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The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

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Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#251

Post by exelius »

aerique wrote: post #84

Honest question: We lived with one car (a car that was given to us) for 4 ½ years. During that time, I walked or rode my bike to school to save on gas. We recently bought a second car with money I saved from my web design business. Is the US really structured so that owning one car is (seen as) a problem?

Yes. If you live outside the center of a major city, you must own a car or rely on other people for rides. There is often no public transit, and the distances between things can be very, very large (easily 10-20km between small towns, and expanding the further west you go). Most non-Americans underestimate how enormous the USA is, even on a local level.

If you're a couple and both of you have jobs, it's not always feasible to have one person drop off the other before work because things are so spread out. Without public transit, this means people often need 2 cars.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#252

Post by blister »

sethammons wrote: post #193
scott_s wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I think that number includes private money. 2. Comparing salaries across countries is not that useful - teachers aren't going to go to another country to teach. But they will go to another, higher paying job near them. So the more meaningful salary comparison to make is with the amount of education and work-time a teacher needs, how much do alternative jobs in the same area pay?

This. As a teacher, I could make about $45k a year, working through the summer. Work through the weekends on lesson plans, and through the evening grading. Easily 60 to 70 hours a week. Winter vacation and spring break might allow me to catch up on grading as there is always more to catch up on. As a software developer, I make over twice that. I typically work 40ish hours a week, and have vacation.

Why do you have to grade so often? Aren't you responsible for deciding how much work to grade? Are you certain assigning homework is the most effective way to gauge student understanding of concepts?

That's something I'll never buy about teachers. All of the ones I know complain about how much time they spend grading papers. I just want to scream "Stop assigning homework!"

Honestly, maybe what we need is new and creative teaching methods that happen in class rather than just piling on work to the students.

(Don't take this as a slam on you, I'm just curious why teachers always go the "Give them homework" route. Kids end up with hours of homework all the dang time.)

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#253

Post by jnbiche »

noir-york wrote: post #220
noir-york wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current policies of Obama are not necessarily the policies he would like to implement. He voted for the cromnibus' because it keeps government open and funds a few of his signature policies, but that doesn't imply its the budget Obama wanted to pass. Obama has to be pragmatic. Obama and Warren 'talk a good game' as you put it but I'd bet that in a different political system, say Britain's, they'd be execute on th…

Why was I down-voted?

I strongly disagree with you, but I didn't downvote you. There are people on HN who downvote things they disagree with.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#254

Post by king_jester »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #247
vonmoltke wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are most certainly allowed to increase the cap. They don't have the money to. Texas is putting state money into state-run academic hospitals in order to increase the number of slots open, and at least one non-profit academic hospital here (Scott & White) is using their own money to increase the number of residency slots they have.

I don't think its true that they're allowed to increase the cap. These quotes suggest otherwise. "Physicians and medical students from across the country are urging Congress...to lift the cap on the number of available residency slots." http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2013-02-03-urge-co... "The BBA resident limits have imposed significant limitations on the ability of teaching hospitals and medical schools…

Its not a hard cap, its a cap of number of residencies that will be supported by federal funding through Medicare:

http://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2012/08/30/why-reside...

A large majority of residencies are funded this way due to the very high cost of residency. As a result, many private institutions won't increase residency numbers on their own due to funding.

The main issue is the cost of residency is massive and is prohibitive for private money to fund anyone's residency.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#255

Post by marcosdumay »

deadgrey19 wrote: post #115
jonpress wrote: post #109

I was surprised that he mentioned the global financial crisis. I think 'too big to fail' was one of the biggest frauds ever committed against society. There is no such thing as too big to fail. I think the 2008 financial crisis was an evolutionary mechanism for society to rid itself of excessive greed among its leaders (natural selection). The bailout was an unnatural intervention and will only serve to propagate the…

This seems a little short-sighted to me. Bailing out the banks was not a question of protecting the banks (who are by no means blameless), it was a question of limiting collateral damage. A large bank failing has the potential to render (literally) millions of innocent people ("mom's and pop's") instantly bankrupt. If a bank fails, there's no way to get your money out. The money simply goes away. Typically banking pr…

