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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#901

Post by justsocrateasin »

colinmhayes wrote: post #630
justsocrateasin wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. I'd disagree. Some anecdotal evidence - I'm from a HCOL suburban area with a nationally ranked public school system. Teachers here are generally considered "well-paid" by teacher salary standards. Many of the teachers in my area literally cannot afford to live here, and have to commute…

I went to Chicago public schools. Most of my teachers had graduate degrees from degree mill schools, some even had phds that they loved to talk about even though I doubt they spent more than a few days to get them. That ended up meaning they all made around 110-120, with full pension after I believe 30 years. Certainly not an amazing salary, and they all worked much harder than I ever have, but nothing to laugh at I’…

Very good point, that's a salary you can live very comfortably on. Seems like it just depends on the school district, but I'd say the authors main point, that salaries across the board for teachers are lower than they should be given how hard the job is and how qualified most teachers are, still holds true.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#902

Post by tsol »

nine_k wrote: post #858
draebek wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis on "classroom control" personally doesn't surprise me. If two or three students start refusing a teacher's orders, that teacher is done for the year, and maybe forever at that school. In my middle school, discipline was all but lost in most of my classes. Play cards in class, tell the teacher to shut up. What's she going to do? We stole her phone and keys in first period, locked the doors to the room, an…

I said it before and will say it again: the way public high schools are arranged is cruel towards both the kids and the adults. (Also counterproductive, but first of all, cruel.) Teenagers are forced into groups of the same age, within 1 year tolerance. This is the age of learning of social structures, building social ties, learning about various forms of social status, etc. They need to be inside a rich social struc…

You said exactly what I've always thought about public school but could never put into words. I've found, though, that private school avoids some of these problems by filtering out problem kids and keeping class sizes small. Kids can be made to be friends with each other(at least to some extent), but many of them don't have that guidance

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#903

Post by eitland »

Wistar wrote: post #843
donw wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents were both teachers. A significant trunk of my classmates went into teaching after college. We keep in touch. The above comment is accurate.

Which "above comment"?

"Above" typically means above in thread, i.e. "parent", i.e. the post/comment one replies to.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#904

Post by justsocrateasin »

prepend wrote: post #711
WWLink wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To answer your question of "why don't they change professions?", I think that's rather naive. Not everyone is on the path of trying to optimize financial independence and minimize time spent working. Why do folks go into journalism? Or art, or music? Are those people stupid, because they aren't in software engineering where work is more lucrative and easier? You're hanging out on a website where people regularly ta…

> a lot of people here really DO think those people who go into journalism/art/music are stupid because they're not working in more lucrative fields. I don’t think they are stupid as people have interests and there’s many reasons to pursue a career other than money. I just think they are stupid when they complain about how they don’t make a higher income in these fields. The income potential of these fields is known,…

> The income potential of these fields is known, so complaining about this, once in the field, is really just an irrational thing.

Are we not allowed to complain about known things? If you get a speeding ticket do you complain about it? Under that same philosophy, complaining about your ticket is irrational and stupid. Someone complaining about a hangover is irrational and stupid. Someone complaining about having back problems because you sit all day and don't exercise is irrational and stupid. I just don't think this line of reasoning makes sense at all. Our priorities change and maybe a teacher wants to do something good for the world but after 10 years they see they're not paid/respected well, and they have a family to take care of and a mortgage to pay and they're tired because they work 60 hour works. IMO that's a very rational place to start complaining.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#905

Post by notch656a »

jedberg wrote: post #595
meetingthrower wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive analysis of our budget. For primary education through high school, admin is NOT the root cause. If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3 or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs. Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and…

I read a book a while back whose main argument was that we spend so much on the bottom 1% (special ed), why aren't we spending an equal amount on the top 1%? Why don't the smartest kids get one on one instruction and special resources that no one else gets? To be fair the author was fairly balanced and presented the arguments against, such as that they tend to come from wealthier families that can provide that suppor…

Some of it may be crab mentality. No matter how much you spend on some (but not all) special ed kids, there's no worry they will academically surpass the majority of students. So there's no fear from parents that the spending will mean their own kid gets dragged further down the pecking order.

