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Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

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Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#71

Lots of comments to the tune of "pay teachers more." Teachers in large urban areas with strong unions tend to be paid quite well, especially factoring in benefits, and it doesn't necessarily correlate that well with various metrics of "success" in education (standardized test scores, on-time graduation rate, fewer violent incidents) once you look into individual cases and see through the administrative means by which…

In the area I taught, median pay was about $60k/yr. After 20 years and getting more advanced degrees, you could get to $80k/yr. Most of the teachers I worked with worked more hours per year than just about any software engineer I know. Only very lazy or very tenured teachers were getting the fabled summer vacation or winter break. I have more income, more vacation, and better hours as a developer than I ever did as a teacher

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#72

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

What did anyone expect when everyone whole-heartedly supported more mandatory testing and measurement intiatives to help failing schools, almost about a decade back? If you start emphasizing test scores, that's all that will be optimized.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#73

Lots of comments to the tune of "pay teachers more." Teachers in large urban areas with strong unions tend to be paid quite well, especially factoring in benefits, and it doesn't necessarily correlate that well with various metrics of "success" in education (standardized test scores, on-time graduation rate, fewer violent incidents) once you look into individual cases and see through the administrative means by which…

Yep. Currently a teacher myself, and I'm seriously considering quitting after this year. I enjoy teaching, but there's just so much BS crap that I have to deal with. Parents here (rural area in a Southern state) have no desire for education and often think their kids shouldn't have to do anything to pass. So I constantly get emails from Little Johnny's mother about his math grade when Little Johnny literally hasn't picked up anything except his phone all damn year. But I can't tell her that, or if I do it doesn't matter ("He'd do great if you taught him real world stuff"). The huge culture of anti-intellectualism leads to a lack of respect here, as does the whole "Those who can, do" type attitude. IT sucks.

Thankfully, my district doesn't require lessons plans except for the classes we're being observed in. They give us the syllabus and trust us to teach it. I love this, as it gives me the freedom to try and be creative and spend as little or as much time as I need on a topic, without being rigid in how I approach it. Sadly, a new hire last year came in and wants to change all that; we're now forced to give standardized tests across the same class (so all geometry teachers must give the same test), which implies we have to do it on the same day...So someone either ends up going too slow or too fast. It was damn annoying, and thankfully I'm leaving that department next semester (I'm certified for both math and science, so am moving to the latter).

And then there's education classes. They're all jokes, and the "research" is so BSed it's not even funny. And the writing quality of the Ed.D.s wouldn't fly for an undergrad at any top 20 school. It's hilarious, and they're all quite useless, and just talk about "theories" and never explain anything practical (laws, for instance, would be damn nice).

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding your kids too hard also causes burnout and rebellion

Again, that may or may not be an accurate characterisation of the circumstances. The parent may genuinely be writing at the students request. It’s seems reasonable there may be at least some students who genuinely want to do more work to improve their chances of being accepted in to their preferred choice at the next level.

If it's the parent writing at the student's request… I'd think it'd be more effective if the student themself emailed the teacher about the grade, wouldn't it?

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#75

Lots of comments to the tune of "pay teachers more." Teachers in large urban areas with strong unions tend to be paid quite well, especially factoring in benefits, and it doesn't necessarily correlate that well with various metrics of "success" in education (standardized test scores, on-time graduation rate, fewer violent incidents) once you look into individual cases and see through the administrative means by which…

In the area I taught, median pay was about $60k/yr. After 20 years and getting more advanced degrees, you could get to $80k/yr. Most of the teachers I worked with worked more hours per year than just about any software engineer I know. Only very lazy or very tenured teachers were getting the fabled summer vacation or winter break. I have more income, more vacation, and better hours as a developer than I ever did as a…

Yeah, the pay is an issue. Sure, I make great money for a single young male living in an low COL area, but there's no room to scale. My mom retired from teaching in the same district I'm currently in with 31 years experience. She was only making 15k more than I started at. There's no chance to increase pay apart from going administration (and even then it's not a huge increase) or getting more degrees (and there's a limit to those).

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#76
post #11

Articles like these, while only loosely related, always make me think that the software engineering bubble has to pop. You have people with ton of education busting their behind dealing with little brats all day to try to make sure they have a future... During that time, some bro who read a couple of books and hammered on his keyboard, and MAYBE did a 3 months bootcamp gets bummed if he can't pull in 100k in one of t…

I think we should treat teachers better and pay them more. I agree we should value other professions too. That being said, I’m not following how attitudes in software engineering are related to the topic of this post. The freebies, on call outrage, etc is inherent to the tech industry with venture capitalist money or otherwise insane net profits... the longer term sustainability is questionable, but fresh college gra…

> That being said, I’m not following how attitudes in software engineering are related to the topic of this post.

Sorry, I probably made my point poorly. It wasn't about attitude in software engineering. It was how insanely overvalued the field is, with a completely out of wack investment to reward ratio. Few to no other fields come even close, and its siphoning people from all other fields as well as creating unreasonable expectations from them. That's obviously not the root cause, but it's something to ponder.

Essentially, all I was saying is that the article made me think about how crazy the contrast between those 2 professions is.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#77
post #67

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

My entire family are teachers (Mum, Dad, Sister, Brother), and have all had to deal with this to varying degrees, and have had it consume their lives at various times. My brother has the best work-life balance of any teacher I have ever met, and I think his approach is brilliant. Teaching is one of those careers where the expectation is on the teacher to endlessly do more and work harder, "For the kids", and if you k…

Presumably the backpresure of requests does not go away - when parents email for information, they do not stop just because they didn’t get a response. They will reach out through other methods. Do you know how that irreducible workload gets resolved, other than getting passed to colleagues who do put in extra effort/hours?

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding your kids too hard also causes burnout and rebellion

Again, that may or may not be an accurate characterisation of the circumstances. The parent may genuinely be writing at the students request. It’s seems reasonable there may be at least some students who genuinely want to do more work to improve their chances of being accepted in to their preferred choice at the next level.

When I was in high school (20 odd years ago), the type of student who would want extra credit work was also likely to advocate for themselves quite capably.

I guess it's not impossible that a parent would intercede on behalf of their child, with the child's knowledge and permission, it just seems unlikely to me. Any student who is actually contemplating Princeton is almost by definition extremely self-motivated and independent.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#80
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The teachers union in Massachusetts made all the teachers sign liability waivers and arbitration waivers if a lawsuit happens. Wait what? I thought the union was supposed to at least pretend to look out for the teachers' interests.

I’ve never been in a union, but I’m sure not all unions are created equal. I wonder if unions get in a position where there’s no non-union competition they start to operate in the best interests of the union and not the interests of the people they represent. /shrug I’d love to hear more from the OP about this, fwiw.

If the best interest of the union is not the same as the best interest of the union members (teachers in this case, presumably), there's something seriously wrong.
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