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Hey Moog, are you taking a sick day? ;-)

My wife teaches fifth grade with 34 kids in her class. Most, if not all, are low-income. Many are military families, so that helps, but every year she has at least 3 kids who disrupt everything. I finally convinced her to boot them to the principal, and that helps her.

In the 8 years in her district, she has had no parent volunteers in her class. She earns her salary with that many kids. And she is very well paid.

When I compare her hourly, adjusted for months and hours worked, she makes less than a CPA or other professional. But she makes plenty, and does not complain at all.

Hey Moog, are you taking a sick day? ;-) My wife teaches fifth grade with 34 kids in her class. Most, if not all, are low-income. Many are military families, so that helps, but every year she has at least 3 kids who disrupt everything. I finally convinced her to boot them to the principal, and that helps her. In the 8 years in her district, she has had no parent volunteers in her class. She earns her salary with that many kids. And she is very well paid. When I compare her hourly, adjusted for months and hours worked, she makes less than a CPA or other professional. But she makes plenty, and does not complain at all.

And therein lies the discrepancies. I'm IT in my class often. I get a little parent help, but I don't have an aide or specialists (we do have 1 reading specialist) and never will. I DO see some teachers in other states who do have all the "extras" and STILL complain about being underpaid. I don't have any sympathy for them. After 4 years of me teaching my wife worked PART-TIME without a degree as a computer programmer and made just as much, actually a little more than me. But you know what, I don't want to do anything else. I LOVE teaching these little first grade buggers. Every day is different. In what other job can you act as dumb as you want to and still see wonderful progress from the kids? AND you have hit upon another factor. Sometimes you do get kids with hard home situations. Those can't be accounted for in dollar terms. One of my lower kids has a single mom who works too many hours to help him much and a deadbeat dad. He's had issues just dealing with the situation at hand and hasn't always been in the mood to learn. But he's coming around now. Today, he even took a book to read as he was waiting in line for lunch. I had ONE year where I had about every situation you could think of. I had 4 "normal" kids out of 25. I worked my tail off that year and came home EVERY night exhausted. I had some very hard personal situations to deal with and one of my most beloved former students was diagnosed with brain cancer and died. But I LEARNED more that year than any else and saw just amazing miracles that year with kids and parents, none of which was my doing for sure. I learned to try not to complain so much, especially from the student with the brain tumor. I learned that no matter how bad we have it, someone always has it worse. I learned that it's our ATTITUDE that counts in life and how we live it. It was my most challenging, but also my most rewarding year.