Posted on 02/02/2007 5:20:28 AM PST by Zakeet
Teachers work about 9 months out of the year. That's why $34/hour makes "low pay". That $34/hour is equivalent to $25/hour(12 month) (math: p * 9/12 = s)
First, 25 dollars an hour with three months off aint bad.
It allows female teachers to be with their kids.
Other teachers often take a part time job
You are too easily brushing off the fact that summers offer teachers an incredible amount of freedom. And I don't know where you are getting that benefits information, b/c if your son is a public school teacher, he likely has some of the best benefits available for a working professional.
Interesting. I'm a network/systems admin. I'm on call every other week, and my boss takes the phone and pager when I'm not on call, but when he runs into a problem he can't resolve, which is most all of them, he calls me. There's another guy there who can do some things with the system, but he isn't terribly experienced, and sometimes runs into problems. It's a very demanding line of work, but I wouldn't do anything else I love it. I'm glad to see you got a taste of the demand as an instructor before going to be an admin. It was a bit of a shock for me, but I got used to it after a few months. I would cry for additional staff, but the job security is nice. :P
The city of Detroit school teachers have a 182 day school year. I couldn't find out their vacation schedule but did find out that they also get 10 paid sick days per year which go into a bank if they aren't used......
"he is expected to cover the following duties over and above his school day: coach track in the spring and run the track meets, be at and do the scorekeeping for every football game, and every basketball game (and they had regular and JV teams for both boys and girls - 2 games each/wk, that's 8 games a week!) and they wanted him to take his turn driving the activity bus for spoting events as well. These NUMEROUS extra hours do not equate in extra pay at $34.06/hour."
No, but it the district opererates like most districts he will get paid extra from some of these duties.
I am assuming that he was paid for coaching track and driving the bus?
Probably the scorekeeping was volunteer?
Strange, my wife is a teacher (junior high special education), and she works 10 hours a day, for 9 months a year (approximately 40 weeks). That comes to 2000 hours a year. She makes about $19.00 an hour (rounding UP).
Even in the rural areas of PA teachers start out at least double that.
Let's not forget the grueling hours they work - What is the worst case? 8:00 to 3:00? And how many half days do they get? And here in the NY, a few flurries an a Monday or Friday gets you a three day weekend. It is not like they are working 50-60 hours a week like us mortals.
Underpaid my arse.
The teachers in our town can make more per day than when they teach during the school year by teaching summer school.
I don't know where people keep getting this "three months off" idea.
My wife is a high school teacher here in Connecticut, and so are both of her parents, her brother and his wife, and her aunt. For my wife, Final Exams end this year on June 20. She has to come in the next day to submit final grades.
In August, classes will start up again around August 27th. In that time span, she has a mandatory 1 week training & curriculum development workshop she is required to attend. She doesn't get paid at all during the months of July or August, so it's not exactly a vacation, more of a "temporary layoff."
Teachers don't get to choose when to take vacations, unlike people in most other professions who, a month or two ahead of time, just block out their calenders. Yes, they get a certain number of "personal days," but these can't be used as a supplement to a vacation, and you can't take more than one consecutively.
When the numbers are skewed with the per-hour stuff, then yes. However, if you go by annual salary (W-2's, not some mathematical conversion prorated for X), then I'd bet the rankings would be different.
Let me also add that the discipline within athletics is much stricter than in the classroom. Off-task behavior on the practice field or during games is usually not tolerated, and most parents will not challenge the consequences given their kid in those circumstances.
Well, if you want to do it like that, it's really $5,87/hour, if you count every hour in a year. It's a bogus number which means nothing, jst like yours.
Hourly pay is hourly pay, not a rerverse-calculated annualized pay per hour.
Teacher get into the profession fully aware they work 9 months of the year, and get every little holiday imaginable. If they are unaware of this, they are way to stupid to be teaching! That's often why they do it, for the time off! I'd love to be able to take every summer of, but in my professsion, that's impossible.
there are actually some *really* good school in detroit.
174 days in MS..that's how many days they work....174. My best friend is a teacher. She makes good money and sleeps in all summer. The whole argument is a crock....and if you'd hear the stories of how often she has to check the spelling and grammar of her fellow teachers before memos leave the building or check the bulletin boards etc....you'd wonder what in the hell was going on.
It's amazing how many folks who don't actually know any teachers, think they know all about their days.
Here I go, letting fly the flames of war.
I am a public school teacher in a rural S. Georgia county. I am compensated very well for the service I provide in respect to the overall average income (Somewhere around 19-24K/year).
Am I overpaid? Perspective says yes, based on my cost of living and other extrinsic factors.
If I taught in Detroit/Atlanta/Chicago, maybe I would be underpaid, taking cost of living into account.
Since there are so many ways to skin a cat or argue about teacher pay, what I am saying can and will be distorted to fit whatever way someone wants to look at it. I accept this.
That said, I went into teaching because I *wanted* to be a teacher. Period. I could have gone to law school/med school/business etc, but I *chose* to become a teacher.
And if you really, really think about it, how much is anyone truly worth? Considerably more than what they are compensated for, indeed, but that is another post.
Although there are many wonderful, hard-working teachers, the ubiquitous perception that teachers are underpaid clearly demonstrates how well the teachers' union propaganda resonates with the masses.
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