Teaching: your opinions (poll)Follow

Don't think they should be nearly as protected as they are, but I feel the same way about my job.

I'm no fan of tenure, and I've yet to hear an argument for it that wasn't flawed. Getting summer off seems like a sweet deal.

That being said, I'm not raging about them. Yeah, tenure is an issue, and it should be addressed, but meh. I'd have selected the second option, 'cept for the bits about them complaining too much (in my experience, they only complain as a counter to people saying that their job is easy/insignificant) and them influencing childrens' outlooks with their own views (which, if it's even a problem, is marginal and solvable locally).

Edited, Sep 21st 2011 4:47pm by Eske

The problem is that #1 and #2 are not really exclusive. I think teachers are great. I think that the public school system most of them have to work in is awful. Same with the unions that come as part of that package. And I think that most of the negatives people do cast at teachers are really things that are related to that public school system and those unions and not really the teachers themselves.

The ones I know don't.

The do attend a few staff development days and may have to spend some time prepping their classroom. But it's not more than a handful out of the whole summer. If they are actually working during the summer (like teaching a summer school course), they get paid more, which breaks the whole argument.

Voted number two, but my opinion is more realistically represented by a mixture of both one and two, with two slightly edging out one.

Edited, Sep 21st 2011 7:06pm by Turin

Go look up the definition of "median". Then get back to me.

There's a fair mix of all three, and not just in one teacher being a good example and another being a bad example.

Education is supremely important, and in the long term the most efficient way to create lasting benefits. Many teachers do work hard and it can be a very tough job. However there are some problems with teachers unions that need to be fixed, and especially in private schools injecting personal viewpoints is quite easily achieved and can be severely damaging. And to an extent they are glorified babysitters, because the school system is fairly broken, to the extent that much of what children gain is a byproduct of merely being in the presence of a book with ideas they couldn't figure out on their own in a timely manner rather than any sort of method or effort on our part to impart knowledge to them.

So I went with the last one. Just because this thread seems to be heading into yet another boring political discussion, I'll throw in that I think there are many true conservative critics of schooling such as the power and detrimental effects of teachers unions, that could be improved. I don't however think that eliminating teacher unions or switching to entirely private schools would have a very significant effect for the amount of effort involved, and that largely it distracts us from more fundamental and serious problems. Namely, that we don't have a half intelligent metric outlined to even determine whether what we're doing is successful.

I mostly agreed with 1, but the hours aren't long, as far as I can tell. Schools around here are in session for 6 hours a day. Let's give them 2 hours on either end for prep and correcting homework and tests, and also remember that they have periods off, not including lunch time. Holidays off, with thanksgiving normally being 3 days off; Xmas vacation, February vacation, April vacation; ~2 months for summer. It's not a bad job in regards to time off.

Even if they averaged 9 or 10 hours a day when you add up all the prep or what not, all that time off really makes up for a lot.

Teachers, especially those in high school, are expected to support some sort of after school activity as part of their employment. For example, my high school biology teacher was also the baseball coach. My high school band teacher had orchestra on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and then jazz band on Fridays. My high school chemistry teacher ran the science club. The entire math staff participated in the math club, with one teacher coaching math olympiad and another one handling math bowl and yet another one handling the actual math club activities (we tutored the middle school that was attached to our high school as our service project.) Etc. Even management gets into this - my husband's brother in law is the high school principal... and the track coach.

So yes, it's not unheard of for a high school teacher to put in a 12 hour day during the week, on top of weekend activities.

And they usually don't get paid for those extra curricular activities - they're just expected to do it. (On the other hand, department heads are paid an extra $5,000-$10,000 and given a pass on heading the extracurricular stuff since they have double the paperwork to deal with.)

That's what I've been told, yes. They make more than space traveling generals of divine holy armies.

Kindergarten teachers make more than the Archangel Michael! Who probably isn't paid at all, so I guess it's technically accurate.

And how well paid are you for those 50-60 hours a week? I hope you're getting some form of overtime compensation.

I'm not against paying high salaries to work-a-holics. More power to you. But $40K/year for 50-60 hours a week is not a high salary.