You whine because teachers get more time off than you. Become a teacher. You are not satisfied with the grade point averages and intellect of teachers. Become a teacher. It is not acceptable that teacher's unions have so much power. Become a teacher, and you can help to change these things.
I am a conservative.
I am a veteran of the armed forces.
I deplore the teacher's unions and their power.
My colleagues are not very bright.
My grade point average in undergrad was 3.8.
I have a Master's degree.
I owe $25k in student loans.
I make $45k per year.
I am a teacher.
...and I Freep.
Not to be a jerk, but what was your undergrad degree in? 3.8 is good, but it is more impressive in some subjects than others. Also, 45k a year is almost twice the national average wage. More importantly, is this 45k a year include working during the summer or not? 45k with good health care, good retirement...it could be a lot worse!
I am 44, and have worked in the High Tech sector since I got out of the Army in 80.
With the ups and downs of the economy, I have found myself out of a job on several occasions, and have been working for a School District of 50,000 students for 10 years.
I manage a huge Telecom Network. I attend planning sessions, do Infrastructure design, and manage a multi milliom dollar budget.
And what do I get paid for this you ask?
About $60K a year. What I made in a bad year as a contractor.
In return, I get a lot of days off and job security.
I would LOVE to become a teacher. I am great with kids, and actually was an Instructor in the Army in Electronics and loved it.
I enquired to the possibility of becoming a teacher and found the dirty little secret of the teaching profession.
You must have a Teaching Certificate in order to become fully qualified. I could of course have gone back to school and recieved a Degree then a Teching Certificate, after about 8 or 9 years of course.
The fact that I actually DO the craft has apparantly nothing to do with it.
The recent trend in education is to do away with all education in "the trades", such as Carpentry, Automotive and Electronics in favor of a strictly college bound track.
So I ask you, what should be done to open up the system to people like myself ?
I ask all the time, to those of whom will listen anyway, where will the next set of Mechanics, Carpenters and Electricians come from ?
Certainly not from the pencil necked geek crowd who think the world lives and dies on degrees. frankly, I think the majority of the "Certificated Employees" I work with, would all tend to agree. They all make at least my salary or better, all for 2 months a year more off and better benefits.
Please don’t take any of this as a personal attack, far from it.
I sympathize with you and would love to join you in the teaching profession, but the deck seems stacked against it.
The fact is, for most Government jobs that involve any sort of education requirement, you nearly always get paid less.
This is not always a bad thing.
I am personally willing to trade a more lucrative lifestyle for security and free time.
It all depends on what you are looking for...
Cheers,
knews hound
A) I couldn't stand the horrific pay cut;
B) I couldn't stand working with such drooling idiots (the teachers and administrators) all day,
C) Been homeschooling probably longer than you've been teaching......and I'm the dad of seven,
D) I've already given one small example of what I've done to deal with public schools. We homeschool our kids up to high school, so I wind up dealing with public high schools only.
I wish you well in your chosen career....but many of us choose to change the "system" in other ways that are every bit as effective.
So yes, I bash "teachers" fully recognizing that on the whole, they are good-hearted, well-meaning people. Perhaps not the sharpest tools in the barn, perhaps rather sheltered, but honest and generous nonetheless.
I bash a hopelessly broken system that the same people, teachers, would defend to the death.
I bash a philosophy that believes that the State knows better. If the same good teachers believe this philosphy, so be it.
I bash a culture of dependency- the notion that you can't know something unless a "teacher" teaches it to you. Many teachers are threatened by the idea that they aren't essential.
I bash the idea that a teaching credential imparts a special, cosmic power to an individual, elevating them to some mysterious higher plane of being "qualified" to spend time with a child. I took those classes and they were quite useless.
I bash equating grades with worth or potential. It is a false standard. I bash anyone who waves grades in a parent's face as a measure of a child or their parenting skills. My gpa was higher than yours, but what does that mean? Not a blooming thing!
I bash the notion that children are little cookie-cutter people that can be put together on an assembly line in a factory, who all learn to read at the same age, who all learn to multiply on the same day, who all paint blue skies and red flowers with green leaves. Teachers who pay lip service to the individuality of each child, but then try to cram them into a cagegory (like "learning disabled", "ADD", "average", etc.) need to be bashed along with the system.
I bash without apology because it is going to take quite a jolt to dislodge the mass-schooling paradigm in this country. And I encourage all teachers to read the writings of John Taylor Gatto. His essays are widely available on the internet and several chapters of his book is at his website.
You ask what I (among others) am doing? I have volunteered in my kids schools in the areas of my expertise and have been constantly engaged with the marxist and socialist history facutly in my daughters' high school. Perhaps, if I am not too old then, I will semi-retire to teach after my kids are out of college. The problem, of course, is that it is almost impossible to be hired if you are a conservative, because the existing faculty are all so left wing. In our 22 person social studies department, the most conservative person is a liberal democrat, most descibe themselves as some sort of democratic socialist or social democrat -- they admire the European lefts --, and a few are avowed Marxists. How anyone can be a committed Marxist after the Fall of the Soviet Union is beyond me, but there you have it.
My experiences with teachers overall has been mixed. Based on my own primary and secondary school experiences, I used to believe that 3 out of 4 teachers were incompetent. The schools where my children are growing up (Greenwich, CT) are far better, perhaps only 1/2 are incompetent, and of those, perhaps 1/3 are bright enough, but burned out.
How am I making a difference? Beyond keeping myself informed on issues in my local school district and voting, I homeschool. And yes, I do think that is making a difference. A big one. Otherwise the NEA would be so against it.
However, even if I didn't have small children, I wouldn't consider teaching. Having seen first hand how teachers' hands are tied to affect any disclipline in their classrooms. Knowing the kind of person with and for whom I'd have to work, I'd be miserable.
My favorite teacher in high school quit the year I graduated. He saw the changes in the students that were coming up in the system and he didn't relish the thought of having them in his class. No too many years later, he return to teaching. It was his passion and he just wasn't happy in private industry. He was a tough, no-nonsense teacher who had high expectations and knew his stuff. Teachers like him I applaud. That is not, however, what the "Educational Establishment" trains their teachers to be.
FP
It must be terribly frustrating for you in the teacher's lounge. My wife's immediate family has several teachers and school psychologists. Wonderful people. But they are not the intellectuals thay fancy themselves to be and their brand of smirking liberalism can infuriate me. Keep freeping!