Spending for gifted children means putting other kids even higher up the pecking order than their own average kid. Who wants to spend a bunch of money to watch their kid get left further behind the front of the pack?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#906

Post by effingwewt »

gms7777 wrote: post #656
effingwewt wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or could it possibly be they aren't paid enough to care? Here above you was a professor stating how shit it is to be one, and the very next comment is a student shitting on professors in general. This very thread exemplifies why no one wants to teach.

It's not that they're not paid to care, it's that they're not paid to teach. At least at research universities, tenured/tenure-track faculty's job is to do produce research and get grants. Teaching is a thing that's piled on top of it that doesn't help your career and takes a whole lot of time away from your primary job function. A lot of professors do actually care about teaching and genuinely want to help students,…

I got you, I hadn't even thought of that end, more of the professors teaching.

Even then I have seen myself they lean too much on TA's who are barely a semester ahead sometimes.

Thanks for clarifying about the research side, really appreciate it.

All of this is just so sad.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#907

Post by notch656a »

justsocrateasin wrote: post #901
colinmhayes wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Chicago public schools. Most of my teachers had graduate degrees from degree mill schools, some even had phds that they loved to talk about even though I doubt they spent more than a few days to get them. That ended up meaning they all made around 110-120, with full pension after I believe 30 years. Certainly not an amazing salary, and they all worked much harder than I ever have, but nothing to laugh at I’…

Very good point, that's a salary you can live very comfortably on. Seems like it just depends on the school district, but I'd say the authors main point, that salaries across the board for teachers are lower than they should be given how hard the job is and how qualified most teachers are, still holds true.

Are our public school teachers unfit to be teachers and low-quality workers because not high enough wage is offered for quality people? Or is it that the salary attracts competent people but other factors are broken?

The interesting thing to me is I see people almost universally praise our teachers, and comment on how great and caring they are. The money seems to be attracting the raw talent, so I'm leaning towards something else is much more broken in our system.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#908

Post by pojzon »

vehementi wrote: post #772
pojzon wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago teachers were respected and parents trusted teachers with their kids. If the kid was misbehaving in class or getting bad grades -> was properly managed by parents. Right now parents are delusional about their kids. Blame teachers if something is wrong with the kid. Cant understand that most likely they are the issue why the kid is behaving this way. Dont want to take the blame. At least those are my obes…

Like other people in this thread I've had the idea of retiring early and having a second career as a teacher. What if I did that, and then just refused to take any of that shit? Are teachers rare enough that I wouldn't get fired?

You could lose your rights to teach for many years as teachers are supervised by independent curatory system.

If you get blamed a lot you can also get a court case.

You are on a lose-lose position as a teacher.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#909

Post by notch656a »

horsawlarway wrote: post #332
lotsofpulp wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and for daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive & clean You cannot compare the per child costs of taking care of a kid who cannot go to the toilet themselves or eat by themself with a kid who is much more self sufficient. The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might need to be much les…

I think comparing the costs between the 5 year olds in our daycare and the 6 year olds entering first grade is entirely fair. Our daycare gets more expensive as the child ages - not less. > The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might need to be much less qualified than an AP physics teacher in high school, but the labor (and liability) costs do not necessarily scale exactly with the minimum qualifications ne…

>For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr)

>I think comparing the costs between the 5 year olds in our daycare and the 6 year olds entering first grade is entirely fair.

Which is it, you're paying for a 1 year old or a 5 year old? What daycare do you go to that 5 year olds pay the same rate as an infant?

What would be "fair" is to not lie, and be truthful and say your original comment was comparing an infant (or 1 y/o) to school child, and not play switch-a-roo to now say we're talking about 5 year olds which in most states requires something like 1/3 the number of caregivers per child as a 1 year old.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#910

Post by bmitc »

Lack of autonomy and abysmal pay is why I don't teach. I would love to do so, but it literally requires you to sacrifice your lifetime and lifestyle.

It's pretty simple: increase taxes on the wealthy and megacorps and pay teachers more. Also, get rid of the bureaucrats who infest education administration.

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