By the book, the procedure for "bailing out" a bank is to seize it (what's worth nothing, since it's bankrupt), pay enough of the debit so it gets some market value, and auction it back to the private economy.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#256

Post by scott_s »

blister wrote: post #252
sethammons wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. As a teacher, I could make about $45k a year, working through the summer. Work through the weekends on lesson plans, and through the evening grading. Easily 60 to 70 hours a week. Winter vacation and spring break might allow me to catch up on grading as there is always more to catch up on. As a software developer, I make over twice that. I typically work 40ish hours a week, and have vacation.

Why do you have to grade so often? Aren't you responsible for deciding how much work to grade? Are you certain assigning homework is the most effective way to gauge student understanding of concepts? That's something I'll never buy about teachers. All of the ones I know complain about how much time they spend grading papers. I just want to scream "Stop assigning homework!" Honestly, maybe what we need is new and crea…

Personally, by the time I reached middle school, homework was when the learning happened.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#257

Post by vonmoltke »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #247
vonmoltke wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are most certainly allowed to increase the cap. They don't have the money to. Texas is putting state money into state-run academic hospitals in order to increase the number of slots open, and at least one non-profit academic hospital here (Scott & White) is using their own money to increase the number of residency slots they have.

I don't think its true that they're allowed to increase the cap. These quotes suggest otherwise. "Physicians and medical students from across the country are urging Congress...to lift the cap on the number of available residency slots." http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2013-02-03-urge-co... "The BBA resident limits have imposed significant limitations on the ability of teaching hospitals and medical schools…

Medicare funding drives GME availability, but that is only because it represents the lion's share of the funding for it. Universities in Florida and Texas[1], the two states with the biggest shortfalls in residency slots, are taking steps to address this by finding other sources of funding or creating partnerships with non-academic hospitals to have med students do their residencies there.

I may be mistaken, but I don't think the federal government even has the power to restrict the number of residency slots.

[1] http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MedicalEducat...

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#258

Post by mullingitover »

coryrc wrote: post #240
mullingitover wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two-income household is sort of the 'betray' option in prisoner's dilemma. If nobody did it, labor would be vastly more valuable, and nobody would need two incomes to support a family (generally). Kids get a full-time parent, nobody has to depend on day care, it's an awesome deal for families. However, as soon as the critical mass of people starts depending on the extra income stream, the value of the labor drops…

Yeah, because no one can create wealth, especially not women...

Well that's a pretty sexist thing to say, and why even bring gender into this at all?

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#259

Post by relaytheurgency »

talmand wrote: post #197
Goronmon wrote: post #189

I honestly don't know how people stay teachers for more than a couple years in most places. The people who I know who are teachers not only get paid fairly poorly, they work 60-70 hour weeks, have less and less control over how they are allowed to teach and also have to deal with crazy parents (ie. parent stalking outside school, sending books/emails, because they apparently aren't teaching in a way that is pro-conse…

I think the pro-conservative/pro-christian snipe isn't necessary. In my experience parents all across the political/social/class spectrum are capable of crazy things when it comes to their kids.

It doesn't even have to be political. I had a parent supposedly "so angry that he could not meet me in person for fear of hurting me" because his daughter supposedly came home crying from school every day due to my class. He was just a pushover parent who was being utilized by a girl that did not want to be in physics class. She was even bragging to her friends about how she was going to get her dad to have her pulled from the class.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#260

Post by relaytheurgency »

iguanayou wrote: post #224

I taught high school for 5 years and made the same decision. The biggest factor for me was how the schools were being administered; just a few examples: - Competition among students, instead of being used as a motivator as piles of research suggests, was specifically DISALLOWED because it might make certain students feel bad. - When a student fell behind because they were slacking off in class, it was the teacher's r…

I'm confused. Do you mean you made x/3 as much as a software engineer? Average salary for a software engineer here is somewhere around 80,000 and I have not met a single teacher making even that.

Edit: Nevermind. As a software engineer you make three times a teacher's salary. I get it now.

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