I became a teacher after doing another job for 25 years. I’m in my 3rd year teaching middle school, and it will most likely be my last. Too much stress, not enough money, and poor benefits. Coupled with horrible student behavior and disrespect from students/parents. Large class sizes, and I’m on my own.
When I saw that one of my high school teachers had a salary of $32,000 a year I was disgusted. She literally needed another full time job tutoring just to barely make it by. I’ll never complain about any teachers that I’ve ever had ever again.
I agree, my state pays a flat rate of five hours a day with no overtime. School goes from 8:30-3:30 and I don’t get an hour break for lunch. On top of that I’ll be teaching five classes usually three to four sessions a day as we have looong periods, plus 80mins of yard duty allocation a week, plus covers. Then there are all the meetings after school hours. It’s above and beyond five hours of pay a day.
I was a HS teacher and university professor for 20 years in an urban area. I taught Art, and after earning my PhD, I was also a teacher educator for 10 years working with university undergrad and grad students preparing to enter the workforce as new teachers. It was my dream to be a teacher, and when got into it, I switched careers from being a full-time Graphic Designer into education, but I did it with my eyes wide open (both my parents were teachers)... or so I thought. I really felt I knew what I was getting into, but I wasn't at all prepared to deal with everything these teachers discussed. When I first started out in 2003, after completing my master's program and student teaching and getting my license, each year there were a handful of days here and there where I felt I was up against a wall, or that really shook my faith in myself and my choice to become a teacher. But by the end I felt I was living in a never ending nightmare, and I would sit in my car for 20 minutes every morning, near tears, talking myself into going into the building to face another day of chaos. By my estimation, 2016 is when the real down-turn began in schools, way before the pandemic made it all worse. It was a subtle shift at first, but that's when I started noticing real negativity start to take over the attitudes of many more kids and parents towards us. That's also when I noticed more and more kids develop an apathy for learning that was impossible to penetrate with even the most creative lessons, activities, and field trips. From there, the lack of respect and student apathy just seemed to grow exponentially every year, like it was contagious. That's also when discipline policies in so many schools and districts became almost non-existent. By the end of my last year, it was more work for me and more of a punishment for me to try to hold kids accountable for missing homework and disrupting class than it was worth. Even when a student was violent with another student, or when they verbally abused me, threatened me, or tried to physically harm me, I had no real support. And forget about giving a student detention or any kind of consequence for their actions because the parents would just let kids get around it by letting them stay home. In the end, two years ago, I just couldn't take it anymore and I had to get out. I felt like I was in an abusive relationship. Every year I would start out full of energy and hope that things would be different, and every year really ended up being worse than the one before. Yet I stuck around, trying, in vain, and going back year after year to fulfill my personal mission to affect positive change "for the kids". I sacrificed my own physical, mental, and financial health for two decades, and I justified it to myself constantly by saying it was my calling, that there are "other rewards" for teaching besides money that make it worth it, and "the kids need me" -- all the tropes we're fed by the media and society to justify how poorly teachers are treated and paid. But now that I'm out, I honestly can't recommend in good faith anymore that anyone pursue a career in education. I was constantly left twisting in the wind rather than being supported by parents and my administrators, who were supposed to be my allies, and no one should have to feel that way when they're just trying to do their job. And here's the kicker -- I taught an ELECTIVE; a subject everyone says they "love", a class so many said they looked forward to every day, AND I was consistently nominated for awards! But it just became too much. And, surprisingly, as hard and as heartbreaking as it was to leave (I cried for two weeks) and make a career switch back into the corporate world, I honestly don't miss it. I really thought I would especially miss the kids more, but I'll take the mundanity and banality of dealing with complacent adults in the corporate world any day over the emotional rollercoaster and constant flood of frustration I used to experience daily. BOTTOM LINE: There are three factors that could easily be addressed that would help schools and districts recruit and retain teachers. First, pay teachers a respectable salary truly commensurate with their level of education and experience. STARTING salary should be $60-70K at least. When teachers working full-time qualify for food stamps, there's no way you're going to recruit or retain even the most dedicated people, and there's no way anyone is going to respect someone