Are we really supposed to feel sorry for New Jersey teachers?

The Constitutional Alamo ^ | 05/27/10 | Michael Naragon

[GenXteacher]

I certainly don’t have any sympathy for her. If you get hired, you work for what they pay you. Does anybody get paid enough for what they do? Tiger Woods, maybe. Nobody goes into teaching to get rich....

[Intolerant in NJ]

There are a few people in the profession who could be successful in other areas and choose to make the sacrifice for the kids, but many, many more who see education as some sort of dodge or hustle...what amazes me is that so many of the teachers today are so caught up in their precious status and money and demanding respect, rather than in actually being good teachers and professionals - my parents were both teachers, my mother with disabled students and my father first in high school and later in a small college - that was back in the day when they got paid probably half what teachers get today, and had to take some Gawd-awful summer jobs to make ends meet - and the teachers I had in high school seemed genuinely happy to be teaching and engaged in developing the best instruction they could - one proudly wore his Phi Beta Kappa key every day and probably could have been off somewhere teaching classics for bigger bucks - I remember some grumbling from my parents about wishing they earned more, but certainly not from them or any of my own teachers do I remember the kind of strident, incessant, and resentful whining which today's "professionals" seem to pick up almost as a part of their training in becoming educators.....

[TankerKC]

When I first heard this story, I knew exactly who this person was. I've met her kind a thousand times.

Do you personally know Rita Wilson?