Reply to Why is there a teacher shortage?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Simple answer is teachers are treated like unpro crap and blamed for society's ills while being paid peanuts and getting no support from the admin or union.[/quote]

That’s the reason. I can’t think of another profession requiring a specialized degree and license that pays so little [/quote]

I can’t think of any other profession that gets over 3 months off per year. [/quote]

Me neither since it's more like two months. Even that doesn't help. There is a shortage and it will get worse. Nobody seems to care to do anything about it. Eventually, schools will go to a model that already exists in places. One certified teacher will teach online while many classrooms will watch. They will employ monitors to watch the kids in person in the classrooms. [/quote]

Summer alone is  2.5 months.  There are lot more days/weeks off and vacations during the school year.  It is a lot of time off [/quote]

IT DOESN'T SEEM TO HELP THOUGH, DOES IT? If these benefits are so awesome, people should be flocking to fill these positions but they aren't. We've had vacancies for over a year and not one person has even applied to most of them. [/quote]

So…teachers should get paid a lot more for working a lot less?[/quote]

Let’s be very, very clear about this: 
Apparently these glorious summers aren’t a huge perk. WE ARE ALL STILL LEAVING. If you think these amazing summers are worth it, then apply to work as a teacher.

You clearly know the workload and the pay AREN’T worth it, because I don’t see you lining up for an interview. I don’t see anybody lining up for an interview!

I’m so sick of hearing “but you get all this time off.” I work 7 days a week. Yes, 7. I am never caught up. I spend my glorious unpaid summers you seem to crave in classes that I PAY FOR in order to keep my certification.

So just stop with the “all the time off” nonsense. Frankly, it’s very insulting.[/quote]

Teachers haters irrationally hate teachers. There is literally nothing that you can explain to them that will help them understand. 
[/quote]

No one hates teachers, but let’s not claim teachers are working 8+ hrs per day 7 days per week and 365 days per year.  They don’t.  In fact, it’s been discussed to pay teachers more and have them be year round employee and many teachers chimed in stating there isn’t enough work for them to do.  No other profession gets as many vacation days as teachers do.  Some people want to make a lot of money and seek a job that pays as such, but you’d be lucky to get. Some people would rather make less and have more time off and a schedule more closely aligned to the days off their children have.  Short of taking FMLA leave, no other employee could take the same number of (unpaid) days off a teacher has without getting fired.  The avg American only gets 11-15 paid vacation days, of which most people don’t even take for various reasons. That is comparable to the paid time off teachers get as well. [/quote]

Teachers don’t get paid time off. They work 180 days and get paid got those 180 days. [/quote]

My kids have 6 teachers/6 classes daily.  There seems to be a least one sub per week in a class, sometimes more.  Does this get deducted from their 180 days of paid working days? [/quote]

Most teachers get 8-10 days of leave a year. So those teachers lost a day of leave, yes.

I think the PP is trying to point out that the days teachers don’t work (summer break, spring break, etc) aren’t actually leave. Teachers contracts are for 180-190 days a year. Breaks aren’t “leave”. They just aren’t work days. Teachers aren’t paid for them.

(And they often are work days. When I taught public school, my family was very mad at me for grading on thanksgiving. I had no choice. It had to get done.)[/quote]

So teachers do get paid time off in addition to the unpaid breaks [/quote]

Do you think of your weekends as “unpaid breaks”? I suspect you don’t.

So 10 days of leave for 190 days of work. That’s not a lot.

My husband gets 45 days of personal leave a year, including 2 additional weeks at Christmas. He also gets paid about three times more than a teacher and doesn’t work 40 hours a week. He can take just 1 hour of leave and doesn’t have to do anything to prepare for it. He has true flexibility.

I think you are trying to make the argument that teachers have it so good. They don’t. Period. That’s why the teacher shortage exists. [/quote]

DP. No, teachers don't have it "so good," but we should be clear about what are and are not problems. Given salary levels, combined with the ability to make more money over the summer, pay isn't a major problem for teachers in the area. Limited personal leave is a challenge, mitigated by some of the breaks. But every decent teacher I know is always regularly up late working on grading or lesson plans.[/quote]

This is why pay is the least of my concerns. You could double my pay and I still won’t stay.

It’s the demands of the job. It’s being “on stage” most of my day. It’s managing 150 people, many of whom don’t want to be managed, and then being held accountable for how they do. It’s grading! Grading at 4pm, 9pm, 11pm, and 6am on Saturdays. It’s nonstop emails that I don’t have time to respond to. It’s giving every opportunity to a student, and then having a parent tear me apart when all of my efforts fail. It’s covering for other teachers because they quit mid-year, meaning I get less time to do my own work. It’s administrators who create work for me to justify their own jobs.

Pay me three times more and I will still quit. It isn’t worth it.[/quote]

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