working full-time who is earning less that someone working at Costco. And no amount of "other rewards" or warm fuzzies that supposedly come from teaching is going to pay the bills. FINANCIAL REWARD FOR A JOB WELL-DONE IS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE OF PERFORMING MEANINGFUL, IMPACTFUL WORK. Is anyone crying right now about a lawyer or doctor or engineer retention or recruiting problem? No. Because people in those professions are paid commensurate with their education an experience, so they keep doing the jobs -- and those jobs can be just as thankless and fraught with difficulty as teaching. Second, districts need to create and enforce student accountability policies and procedures that support teachers and students' success while discouraging disruptive and violent behavior. Many other places in the world with the same amount of linguistic, cultural, normative, geographical, and income diversity as we have in the US have figured out how to do this. School boards and school leaders, instead of their constant belly-button gazing, need to look around a little bit at what other countries do in regards to this and mimic SUCCESSFUL (not necessarily the most efficient or "easy") solutions. I'll give you a hint -- start with Australia and Finland. Right now our school boards and district-level leadership waste WAY too much time playing the role of "morality police" and posturing for political gain instead of doing real policy work that actually improves schools and the experience of school that kids get. Lastly, districts need to stop hiring their leaders from within and stop making the system administrator heavy. There are way too many district-level administrators in most school districts, and most of these expensive positions are there to do nothing but create unnecessary distraction and work for teachers. Then the "hire from within" mentality just creates a vacuum that perpetuates the norming of this while allowing a profound lack of imagination to thrive. I can't tell you the number of administrators I encountered throughout my career who were students in the district they ended up working in. If a system wants to actually change, it needs fresh ideas and perspectives, not more of the same people who have all been indoctrinated to the same level of mediocrity or failure. It's like making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Eventually the copy will not be legible or discernible as useful and is just wasting resources and taking up space. These solutions ARE all within reach, and will start to address some of the toxicity that has taken root in our education system. To start making this change, VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS for people who want this type of real change instead of voting for people who have a great Instagram feed and are just out for themselves and their own little personal agenda. After these three things are tackled, then work can start on reduced class sizes, increasing operating budgets, improving school culture, and creating true equity in our schools. Until these changes are made though, I fully support those who are leaving because they can't take it anymore. A hiring and retention crisis, as damaging as it would be for the kids, may be the only way necessary change will come about. I also advise anyone thinking of going into teaching now to spend 6 weeks shadowing a teacher at the end of the year, then seriously re-evaluate your options. Teaching may feel like a calling, but you'll end up sacrificing more than you realize!
As a sped teacher I spend one weekend day per week catching up on paperwork. It’s insane. One reason we can’t catch up is due to covering responsibilities in the building when we are short staffed or due to student need absorbing planning time.
I left teaching (middle school science) after 8 years (2005-2013) to mow grass and trim trees. I own my own company now, for 2023 I paid myself $140k. I don’t miss teaching at all.
I'm a credentialed computer teacher in California. I teach 500 students between the ages of 4 and 14 each week. I see each class for an hour. I have comouter science standards I must teach, but I'm given no curriculum or pacing guide. I have to create it all. I get 30 minutes of prep time each week. 30 minutes to develop 10 grade levels of curriculum plus maintain all the equipment. Now the district is trying to add another class every day to my schedule. I guess they think I have too much free time. 😂😢
Some places don’t value teachers at all. Discipline is downright dangerous and degrading. A quarter of a century and I don’t know if I could do it in this day and age
We are in contract negotiations right now. We polled our membership, on average, teachers in my district are donating 10 hours a week (a large suburban district). We calculated what that meant in terms of being paid for our work. Our district is getting $65 million in free labor from our teachers.
As much as I have a passion for teaching, I just don't see it feasible on multiple fronts to carry on much longer. I love teaching my grade level and content, but every year its just something else. I first response to most people who ask (or don't ask and I tell them anyway) is the lack of half decent pay, but in truth that only scratches the surface of the compounding issues we're facing. I really hope my plan to get out and do something besides teaching works.
