Reply to NY times op ed on the teacher crisis

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I absolutely adored my job as a high school math teacher.  Seriously, the 7:30-3:30 part was amazing.  The kids were fun, the teaching was meaningful, and I enjoyed the challenge.

I quit in June.

I found a job making $50k more than my teaching salary making slide decks for a government contractor.  How do you turn that down?  $70k-$120k is a no brainer.  It's going to pay for my kids to go to college.[/quote]

Do you work the same hours? Have the same amount of time off?[/quote]

Way way way less hours, way more flexibility.  I have gone to sleep by 11 pm every night since I started the new job.  In teaching, the kids left at 3:30 but I always brought piles of work home.  I'd work until 10 pm on a good night, 2 am on a rough night, and usually at least 5-6 hours on the weekend.  The amount of effort it takes to make good lessons and provide real feedback is unreal.  I was sick all the time from lack of sleep, and I had taught for almost 15 years.  It wasn't 1st year teacher burnout.

Now?  I get to work from home 3 days a week.  If I have a doctor's appointment I flex an hour instead of having to create an entire day's worth of sub plans in addition to my regular work.  I have 6 weeks PTO plus the week between Christmas and NYD my company is shut down, so less than a teacher but not drastically so.  My contract as a teacher was 195 days - 5 PTO days = 190 days (38 weeks), my contract with my new employer is 260 days - 10 holidays - 30 days PTO - 5 days shut down = 215 days = 43 weeks.  So 5 weeks (13%) more than before, but they're at home and they're 40-50 hour weeks max, instead of 60+.  Plus, 70% more money.

Regardless, I can't pay bills with time off.  College tuition can't be paid with winter break.  Private sector salaries have ballooned in the last decade, while after 13 years of teaching I only made $11k more than I did when I started.  If pay can't keep up, anyone who has the skills to leave is going to. [/quote]

Maybe teachers should be paid more, and expected to work 12 months per year. Instead of all the breaks they get, time kids aren’t in school on breaks can be used for planning and professional development.  It is silly to expect teachers to only work the hours students are in the building.  That isn’t realistic.  Teaching should be considered, and compensated, as a full time job 12 month per year with 2-4 weeks vacation they can take on any days kids they are not expected to be in building teaching.  [/quote]

I think if school were 2 less hours per day or 1 less days per week, it could be year round and work.  That is how much extra time teaching requires to keep it to an 8-9 hour a day workload.  If you're going to make it 12 months but keep it 7 hour school days and 5 days a week of lessons and grading, then you need to double all salaries at minimum.  The only way most teachers survive September - June is because of July and August.[/quote]

I’m not saying students should be in school 12 months, just teachers.  They should get the bulk of their planning and training done in June,July, August- while students are not there. Working 8-10 hrs per day during the school year should be acceptable.  Most professionals put  in somewhere between 8-12 hrs per day on a regular basis with no official overtime pay, just their salary [/quote]

I understand the thought behind this, but at least in regards to planning, there would be no point in doing it over the summer. Lessons need to be tinkered with constantly based on class dynamics, which we don't know until we have the kids. I'm now wondering if there are enough meaningful tasks to keep teachers occupied over the summer. That's kinda the hard part. Most of what we do is centered around our current cohort[/quote]

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