Sure it is easy to to come to work from 7:30-3:05 and leave. Except we don’t. We stay, make copies, make lesson plans, clean our rooms, straighten desks, and use the restroom. Being a teacher isn’t as easy as it looks either. Teaching in an elementary school, peace of cake, right? WRONG, I do not get paid enough to get punched, bitten, kicked, spit at, and threatend. But I guess that 31.75 and hour should cover it!
People who argue that teachers are overpaid should come do my job for a week, and then see how you feel. We do not only work 8-3 M-F. Rarely are those our hours. I love working as a teacher and recognize I will not get paid for every hour I work, and can not earn overtime for hours I do work. But I do not complain. If we want to complain about an overpaid field, lets do it about doctors!
(In response to Scott: I am sure you were homeschooled then, because no teacher could have taught you anything worth while!)

So I think my opinion counts when I say that teaching is not an easy job. After graduating I quickly realized the corporate world wasn’t for me. So I started subbing in Southern California to feel out teaching. Subbing is a cake job, until it turns into a long term assignment. Then it becomes almost like real teaching. One assignment I worked about 60 hours/week, another about 40, but only because I had a second job, the lesson plan was already laid out for me, and all the standards had already been taught by that time of year.

But man! Big city kids are tough, and on a bad day it’s you against 120 of them. Class discipline is a bull that no college course could ever teach you to ride. Parents are a pain. And there are no breaks. You can’t go for a drive at lunch, or close the office door and shut your eyes to ease the mental strain induced by computing a million classroom variables simultaneously for hours on end.

A good metric of whether the salaries are too low is whether or not they deter potential candidates from entering the industry. Some of you wonderful teachers say you shouldn’t be in it for the money, and that’s because you are truly wonderful. But that’s not the attitude any taxpaying parent should be taking. For the rest of you, it’s your kids who miss out on the extra candidates by not investing further resources into this social and economic boon.

Much to my sadness, I will not be teaching. $55,000, mid-career, in San Diego doesn’t go very far. That’s what the average engineer starts at. The average house here costs between 500k and 700k, giving what internet salary calcluators tell me is a minimum morgage of $3000 a month. The starting salary in my district is 35k (which admittedly is low for the area). Am I supposed to raise a family with that? Half the entertainment of eating lunch with other teachers is hearing how they try to swing $300/month in homeowners fees, and $1000/month in daycare. To top it off, the push for “qualifed” teachers means regardless of what I’ve achieved or how much my skills are needed, I still have to spend two years in an intern program or take off a year or two for an expensive credential program. Oh yeah, and that’s not even counting the “those who do do, and those who don’t teach” speech I occasionally got when I told somebody I was thinking of going from chemical engineering to teaching.

Teaching is a beautiful thing. Just from subbing alone, I have had the greatest job satisfaction of my life. But as they say, “you gotta eat”. And considering the role education has played in the economic glory of the last century, it behooves society to take this institution a little more seriously.

Part of the problem is most people feel K-12 teachers work only 7.5 hours per day, then go home. Society thinks this is a blue-collar position where you get up, work, then go home. What isn’t accounted for are: outside time spent planning lessons, grading papers, attending mandatory workshops, spending own personal money on supplies, spending time with students outside of class, fixing computers, spending own personal money on tuition expenses, dealing with parents, dealing with administrators who haven’t been in the classroom in 20 years, and in my case … taking additional technology classes to further my technical knowledge. So really, it’s a blue and white collar position with constant non-paid overtime. This is the same for assistant principals/vice principals, but their salaries reflect this extra work (which is the same as a teacher).

Another problem too is there are a lot of administrators who label younger teachers, such as myself, as “inexperience” or “lack teaching skills” because of their age. I took this as an insult, because I had technical training skills that were highly sought after when leaving the profession. And I had a history of networking with kids inside and outside of the classroom as a teacher, coach, mentor, and community volunteer.

I also get sick when I read or hear “we need to encourage more mentor programs.” After my first year, my mentor was great; the overall program was a joke! We both met (along with other first year teachers), watched some outdated educational videos on classroom management, talked about non-relevant issues pertaining to our classroom environments, and received $1,000 for doing this after six sessions! My designated mentor was kind enough to inform me at the start of this program that it was “easy money” and “sort a joke because all these administrator types are doing is showing you videos and talking about their experiences as a teacher 10-20 years ago.”

My students, at times, were loud only because they were being engaged with the learning environment being offered to them! One teacher told me “when they were your age, they had a different classroom environment vs. an active learning environment like yours, Kevin.”

