Lulea Sweden

Jeff Miller wrote:
i'm ashamed to say that a 1st year teacher with a masters
degree and all proper teaching credentials in my city's schools has a

starting pay of a little over 29k...and it takes 20 years before
he/she
can expect to earn over 40k.


Working 10 months out of the year, 29K would equate to 35K for the rest
of us. Not a bad start, when you consider how relatively easy it is to
obtain an education degree and the lack of real knowledge on a subject
needed to *teach* it in some states, it is not unrealistic to expect
lowered salaries. (Please note i did not say teachers did not *know*
their subjects in all cases)

Elementary and Secondary education is not the noble profession many
folks make it out to be. Can some teachers make a difference in some
kid's life, of course. it still does not the whole profession noble.

You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.

Wayne
I might have left this alone if I wasn't writing checks to the IRS and
state today after receiving my property tax bill yesterday.

"Wayne Knight" wrote in message
oups.com...

//snip//
Working 10 months out of the year, 29K would equate to 35K for the rest
of us. Not a bad start, when you consider how relatively easy it is to
obtain an education degree and the lack of real knowledge on a subject
needed to *teach* it in some states, it is not unrealistic to expect
lowered salaries. (Please note i did not say teachers did not *know*
their subjects in all cases)


Wayne, I used to think pretty much the same thing as you. Not any more. My
wife teaches four levels of Japanese at one of the local high schools here
in St Louis County. She spends more time working outside of class than
inside, and subject matter knowledge is the least of the issues. There's a
good summer break, but she works evenings and weekends grading papers,
preparing lesson plans, talking to parents, preparing special lesson plans
for students who are suspended (one of the more asinine punishments),
preparing other special plans for students with disabilities, working with
other students who need extra help, assisting others who want to do
independent study, and on and on. And what's the reward for long hours and
extra dedication? Nothing but the psychic reward of occasionally making a
difference in somebody's life.

In my world, and probably in yours, people get ahead by working harder:
bigger bonuses, promotions, more perqs, etc. But not teachers. A talented
teacher who works harder gets tougher students.

Elementary and Secondary education is not the noble profession many
folks make it out to be. Can some teachers make a difference in some
kid's life, of course. it still does not the whole profession noble.

Is ANY profession noble? My wife doesn't make much money. But when her
former students who are now FBI agents, lawyers, and teachers come back
years later to see her and tell her what a difference she made, it's a
pretty valuable reward. And when one of her best students - an honor roll
student and athlete - elected to join the Marines to get money for college
and law school, and then went to Afghanistan on October 2001, I think her
concern about him was second only to that of his parents.

I suspect that few people other than teachers and police officers get such a
picture of the social issues that this country faces. There are people in
this community who don't eat every day because they can't afford it. There
are kids in my wife's classes whose mothers work full time for the minimum
wage and can't make ends meet for their families. There are kids who go to
bed at night having had nothing to eat all day except the free lunch at
school, and are about the be evicted from their homes. That is absolutely
true. And we penalize the kids for that!

You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.

Yeah. Get a bunch of technicians who're good test takers but haven't the
foggiest notion about the real world. Doesn't do any good to raise the bar
if not enough people want to get in.

Imagine a kid from the inner city of St Louis who is bused to an affluent
school in St Louis county. His mother can hardly afford to buy him a pencil
and paper, but now he is immersed in a school with kids who drive BMWs. How
does he feel? What kind of character does it take to deal with that, and how
do teachers deal with the issues? Probably not by learning something from a
textbook and passing a test about it.

Wayne
I might have left this alone if I wasn't writing checks to the IRS and
state today after receiving my property tax bill yesterday.

I know. I paid mine today too. I figure a good bit of it went to pay for
propaganda development to convince people that the Administration wants to
improve the country.

"Bob Patton" wrote in message
...

In my world, and probably in yours, people get ahead by working harder:
bigger bonuses, promotions, more perqs, etc. But not teachers. A talented
teacher who works harder gets tougher students.

Haven't teachers sort of done that to themselves tho?

Is ANY profession noble?

IMO not really.

My wife doesn't make much money.

