and reminder that the opportunity cost of a few days’ strike is far outweighed by teachers being overworked to the bone without adequate compensation or psychological support, resulting in the best teachers weeding themselves out of the field altogether.
anti-union sentiment is hurting kids.
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Teachers in America are paid and treated like absolutely noone cares about them. Without them, prisons would be even more overpopulated, the wealth gap would be a wealth chasm, events of bigotry would skyrocket, parents would have to pay for daycare, children would go without lunch, etc. Honestly I have a hard time imagining anything in this shithole getting significantly better without improving funding for teachers and schools. However, I think that’s the exact reason they aren’t funded-better.
You mean everything you mention isn’t already happening in multiple states?
My dad has told me multiple times “teachers unions are the worst thing that has happened to teachers.”
Someone very close to me is a teacher and I don’t think I’ll be able to stand hearing him say it again.
thats so enraging im so sorry
We generally find that the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests that teacher unionization and union strength are associated with increases in district expenditures and teacher salaries, particularly salaries for experienced teachers. Cowen and Strunk
He claims to understand the plight of teachers because his mom was a high school guidance counselor 50 years ago and his sister was a tutor/substitute teacher 15 years ago. He’s 100% out of touch and if that wasn’t already clear, he told me that he didn’t believe there was a teacher shortage.
I pay $3500/year in school taxes. Teachers are in poverty while administration makes well into six figures, and climbing. Make it make sense.
It’s not just the pay.
It’s also the constant walking on eggshells about every single topic
Administrators controlling how teachers run their classroom
Discipline being relegated to the teachers taking time away from teaching
Open communication between parents and teachers being abused with no help from administration
Lack of resources to properly cover certain topics
Lack of programs to properly educate different types of students in ways they need, ways that a traditional classroom environment doesn’t provide.
Source: Former teacher
I would say 10 years ago it probably would have been mostly a pay issue. Now, all the teachers I know, a raise wouldn’t be enough to right the ship. Teaching to the test, no child left behind, the ever increasing behavior problems with no real way to stop it, the list goes on and on.
wow thank you for sharing this :)
This is spot on. A family member of mine is a high school teacher and faces everything you laid out. I’d add the seemingly constant threats of lawsuits and violence to further illustrate the untenable atmosphere.
I loved teaching. I went broke doing it, but I loved it.
Same. Might consider going back in the future but probably not.
this is what is so heartbreaking! teachers are what we thought doctors were growing up. i don’t know one who isn’t so intensely passionate and loving towards their students and work.
and the despicable cost-cutting system recognizes that and decides to simply take advantage of it. “the most passionate individuals are willing to do the job for the least pay? easy business decision.”
and when yall manage to scrape together a union we’ll further blame student issues on teachers’ failures, and not school leadership’s failures to partake in collective bargaining, a process so well entrenched in society that most other industries are able to do it without even coming close to a strike.
sorry im worked up over this, don’t know if you could tell lol
What ended up making me quit was the bureaucracy. The low pay, on it’s own, was awful, but I was willing to put up with it.
Getting screamed at by some office worker because they didn’t like how I chose to fill out an attendance report made me go “This is not worth it. I’m better than this.”
I was making $16.50 an hour teaching in the early 2000s. I’m now making just under $70 an hour working in the profession I was teaching.
When I graduated college, I was interviewing with the charter school that my mom works at. They were looking for ANYBODY with a degree in physics. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a licensed educator, it didn’t matter that all I had was a Bachelor’s degree. They were offering an annual salary of $42,000 per year.
Two years later, I’m making over 4x that amount, annually, as a software engineer.
I really would love to teach, because I love science and I love teaching. But I love financial stability and a good work/life balance wayyy more.
My dream would be to coach full time. I’ve interviewed with colleges (smallish and local) and it might as well be volunteer since it’s not football or basketball. Damn shame.