Depending upon where you live, 30k per year can go further in a rural town versus a major metro area such as Seattle (where I live).

What really should happen is union and state officials need to come up with a salary schedule reflective of the cost of living associated with one’s area; perhaps indexing/leverage it to the average home price for that particular community. Teachers that are most needed in a metro area should average out to 50k-90k per year; and those in rural areas can expect to make 35k-70k per year. Also, there should be a program for educational reimbursement for those requiring additional training (advanced technical classes, scientific/math classes, etc.)

The bottom line to retain teachers:
*Higher salaries
*Flexible training solutions for vocational/high need teachers with full reimbursements
*Make the profession feel like a management role. Encourage teachers that “they are in charge” of their environment.
*Another option: Cut the school day to half a day, allow the other half for lesson planning, development, training, meetings, etc.

Overall, I did enjoy being a computer education instructor; but felt I was working in an outdated system that needed some major improvements (high school education environment).

Just my two cents.

Although some work hard, some teachers don’t do a thing.

They come in 30 minutes early and leave about 30 minutes after school (still not 8 hours). They grade everything at school and brag how they don’t work that hard. They are either really organized, know their stuff, or are lazy not really caring.

In my experience it was rare to see a teacher who really cared about the position. They get paid what they are worth while the one who really try hard aren’t paid even close to how hard they work.

Consider this:

-Regardless if you have a shorter summer than your students you still get more time off compared to professionals with the same years of experience.

-You have guaranteed raises in most states. Your pay is scaled each year. If you are a crap teacher, you still get a raise. Consider professionals who work hard and can’t get raises for a few years or unless the company they work with is profitable.

-You know exactly how much money you are going to make. Seriously, before going into the profession you can see on paper what pay is given for educational levels and years of experience. If you didn’t like what you saw, don’t become a teacher in the first place. I’m not a teacher and I know what they make in my state based on that same scale.

-No one has it easy in the professional world. Most people are working hard, getting up early, and have all sorts of garbage to deal with during the day. Teachers aren’t the exception.

If you work hard, I appreciate you and feel sorry for you. If you are a slacker, you don’t earn what you are paid.

- Wake up at 5:30 am
- Open weight room at 6:00 am for weightlifting
- Clean up and prepare classroom 7:00
- Teach two-hour block 7:30-9:40
- Maintain an efficient classroom ensuring ALL students are learning
- Continue to build and establish relationships with students to ensure greater student achievement
- Identify signs of drug use, alcohol abuse, physical or sexual abuse, bullying, lice, etc.
- Have all materials and information ready (which means researching on your own time, collecting materials, copies, etc.)
- Incorporate technology such as PowerPoints, video clips, Internet, word processing, etc.
- Use formative and summative assessment to adjust your teaching and lessons to best suit the needs of kids
- Teacher meetings discussing student issues, cooperative lessons, planning, etc. 9:40-10:15
- Teacher planning time to research, correct assignments for formative assessment, create detailed lesson plans that align with state standards 10:15-11:15
- Lunch, but in my case, volunteer lunch duty (to help build rapport with student body) 11:15-11:45
- Teach second block 11:45-2:00
- Applied Academics (enrichment period, drug training, alcohol awareness, etc.) 2:00-2:20
- Prepare and plan for athletics 2:20-2:40
- Practice (I coach football, baseball, basketball, and wrestling – four middle school seasons) 2:40-5:00
- Arrive home 5:30 pm

At this point, you’d figure it’s been about 11 hours of work. However, this does not include the 2 to 3 hours I spend in the evening researching information, studying other lessons to incorporate in my classroom, handling phone calls if needed, analyzing and reflecting on my own performance, designing meaningful lessons that align with state standards, handle emails, etc. So a typical day this past 9 months would be approximately 12-14 hours. That’s 60-70 hours per week. That’s just as much, if not more than, most other occupations. And I made $50k this past year. That may sound a lot at first, but consider that in the current state of things, much of that goes to student loans, housing costs, and in many cases, continuing education costs. We must take additional courses that are not financed by the school district. This means that I must pay for my own graduate work (which adds more time on top of everything else) in order to maintain my teaching license. On top of all this mayhem, we must add the fact that 75% of parents today feel that I am their child’s babysitter, and if their child does anything wrong, it must be somehow the result of my doing.

