The Exhaustion of the American Teacher

[Molitoth]

Ran across this article making it's way around facebook.
I thought it was very interesting, especially considering my wife is an elementary teacher. This really hits the nail on the head.
What are your thoughts?

I don't venture into the DC forum too often, sorry if repost.

And the article won't let me Copy/Paste.

http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/09/...erican-teacher

[BucEyedPea]

BTW, pr_capone, the site your chart comes from also says this under Salaries:
Salaries
Please note that all salaries in charts below do not represent exact amounts and are provided for reference only.


http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/salaries

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by pr_capone

My wife is a teacher. Most days she is out the door by 6AM and doesn't return until 5PM. That is if there isn't a meeting after class be it a school, grade level, or just a teaming session. On those days I typically see her come home by 7-7:30pm. When she gets home she is either grading papers or working on lesson plans for about an hour or two... I often help her grade. This doesn't include the time she sets aside to call parents and talk to them about their spoiled crotch fruit.

She typically will put in 6 hours on Saturdays. That is when she will typically meet with her student teach her to plan the week as well as teach the student teacher how to be an effective educator (no... she doesn't get paid extra to babysit a n00b teacher). Sundays she reserves for herself.

On a typical work week she is easily putting in 65-70 hours.

As for her 3 month vacation in summer. 2 of those months are taken up with personal development meetings put on by the district or taking additional college classes offered by the district to make her a better teacher. Of the remaining 4 weeks, 2 of them are spent in the classroom getting her room ready for the next school year and meeting with the teachers from the grade level below in order to become aquainted with her new students. The other 2 weeks... she actually takes for herself.

She has been teaching for 15 years and is 12 credit hours away from a Doctorate. She makes substantially less than that 70k number floating around earlier in the thread.

Spot on...as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been married to a teacher for 27 years and for you folks out there who don't know any better, PR isn't exaggerating...and after 27 years her salary is $40,000 and her medical insurance costs are $12,000 and rising...y'know, those perks that people assume are above and beyond their salary.

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by patteeu

It's hard for me to believe, but I won't call you a liar. She's a 2 sigma exception though.

Not everyone puts in this kind of time and effort but the majority come damn close to it.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Spot on...as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been married to a teacher for 27 years and for you folks out there who don't know any better, PR isn't exaggerating...and after 27 years her salary is $40,000 and her medical insurance costs are $12,000 and rising...y'know, those perks that people assume are above and beyond their salary.

So now your wife typically works 65-70 per week? Come on. We all can't be married to the workaholic fringe.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Not everyone puts in this kind of time and effort but the majority come damn close to it.

Majority? No.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Spot on...as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been married to a teacher for 27 years and for you folks out there who don't know any better, PR isn't exaggerating...and after 27 years her salary is $40,000 and her medical insurance costs are $12,000 and rising...y'know, those perks that people assume are above and beyond their salary.

My wife kept track of her hours one year. She made less than the minimum wage.

Those who think teachers are raping the public with high salaries are uneducated ignorants.

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by patteeu

So now your wife typically works 65-70 per week? Come on. We all can't be married to the workaholic fringe.

Sorry dude; these kind of hours are thrust upon them; they're not volunteering for it, so I wouldn't call them "workaholics" By the way, my wife's time is now being gobbled up even more; she's expected to make visits to extracurricular school events, like school carnivals and such, for PR to the parents (I'll bet PR Capone forgot to mention this)...and she's tied to it by a point system that affects her salary...not to increase it, but to maintain it...more time demanded for the same paycheck...and it grows worse every year.

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

My wife kept track of her hours one year. She made less than the minimum wage.

Those who think teachers are raping the public with high salaries are uneducated ignorants.

Damn straight. My wife justs wishes she'd bet paid half the hourly wage of a baby sitter and we'd be in clover.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by patteeu

So now your wife typically works 65-70 per week? Come on. We all can't be married to the workaholic fringe.

The teachers I work with are at school for at least 10 hours each day. They also have reading and planning each night to be completed at home, and that's for a single subject. The best thing we could do for our elementary teachers is move to a specialist model.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Sorry dude; these kind of hours are thrust upon them; they're not volunteering for it, so I wouldn't call them "workaholics" By the way, my wife's time is now being gobbled up even more; she's expected to make visits to extracurricular school events, like school carnivals and such, for PR to the parents (I'll bet PR Capone forgot to mention this)...and she's tied to it by a point system that affects her salary...not to increase it, but to maintain it...more time demanded for the same paycheck...and it grows worse every year.

