Those High Paid Teachers

[Ebony AKA AngieJ]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Amber <reanna20 at y...> wrote:
> 
> I know forwards are generally looked down upon everywhere in the
> cyber-world, but this one came from one of my friends who is a 
teacher.
> Since we've currently been chatting about teachers, I thought it was
> apt. Oh, and read it to the end, it's not what it seems.

Thanks for the forward, Amber!  I'll be sure to pass it on.

Teacher salaries, due to critical shortage, ARE improving.  For 
instance, a first-year teacher in Michigan with a bachelor's degree 
and no classroom experience makes on the average between $35-40 K for 
39 weeks of work.  If you teach summer school (and most of us do--the 
thing that no one tells you about teaching is that you do not get 
paid vacations!), you make an additional $2500 to $4000 before taxes 
(depending on the hours and responsibilities).  

Because we're in trade union country, our benefits are second only to 
what the auto workers get.  The current administration doesn't like 
the monolithic education unions (I'm an AFT member), and in college I 
thought "unionized profession" was an oxymoron, but the unions are 
really the only protection we have.  

This is the state with the highest cost-of-living to salary ratio for 
public school teachers, which is why I returned home to teach.  I'd 
make about the same as I would have if I'd started in New York (whose 
school board I interviewed with), but I have a much more comfortable 
standard of living here.  Our governor also signed a bill into law 
that provided every teacher in Michigan with a new laptop computer--
we all laughed when we heard about it, until the computers all 
arrived this spring.  Overall, I think this is a good place to teach.

My veteran colleagues mostly all have master's and specialist 
degrees, so they make around $70K a year.  When we younguns complain 
about what a pittance we're making, they tell us to shut it... when 
they began (mostly in the late 60s and early 70s), Michigan teachers 
were making less than $5000 a year.

The problem with public school teacher salaries is merit pay.  Huge 
controversy--the president and those who think like him want it.  The 
unions and most teachers do not.  It's a good idea in theory, but 
difficult to carry out. 

What would you base it on?  Test scores?  Performance evaluations?    
Sounds good in theory, again, but not in practice.  It would be 
unfair for a teacher in a rich, high-scoring suburban district to be 
counted as "better" than a teacher who works with underprivileged 
city kids where scores are not as high.  Many administrators were not 
successful as teachers (which is why TPTB got them out of the 
classroom--it's really, really hard to fire an NEA/AFT teacher, or 
one with tenure) and *hate* those who are masterful in the classroom. 

Not sure how to solve this.  I started teaching in the spring of '99 
expecting to solve all the ills of the American education system... 
but being here has raised more questions than answers for me.  :-)

Again, I'm rambling... but I like to talk about teaching and kids.  A 
lot.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