all 30 iPads are dead or nearly dead. Nearly every night, the "cleaning" crew upplugs the cart despite leaving messages for them in Spanish not to do that. If I am here late, I will tell them in Spanish not to unplug the cart ever. A week later, they unplug it again. As for the data input systems, they are crap. Data Link is a joke and has had me and plenty of other teachers in my district in tears. Even the head of technology did a presentation on it and couldn't get it to work right in front of us. This is par for the course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:* the teachers in the video are going to be very sad once they start their new jobs and realize that all most all professionals jobs require you to work way beyond your job description! with additional hours non compensated especially when you are new, funding is always an issue and budgets get cut,

* class sizes were often bigger back in the previous decades. I went to Catholic school in the 80s. We had 34 kids per class, 2 classes per grade. Public schools in my fairfax county neighborhood did not have smaller class sizes.

* most teachers I have encountered suffer from a basic lack of understanding of how to use technology at all,or efficiently. They have difficulty use the data input systems, can't figure out how to run reports and on a more basic level many can't figure out their own classroom technology. My kids teacher said over and over that the laptops were "broken" bc they would not turn on. No they weren't broken. I pointed out that the battery was not charged so she needed to use it with the charger. Amazingly they turned on! She was truly amazed and she was really young so not an age thing. The laptops were on a charging cart which I pointed out May or may not get plugged in. The individual chargers were stored on a self on the cart.

- most teachers believe they need a ton of supplies. They don't. Neither do the kids. Reduce supply requests to what is actually used.

How do you manage such long posts with your crushing professional work schedule?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like until they work 8 hours a day 2080 hours a year like others they just aren't going to get the respect or pay they deserve.

To work 2080 hours a year, someone would have to work 8 hours a day, M-F for 52 weeks. So no vacation or days off of any kind?

Of course they should get vacation days. But normal salaried people are paid for 2080 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP- In defense of the teacher you mentioned, most classrooms might have a few outlets in total. Mine has 3 outlets. So the individual chargers are pretty much useless when all 30 iPads are dead or nearly dead. Nearly every night, the "cleaning" crew upplugs the cart despite leaving messages for them in Spanish not to do that. If I am here late, I will tell them in Spanish not to unplug the cart ever. A week later, they unplug it again. As for the data input systems, they are crap. Data Link is a joke and has had me and plenty of other teachers in my district in tears. Even the head of technology did a presentation on it and couldn't get it to work right in front of us. This is par for the course.

Plug a power strip into the bottom wall outlet. Plug your cart into the power strip. The cleaning crew will plug their vacuums into the empty top outlet because it’s easily accessible. Everyone will be happy.