I understand fully what you are trying to say Bob and I;m sure your wife is
most excellent at what she does. Is it tough to make a living on what some
professions, including teaching pay. It sure the hell is and I would not
want to be doing that right now but that's not the relevant point.

I suspect that few people other than teachers and police officers get such
a picture of the social issues that this country faces. There are people
in this community who don't eat every day because they can't afford it.
There are kids in my wife's classes whose mothers work full time for the
minimum wage and can't make ends meet for their families. There are kids
who go to bed at night having had nothing to eat all day except the free
lunch at school, and are about the be evicted from their homes. That is
absolutely true. And we penalize the kids for that!

Do you think teachers and police officers really have the picture? I would
submit that they don't. I was one of *those people* . My mother still has
not recovered. We don;t penalize the kids, some ****ing know it all amateur
psychiatrist nobilese teacher brands the kid a special needs or targets him
as a trouble maker. I'm glad your wife can influence so many lifes and taht
Snedeker's girls had nothing but great kids, my teachers sucked
(figureatively speaking of course) and were more concerned with their
contract negotiations that if I could find the solution to a quadratic
equation, primarily because most of them had no idea what one was. And do
not get me started on how we were treated by the local police.

Yeah. Get a bunch of technicians who're good test takers but haven't the
foggiest notion about the real world. Doesn't do any good to raise the bar
if not enough people want to get in.

If a math professor in college does not know math, then it will come out and
they will be cut. Do the same in elememtary school, then maybe johnny could
read.

Imagine a kid from the inner city of St Louis who is bused to an affluent
school in St Louis county.

Again I don;t have to imagine what that is like.

I know. I paid mine today too. I figure a good bit of it went to pay for
propaganda development to convince people that the Administration wants to
improve the country.

Amen

"Wayne Knight" wrote in message
...
"Bob Patton" wrote in message
...

//snip//
not get me started on how we were treated by the local police.

Not defending the police - just trying to make a point about some social
inequalities. There's a cop in SWMBO's school who is a very special person.
I know that's not always true.

There are some good teachers; there are a lot who don't care very much. Most
work for public school administrations run by politicians and entrenched
bureaucracies who have to worry more about being criticized for teaching
something controversial than about whether their kids can do quadratic
equations. Fortunately, in my wife's case she doesn't need the money - if
she did she wouldn't teach.

I work for a big bank and thought I knew something about bureaucracy. But
the education bureaucracy is something else again.

I've noticed in my work that some of the people who at the end of the day
are best at what they do aren't really motivated by money. There's some kind
of intangible reward that they get from doing a good job and being respected
for that. People who advance to high levels in search of more money have
different skills. And you can read about some of them in the newspapers -
and see some of them on perp walks - almost every day.

What do you suppose would motivate college students to consider becoming
teachers instead of, say, bankers?

Bob

"Bob Patton" wrote in message
...
What do you suppose would motivate college students to consider becoming
teachers instead of, say, bankers?


Not everyone can be a banker, nor can everyone be a teacher. Sometimes its
the education that trips them up, sometimes its a desire, what makes folks
want to be divorce lawyers or groundskeepers. I am not attacking teaching
per se, just this noble profession bs and noting that the pay, while it
could be higher is not as bad as it is made out to be.

My daughter recently graduated from Michigan State and was accepted into a
top flight medical school. Over wine and along the Manistee River as we were
talking, I noted some hesitation in her voice when talking about it, after a
couple of hours she it came out that she had applied because of the earnings
level and a perceived pressure from me. She's not going to med school now,
but considering some more to her liking. BTW, after he relevation, she
considered teaching but guess what *they* wanted g.

On 15 Apr 2005 06:17:02 -0700, "Wayne Knight"
wrote:

(snipped)

You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.


Good idea. When my daughter and I were doing a year of home schooling
for my grandson, I thought it might be easier all around if I got a
teaching certificate. So I took the test for practice. With no study
and half an hour left at the end of the test, I'd easily made a better
than passing grade. It could have been still better, but I was off on
some of the 'If little Susie slams little Tommy over the head with the
toy locomotive in kindergarten, what do you do about it?' questions.