I don't care what tale you want to tell. I know enough teachers, and plenty of them are good, hard-working teachers, to know that 65-70 hour work weeks is not typical. No where near a majority of teachers spend that much time working.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Spot on...as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been married to a teacher for 27 years and for you folks out there who don't know any better, PR isn't exaggerating...and after 27 years her salary is $40,000 and her medical insurance costs are $12,000 and rising...y'know, those perks that people assume are above and beyond their salary.

Everyone's medical insurance costs are rising. That's due to govt mandates on insurance to cover this and that whereby they pass along the costs. Well, that's one factor—a big one.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

My wife kept track of her hours one year. She made less than the minimum wage.

Well, one course I taught came to that for me.

Those who think teachers are raping the public with high salaries are uneducated ignorants.

I didn't see anyone saying that. Private school teachers make less ya' know—and many don't even get pensions.

But I'll tell you what. I wouldn't pay anyone teaching Grades 1-3, when children learn how to read, any more money until they change how they teach reading. And when I see a K child come home singing "Obama, Obama, Obama" and "I don't want that white guy to win" plus bringing home a reader on global warming, I don't know if I'd pay that K teacher a single time. This is a true story too. Happened in Maine. ( They have a lot of Agenda 21 propaganda via Federal funds up there in their schools. I read the most.)

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Spot on...as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been married to a teacher for 27 years and for you folks out there who don't know any better, PR isn't exaggerating...and after 27 years her salary is $40,000 and her medical insurance costs are $12,000 and rising...y'know, those perks that people assume are above and beyond their salary.

So, their pay hasn't increased for a long time, which I suggested. Like most people's not keeping up with inflation.
This would vindicate my claim on those two salaries I mentioned.

[BucEyedPea]

The Atlantic

Study: People Claiming to Work More Than 70 Hours a Week Are Totally Lying, Probably
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...bably/263825/#

Take part of this for what it's worth since it's from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF) in a study highlighted by Harvard Business Review. When asked how much work they do each week, Americans tend to report longer hours than when they keep a more accurate diary of their work, the BLS analysis found. For instance, a person who actually works 40 hours in a week will, on average, report working 43.

Not only that, but the more hours that people work, the more they exaggerate. Americans who say they work 75 hours a week tend to be exaggerating by 25 hours. (The average American work week in September was 34.5 hours, according to the BLS.)

It's hard to say whether people are just bad at estimating their work weeks, are intentionally inflating their hours, or some combination of the two. The BLS suggests that at least one factor is the "social desirability" of work. People may overstate their working hours out of fear of being considered lazy, especially if they are part of a social class that puts a premium on people who work too much.

[BucEyedPea]

Just like I said earlier. Also, Americans work more than lazy-ass socialist Europeans.

Top-Level Professionals View 40-Hour Work Week As Part-Time: Report

Over the last thirty years, the majority of Americans have started working longer hours while earning less, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress.

The report finds that in in 2006, American families worked an average of 11 hours more per week than they did in 1979. Indeed, now many top-level professionals, lawyers and doctors view the traditional 40 hour work week as a "part-time" job, according to the report:

"Many feel, with some justification, that a 40-hour week would be career suicide. This schedule is seen as 'part time' in many professional-managerial jobs, and tends to spell a less-prestigious and less upwardly-mobile career path."

Examining two government surveys conducted roughly 30 years apart, one using data from 1977 to 1979 and the other using data from the years 2006 to 2008, the report finds that people's approach to work-life and work-family balance has changed significantly.

Supplanting the traditional 40-hour work week, many employees now work 50 hours or more. According to the report, male professionals especially work longer hours. 37.9 percent of men with professional and managerial positions worked over 50 hours a week between 2006 and 2008, compared to 34 percent from the years 1977 to 1979. With professional women, the change is even more striking: 14.4 percent work over 50 hours currently, while only 6.1 percent did 30 years ago. ...

Despite this, incomes for the most part have not matched the extra hours worked. Since 1979, incomes have decreased 29 percent for the lower class and 13 percent for the middle. Upper class wages, however, have increased 7 percent over the same time period, which reflects the trend of longer hours resulting in disproportionately higher wages while wages for those working 40 hours a week have largely stayed the same.

Looks like teachers are in the same boat as many others in terms of pay not increasing.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_888231.html