Thank you. You managed to nail the point I was trying to make...
I currently live with a teacher who, from the end of August till the end of June works, typically, 50-60+ hours a week. His week nights are spent at the kitchen table marking quizzes and tests. His weekends are spent revising lesson plans and marking papers and projects. He gets treated like dirty by the students, yelled at by the parents, and takes an incredible amount of crap from the administration. He doesn't make nearly as much as he should.
"He gets treated like dirty by the students, yelled at by the parents, and takes an incredible amount of crap from the administration. He doesn't make nearly as much as he should."
Then, how much should a soldier in Iraq make? How about a private sector employee with an abusive boss and no labour union to protect him/her?
Granted, teaching is not an easy job. But it is taxpayer funded, there is tenure, and there are summers off and excellent benefits. 50-60 hours per week is average for private sector, and not everyone is a CEO.
Your welcome. I didn't mention the things that you did regarding how teachers are treated, but thank you for including those facts. I also didn't mention that with my position I must write up psych reports for each student I assess, and that the reports take approximately 2.5 hours for each (that includes reviewing a student's records, scoring the tests, analyzing the data, and diagnosing learning disabilities, all of which are discussed within the report). In order to accomplish the assessments on time I must write my reports after the school day. I write up on average around 125 reports per year. Most of them after my contract hours. Then we have the meetings with the parents. Many of those meetings go beyond the contract day, as in the case of the one I attended yesterday which ended at 5:30pm. That's two hours beyond my contract day. Then I have to go home and work on other things for the next day. It's a never ending quest. Teachers have anywhere from 20 to more than 30 students (elementary school) or 180 plus per day (Middle and High school) for which they have to grade papers and tests (not to mention make up the tests) which they cannot do during their contract hours. So, those who complain about teachers asking for better pay for what they do just have no idea what it is a teacher has to do.
Congratulations on being with a good teacher, who believes that the teacher is best qualified to grade papers. My kids (in college now) were in a highly regarded school district, yet most grading was done in class by passing the papers to other kids to mark up. My daughter had a lot of problems with other kids marking her answers wrong when they were right, and the teachers would even get annoyed at her asking them to check it. It worked better for my academically lazy son, where his 'buds' would mark his answers right regardless. Our well-paid teachers considered this an appropriate educational method.