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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#401

Post by nerdponx »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #394
danaris wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teachers get enormous amounts of time off Anyone who's actually been or known a teacher knows this is false. During the school year, in the time they're not actively teaching, teachers are - Coaching sports - Overseeing other student extracurricular activities - Making/updating lesson plans - Presiding over detention - Tutoring students who need more 1:1 time - Serving on school committees (especially in larger dis…

> Making/updating lesson plans Why? Are they really better than khan academy at doing a lesson plan? Isn’t this like a software engineer complaining they have to write their own database driver in their spare time after work?

> Are they really better than khan academy at doing a lesson plan?

Yes

> like a software engineer complaining they have to write their own database driver in their spare time after work?

No

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#403

Post by tristor »

greenie_beans wrote: post #358
msrenee wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching pays nothing compared to CS, finance, basically most things you need a degree for. Those brilliant individuals who would like to teach have to decide if their passion is worth making less money than some warehouses are paying around here. Those who don't have the grades or abilities to reach for the higher-paid fields have less of a dilemma. We're actively selecting against the candidates who have more lucra…

I work in tech and would likely teach if it paid the same. My plan has always been to front load my retirement savings early in my career through tech so that I can take a lower paying teaching job when I'm older.

I’m in the exact same boat. One thing I enjoy doing is guest lecturing at local colleges in CS classes, around topics I have professional expertise in. If that sounds like something you’d like to do as well, I’d recommend getting involved in your local ACM chapter, as most college CS programs have an ACM tie-in.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#404

Post by jscipione »

n4r9 wrote: post #382
jscipione wrote: post #381

I don’t want teachers anymore either because I see them as an institution of racially motivated anti-white hate. From CRT to the Minneapolis teachers’ union all I see is hate.

Could you provide some concrete examples please?

Sure https://criticalrace.org/ details anti-white hate training in higher education including teaching colleges as well as elite private high schools, and the Minneapolis Teachers’ union’s new anti-white hate policy has been widely reported for example by msn https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minneapolis-teachers-union...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#405

Post by elforce002 »

tristor wrote: post #391
_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

1. Administrators. We have insane administrative bloat, especially in higher ed. In some institutions there is nearly a 1:1 count of administrators to faculty. Ironically, given the social politics implied by the author, a significant amount of administration bloat is specifically tied to DEI. 2. Well, they are. A teaching certification used to only require two years of higher learning compared to typical 4 for other…

This is true in almost every country. Education is a money pit.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#407

Post by prepend »

_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

> teachers seem to be grossly underpaid

Is this true? It seems like teachers in the US [0] make the 7th highest in the world on average. Of course the US is big and has lots of diversity so there may be pockets that aren’t paid more. But I think they are paid more than other countries.

I think the issue isn’t pay as they are paid more than the US median and mean for annual salary (since they aren’t paid for their two summer months off). And they have more vacation days than any other profession with their 40-60 days of leave.

It’s an important profession, but it’s pretty well paid and stable.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#408

Post by carapace »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #176

> Nobody wants to teach Counterpoint: the internet is full of people who want to teach. The first school of YouTube is overflowing with educational content on everything from merge sort to patching dry-wall. A large portion of my social circle hold teaching/mentorship as a career goal. I don't think this is pedantic. When I look around, I see a surplus of people that want to learn and want to teach. What I don't see…

This. The Internet obviates most of our current educational system. E.g., textbooks are absurd in a world where every child has a radio-networked pocket supercomputer.

The daycare aspect of schools is broken, obviously, but that's a deep societal problem far beyond the ability of teachers to fix.

The educational aspect of schools is (mostly, but not entirely) redundant to the resources available for free on the Internet.

Perhaps we should separate those aspects from each other? (I dunno. I don't have children so it's not (immediately) my problem.)

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#409

Post by justin66 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #395
justin66 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to compensate teachers [1], but in general, you really shouldn't make categorical statements on matters you are completely unfamiliar with. I help manage the finances of someone who is in the position of being unable to collect any social security benefits from the relatively brief time she had a regular job which paid into social security prior to becoming a teacher, and is also unable to collect…

I'm not above learning something. Texas seems to be district-dependent, and CA is statewide: https://www.trs.texas.gov/Pages/active_member_social_securit... https://www.calstrs.com/social-security This is not the case for NY, and not in WI and PA as I have heard from teachers there. In cases where they don't receive it though, they're not paying into it either. I can't comment as to whether that is a good or bad thin…

> In cases where they don't receive it though, they're not paying into it either.

If the "it" you're referring to is social security, this is, to use your phrase from above, "patently untrue." It would be comforting if that were the case, but there are cases where a person who has paid into social security will not receive anything from it, and will not receive their spouse's Social Security survivor's benefits, under WEP and GPO rules. As I explained above, I know one of these people and help her manage her money.

To the original point in my grandparent post: just having to do the math on this stuff could be deterrent to someone trying to make a decision about whether teaching is a smart career move.

> Maybe the union membership by in large doesn't want to?

WEP and GPO are a matter of federal law, although "maybe the unions want this thing that is obviously hostile to their members" is certainly... a thought a person could have. As it happens the American Federation of Teachers is lobbying to eliminate WEP and GPO, and I assume there are other unions who are acting similarly:

https://www.aft.org/resolution/repeal-windfall-elimination-p...

https://sports.yahoo.com/congressional-bill-may-soon-end-194...

(some potential disinformation in the second link, but the point is, this is a pretty active debate)

edit: It occurs to me that maybe you meant "maybe they do not want to pay into Social Security," which is probably true. To keep this in perspective, these teacher pensions which were considered an alternative/supplement to Social Security are a lot older than the WEP and GPO, which came along to kick those with these pensions in the nuts in the late seventies and early eighties. The teachers and their unions were already committed to the path they were on when the federal government changed the rules on them.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#410

Post by batshibstein »

randomdata wrote: post #319
bee_rider wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. 2) How little do you pay babysitters? At, say, $5 per kid per hour, a teacher of 20 would be doing pretty well, and that's on the low side of class sizes these days I think.

> Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. Yes. Gone are the days that you would hire a teacher to teach you something. These days you turn to automated teaching services. The fact that the word teacher is now synonymous with the K-12 school teacher further emphasizes that the career in general has effectively disappeared. A…

$1 per student in a 25-student classroom for 30 hrs/week for 36 weeks is like 27k, the base salary isn't much higher than that. So that's assuming a worthless teacher with 0 added value. The added value is probably at least 3x even for a subpar teacher up to 10-20x for a top performer and the actual time variables are all probably higher than listed above.

I would imagine the 10-20x value-adders aren't incentivized and are probably actively de-incentivized in the faculty senate/union dynamic unless they literally love the job that much which is debunked in the OP post.

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