Let me put this in perspective. I have a brother who was a 10-year veteran at Microsoft. He is one of the best in his field and makes approximately three times the salary I do. The statement about SAT scores seems to contradict my experience. He had a 1220 on the SAT, and I had a 1210. He was a 4.0 student in high school and graduated from the University of Washington with honors. I had a 3.99 in high school, was an all-state athlete, and graduated with high marks at the University of Washington as well. My father, a teacher of 34 years, is an incredibly intelligent individual who can describe almost anything about Pacific Northwest History, physiology, anatomy, or physical education off the top of his head at any moment in time. To say he’s “below average” in intelligence, or that I am below average in intelligence because we teach is an absurd statement. Many of us chose this profession knowing we’d be underpaid, but as a second-generation teacher who has grown up living the life of a teacher, I can say clearly that these comments posted here are hurtful. Being underpaid is one subject, being completely and utterly unappreciated for the work we do is appalling. I see programmers and technicians on here. Good for you, I am happy with your work and the efficiency you’ve produced in the world today. However, would you have the slightest idea how to even do any of that without your teachers? Would you have doctors, lawyers, politicians, or business people without the guidance, support, and wisdom of teachers to build them? Sure, you can state Einstein dropped out of school, as did Bill Gates. But any list of dropouts will show a rather short and exclusive group of geniuses that are exceptions to the rule. I will guarantee that 99% of school dropouts are not successful, and I also guarantee that 99% who finish school are far more successful than if they didn’t.

Finally, we are given the responsibility of your children. Many like you cannot handle your own kids. Don’t criticize teachers when we have to deal with kids dealing drugs, showing up to school with guns and knives, threatening us, fighting us, berating us. Don’t criticize when we deal with gangs, rapes, and the emotional destruction of young people around us everyday. Don’t criticize us when we have to work with students who have severe handicaps and be expected to conduct miracles. I won’t belittle any other occupation, but I ask that you do not belittle us for what we do, and I ask that you don’t make the ignorant claim that teachers are not underpaid when we deal with far more things than many of you. In our job, when we fail, it doesn’t mean money. It doesn’t mean additional hours of work. It doesn’t mean we scrap the idea and move on. It doesn’t mean we spend several more hours typing code, editing text, or be on call 24/7. When we fail, a kid’s life is completely changed. If we fail, then a person’s life will never be the same.

First, let’s not make the exception the norm. Every school (like every office) has some bad employees. There are teachers who made their lesson plans 10 years ago, leave as soon as the contract says they can, bore their students to tears and collect a paycheck. Probably the worst part of being union president is protecting the rights of bad teachers. The reason these bad teachers exist, however, is because administrators didn’t fire them in the first two years when they had the chance. My high school keeps less than ½ the teachers we hire each year because they are not good enough- it is the right of the principal and I rarely disagree with their decisions about who to let go.

The biggest mistake people outside of education make is to compare schools to a business and then conclude that private schools or test score comparisons will force teachers to just “teach better”. If you want to measure my performance based on a standardized test, then let me choose my students, the same way a project manager would choose his workers. The big lie of “No Child Left Behind” is that it requires every student in California to be proficient by 2014. Sounds good, right? It ignores that reality that all students don’t come to school ready or able to learn for a variety of reasons- the language they speak, what learning disabilities they might have, what emotional problems they might be going through, how many days they actually go to school or a million other reasons. Furthermore, we take everyone who walks through the door and by “proficient” they mean about a “B” student. Now imagine if your boss had to hire everyone who came through the door and make sure they were all good or excellent at their jobs. Furthermore, you can’t fire anyone and must actually spend more time and money if they don’t do their jobs. Your entire performance as a boss is measured by how well these employees do on a standardized test of their jobs over a 4-day period in spring. (Oh, the test doesn’t count to your employees- it doesn’t affect their pay or job status, but you try and get them to take it seriously anyway). You get the results 6 months later when they have moved on, so it really doesn’t help you teach them better. Your reward? Reading editorials and web pages that say you aren’t doing your job and you have it easy….

If teaching is so easy and high paying, why do so few people go into this profession?

Pete, Windsor CA

So yes, many teachers are well-paid. Just be careful that you don’t vent your anger over a teacher you once had on the entire profession.

When I work it out…..for all the hours that I actually work in a FULL YEAR….I make about $20 an hour, which is FAR below what other white collar professionals make.

I could repeat the comments that other teachers wrote, but there is no need!

By the way, on the topic of school choice – Arizona has school choice. Parents can send their students to any public school they want to…..so what do this equal out to??? Arizona is among the lowest in teacher salaries in the country and has ridiculous per pupil expenditures. Do you homework. It doesn’t work!

Finally, yes there are “bad” teachers and teachers who are dumber than rocks, but MOST of us are intelligent and caring persons. I took the ACT and my scores were in the upper 20th percentile. You are an ass sir!