So the degree has to count, as the state test here isn't worth doggie
doo. This did not fill me with confidence that the next year the
grandson would be sent out among educated folks with much knowledge to
impart to him. Luckily he's in a good school now, as are the
granddaughters, but if you take the local pot luck of schools and
teachers, you _will_ wind up with some people teaching who have not
proven to have knowledge of their subjects and are teaching only out
of a lesson book.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

Cyli wrote:

On 15 Apr 2005 06:17:02 -0700, "Wayne Knight"
wrote:

(snipped)


You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.


but if you take the local pot luck of schools and
teachers, you _will_ wind up with some people teaching who have not
proven to have knowledge of their subjects and are teaching only out
of a lesson book.


....well lessee here...new teachers with a bs degree start at 26k...do
you really question what the smarter and more capable people usually
choose to do? hint...they don't remain in teaching in the public
schools. raise the salaries...you'll get better quality generally.

jeff

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:58:20 -0400, Jeff Miller
wrote:

Cyli wrote:

On 15 Apr 2005 06:17:02 -0700, "Wayne Knight"
wrote:

(snipped)


You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.


but if you take the local pot luck of schools and
teachers, you _will_ wind up with some people teaching who have not
proven to have knowledge of their subjects and are teaching only out
of a lesson book.


...well lessee here...new teachers with a bs degree start at 26k...do
you really question what the smarter and more capable people usually
choose to do? hint...they don't remain in teaching in the public
schools. raise the salaries...you'll get better quality generally.

jeff

That and the bureaucracy that gives them the job security that some
go to it for. You'd get some more of dingbats who'd have to go away
sometime, but you might have less of the "This is the lesson plan I
was given. This is all you will learn here." type who don't _know_
anything more than the lesson plan calls for. Make sure that the
arithmetic teacher knows arithmetic and in higher grades that the
chemistry teacher knows something more about chemistry than what he /
she learned in the one hour a day for one year they took it in
college.

Many of the teachers I had were, uh, not too bright, which I was,
fortunately, too young and ignorant myself to realize at the time,
though I sometimes wondered what was wrong. When my kids were in
school they were getting more teachers who cared about the kids and
their mental well-being, but there were still some of the kind from my
years around. And the new wave didn't seem to be much more
knowledgeable than the old teachers. My grandchildren got teachers
who were even more concerned, but for educational qualities, my older
daughter had to pick which schools they went to very carefully. My
youngest trusted in the system, which failed, so we did the home
schooling for a year and after that my older daughter inherited the
grandson, who was showing, even in a good school system, that he was
way ahead in education.

Now we did home schooling about the same way I fish. Whenever we all
felt like it and whatever looked interesting, though we did try to
stick to math lessons. And the kid still came out way ahead in
knowledge. Hmmmm.

This means a lot less of government oversight needed for teachers to
be free to be hired and fired and to teach away from the blasted
pre-ordained plans. Like I can see an end to that....

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

Cyli wrote:


Now we did home schooling about the same way I fish. Whenever we all
felt like it and whatever looked interesting, though we did try to
stick to math lessons. And the kid still came out way ahead in
knowledge. Hmmmm.

and i have a nephew-in-law who was home schooled to age 16; he's barely
able to read...

so, how do we recognize, attract, and reward quality teachers?

In article OLi8e.3183$Zr.991@lakeread08, d
says...

so, how do we recognize, attract, and reward quality teachers?



It's a non-trivial problem. As a college professor, I see the
results of the local school systems. A great many of the students
have shockingly poor math skills, which they often blame on the
terrible math teacher at their high school. I also see other
students with excellent math skills, which they often credit to
those very same teachers. I've been around here long enough
that many of the teachers are former students of mine, so I
have a pretty good idea of what they are like. We are fortunate
that the math education program here is controlled by the math
department and not the education department, so we have pretty
good quality control.

It's funny what you here about the teachers from their students
sometimes. I once happened to be with a group of teenage boys
who were talking about their math teacher like she was the
wicked witch of the west, so I asked who she was. I had to
laugh when they told me, because she was a former student of
mine. She was an outragously beautiful, blue-eyed blonde
Scandinavian beauty. By now she has probably reached the ripe
old age of 35, so I can't imagine she's too much worse for the
wear.

Kevin
(and she knew her math, too.)
--
reply to:
kevin dot vang at minotstateu dot edu