‘They’re paid for 9 months. They’re not paid for a year.’
I said nothing about them getting paid for 12 months; I said that they are getting equivalent salaries to other professionals who work a full 12 months, while the teachers are contracted to work a far shorter period of time; the point being, of course, that a window of time for leisure exists for them that others don’t have, at no loss of income...what is difficult to understand about that...?
Theat’s a pointless equivalency that exists to perpetuate a lie.
Except of course they don’t really have that time for leisure. There’s lots of continuing education requirements, and other work related stuff they have to do in those months “off” everyone is so jealous of.
What’s difficult to understand is why people get so upset when teachers are treated like humanbeings. It’s one of the most important jobs in the world and all anybody does is complain that teachers get paid too much or get time off.
I retired form a 46 year career as an embedded engineer, where I designed microcomputer based instrumentation, and then wrote the software for it. Often I wrote the software that ran those instruments from PCs. I started with Skylab, and have made equipment for medical equipment to landfill equipment, and most everything in between. After all of that action, retirement was a dangerous letdown.
I started teaching a digital logic class in the evening Community School, eventually taking an Embedded Computing class in the local high school. I teach one class each day for $28 per day. This is the most difficult job I have ever had. Since it is a totally new class in the State, I have to create ALL of my class content as well as all of tests. It is a eight to ten hour per day experience, not counting all of the training sessions and other red tape.
I have seen first hand the administrative crap teachers are forced to endure, and they can't seek another job simply because a principle can pull their teaching certificate for almost any reason. They are not paid anywhere as well as you seem to think, and are forced to maintain numerous copies of all test so that students can retake tests as often as they wish or because they skipped class when a test was administered the first time or because they did poorly.
I have seen up close and personal that teacher's hands are tied in almost anything they do because the administration makes rules that placate the parents of lazy or brainless kids. Your view of the school system is terribly incomplete. I have worked harder as a part time teacher than anywhere else in my life, including to ever-present eight hour weeks in the engineering field.
Most of the educational rot is caused by parents who sue the school system because their child can't make good grades without such intervention. Since high-level administrators are political animals, they acquiesce to parents demands no matter foolish those people happen to be. Oh, and they think nothing of throwing teachers under the bus. It is a hostile work environment.