Teachers' work is not between 8 and 3 p.m.; it is more like 2 jobs during the school year. When I leave school, my "second" job is just beginning. I have to go home, research and write another lesson plan (or two or three, depending on how many subjects I am teaching that year). I am very picky about the images I use for my PowerPoints, so it could take quite a while to find the perfect image or graph. I have to call parents. I have to go out and buy stuff (on my own dime) for classroom activities. I have papers to grade. I have mandatory workshops and meetings to attend as well, outside of regular school hours. Yeah, I just WISH I could go home and put my feet up. But teaching is not that kind of job. So I am working double hours during 10 months of the year. I am lucky to get to bed before 1 a.m., and then get up at 5:30 a.m. or 6 to do it all over again.
All this, for a steadily decreasing reward of the satisfaction of seeing kids learn. Nowadays, you are forced to pass kids that should never pass or see administrators change the grades of your students behind your back so that their passing stats look good. You have to stand there and put up with students threatening you, "F___ you, bitch I gonna get you fired!" or "F___ you bitch, I gonna find your a@@ after school and jump you", knowing the administration will not only give you no support, but will likely bring you up on charges based on student fabrications. And now the good governor Cuomo wants teacher evaluations based 50% on state exams. So if you are teaching ghetto kids who barely attend class let alone do any work or, G-d forbid, study, it won't matter how thoroughly you prepare your lessons or try to help the students; you can lead a horse to water, as they say. And if the students then tank on those tests, YOU are penalized. As if you can control how much they study for the tests.
There are significant drops in enrollment in teacher degree programs and more and more states are experiencing teacher shortages. Who would sign up for this?
Oh yeah, you knee-jerk "teachers are bad" folks: flame away all you like. I'm simply telling it like it is. I have thousands of colleagues who are IN the trenches, unlike the finger-pointing outsiders, who will back me up.
Most teachers are not bad, but the entire system is evil. American public education had spent almost a century now systematically undermining the American way of life. It has set itself against every tenet of Western Civilization: it has worked to destroy discipline, family, religion, capitalism, and patriotism.
They claim ownership of the nation’s children and target any who dare oppose their hubris. They grant themselves titles, all the while opposing any independent objective measure of competence. I agree they have been underpaid—those running the institutions should be paid in full...
for their calculated treachery.
And true American teachers should be free to work toward professional certification, in competitive, private-sector solutions that reflect American ideals rather than socialist indoctrination factories. Those who risk the ire of the system should be greatly remunerated.
FReeper Clara Lou was/is a teacher in the school I worked in as a long-term substitute.
A middle school.
It was a racial war zone were everyone lived in fear of the blacks. Their savagery, lack of empathy, and predisposition to violence made it very unfulfilling.
One student, Malachi, had a mom who sued the district. He was a feral savage animal. Thus everyone was afraid to reprimand him, so be was free to roam the halls and punch white girls in the face with impunity. The female teachers refused to even acknowledge the issue unless pressed. When pressed they made a lame assed liberal excuse (example: I just didnt understand because I did not come from a poor black background).
It disgusted me that the women there (like most schools, the faculty was dominated by females) would defend the violent criminal and blame the victim, AS POLICY, so as to protect their careers.
It never entered their brains that children were being assaulted and injured, sometimes seriously, on their watch. They were a fundamental part of the problem.
This occurred in Bryan, TX.
You understand that once tenured, anything you do after 3 pm is optional; I know enough public school teachers, and none of them do anything you describe. Here in NJ teachers work 180 days per year (less than half the year), and they work from 8 to 3 - and still get lunch in there. The “poor teacher” nonsense went out the window years ago when the Asbury Park Press released the salaries of all of our public school teachers in NJ (as public information). Taxpayers were floored (and this was just the straight current salaries, not the current or retirement benefits); they promptly elected Chris Christie to deal with them - and he did. With our property tax increases capped at 2%, every time teachers get 4% raises other teachers lose their jobs.
The teachers’ unions have singlehandedly destroyed NJ, and they’re getting paid back as Americans flee - leaving illegals and welfare folks to fill the schools (and NOT pay any bills).