Reply to Teachers - How Hard is Your Job, Really?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The problem is the bar is relatively low to become a teacher. One can graduate from Podunk University and major in "Education" which is considered one of the easiest majors around. On top of that, college GPA really doesn't matter. Theoretically, you could have plenty of teachers who graduated with a degree in Education from a place like Bowie State College with a gpa of 2.8. I know there are teachers with masters degrees but typically the degree will be from GMU or JMU in Education or Education Administration which are not viewed as too demanding compared to law, medicine engineering etc.

People will not take the teaching "profession" seriously until the qualification/compensation is raised. [b]The perception is that what is hard about the job is dealing with kids all day not that the job itself is demanding or requires high level of thinking.[/b]  [/quote]

I wonder if that's the reason people are saying they can't get the job done during the day and have to spend weekends and nights doing it.
No offense intended, truly, but you could see how a poor student who struggled in college would have [b]time management issues, lack organizational skills[/b], or simply be a bit slower in doing tasks.
I'm the PP with the ex boyfriend who was a teacher and this thread is interesting to me as a mother with children about to be school age. My experience with him and his peers is vastly different than what is being represented here[/quote]

I have an engineering degree from a top state school, a graduate degree from an Ivy League university, graduated #2 in my high school class, and I'm still doing things at home nights and weekends. Come on.

I have 130 kids on my roster. If I spend 1 minute per child grading a quiz, that's 2 hours on a single assignment. I have more than one assignment each week, and we haven't even touched the planning.

I get 5 hours of prep time per week, but 3 of those hours are meetings. So assuming I grade my one quiz at school, the only way I get to go home on time is if I don't plan anything, don't copy anything, don't remediate anyone, don't speak to counsellors or admin or other teachers about a child I'm worried about, etc.

I don't doubt that there are slow, idiot teachers. I've worked with one or two over the years. The reality is that the "busy work" (copying, grading, emailing parents, discipline referrals, required trainings) takes up so much of the day that if you want to do a halfway decent job, you have to do work outside of the school day.[/quote]

Thank you, PP.

Teaching isn't my first career. My undergrad and first Master's degrees aren't in education. I know how to work efficiently. There's only so much you can do to trim time from tasks like grading and planning before you start short-changing students.[/quote]

1. If you are doing it right, it requires a lot of thinking. Which of my kids are reading below grade level, what ways do they learn best, how do I need to alter this lesson to make it more accessible to the ESOL, special education students, and what extensions can I do for higher level learners? Integrating lessons across subject matter requires a interdisciplinary focus that is really in very few careers and you have to be able to shift lessons at a moment's notice is something is going terribly bad.

2. As for lack of time management and organization - what careers do you know that expect a performance or presentation for five and a half hours a day every day and provide an hour of preparation time to prepare. Most careers that expect a performance or presentation- law, theatre, business to think of a few are given hours of preparation time for a one hour presentation. Seriously, those of you in law, can you imagine being in court for six hours a day five days a week and get one hour a day to look at all your cases? And have to make all your own copies? Those of you in business, can you imagine going into a six hour board meeting on a marketing strategy etc with only one hour to prepare and look at all that sales data? [/quote]

This is a stupid comparison.  Most teachers teach the same or very similar curriculum year after year.  It's not new "data" you're presenting once you have a year or so under your belt.  
[/quote]

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