Teacher's Aide here! We exist! I am a Resource TA. The SPED teacher for the grade is my supervisor. I work in two different classrooms, ½ day in each. The classes have 25 students each. I work with any student who needs my help but have a caseload of 16 students whom I particularly assist. I make *well* over $10/hr and have full benefits. New England. Blue State.
I was in a district where, after I put in notice I was leaving when my contract ended, I’d routinely come in early, stay late, and work through most lunches to get everything done. One of my friends (who still teaches there) would tell me “You’re done. You’re not coming back. Go home.” The reason I didn’t was so everything put on me wouldn’t get tacked on to teachers who still work there. I’d also have to maintain a system that broke on me multiple times (whilst I told Admin it needed to be fixed and how I’d suggest fixing it) and filled the room with weeks old fish excrement. (No, I wasn’t “formally” trained to handle said waste)
Im at the top of my column and calculated my salary for my contracted working hours. It came out to $3.59 per hour per kid. (My numbers were checked by myself and the Union before I presented it to the board for negotiations last year.) Thats LESS thAN HALF of what babysitters make around here. We settled the contract and got a raise. **YAAAYYYY** Now I am making $3.62 per hour per kid. (1% raise). **sigh**
In Australia (at least, in Queensland) the teacher's union won a class cap of 28 for years 3-10, and 25 for prep-2 and 11-12; it's becoming much harder to find teacher aides but we still have them in schools.
I have 32 years in and still enjoy teaching, but not the students 😡Let’s say the quiet part out loud, kids these days are almost impossible to teach. If parents want us to have a doctor patient relationships with each student so we can form a “relationship “ that will make them love learning, we need to be paid like doctors. Remember education saves lives😂
I'm a teacher's aid in an Elementary school library and I will be finished with my Bachelors of Science in Psychology and no, I am not staying in education....I am going to the mental health profession.
Oh, a connection to me, a first grade teacher. I too am expected to be a mental health professional. However, my master's degree is in teaching reading. I have the reading interventionist credential on my license (along with teaching language arts k-12). The mental health expectation is only one of many duties added to my workload. Professional development, constant data scrutiny, administering developmentally inappropriate assessments, and other optically-appealing (for the public?) non-teaching activities make my job exhausting. I truly love my students. I love the excitement we feel as a learning community when we engage in truly worthwhile exploration. However, I do not have the time to plan and organize as other professionals do. I have very little support. The students who come to me are increasingly impacted (families are overwhelmed). Corporate greed and misdirection (thanks Bill Gates for weighing-in from your billionaire ivory tower years ago with your skewed/ignorant perspective) by companies like McGraw Hill, NWEA, Acadience Learning, Pearson, and others have a bottom line dependent upon ubiquitous assessment of children k-12. The wonder and opportunities of learning is horribly hampered by these now-entrenched practices. I stay (for now) out of love. It's the strangle-hold of caring teachers everywhere.
My sister is desperate to leave the profession. I left when the pandemic started and we had to go virtual or risk my life. Today, I tutor and make $50 an hour 😊
This year, our elementary school was informed that we’d be tutoring, before and after school, four days per week, FOR FREE. It’ll be interesting to see how many of us refuse to sign our “contracts” in February.
Great podcast! I would like to let you know that if you don't teach for 30 years you will not receive a full pension. Only 6% of teachers receive a pension for 30 years. They lose everything which includes: salary, medical, retirement, dental, and disability, You are working for nothing when you leave - most teachers only last 15 years! They have been financially exploited.
When I was a kid, teachers were respected more. My dad always sided with the teacher. So I became a teacher. Times have changed. This whole entitled mentality, more work, low pay….it should be no surprise to anyone that teachers are leaving the profession.
If you’re a teacher and you can get more money at a Costco , then you know you’re being taken advantage of. What they probably not also saying is from that Teachers salary, they probably also spent money on getting stationary, etc for the students to use. Stuff the school administration itself is supposed to supply.
over 30 sometimes in the district i was a sub at for 10 years, many times kids don't want to do their work at the admins don't care. NC is a horrible place for teaching and subbing.
In 1964 my classes throughout elementary school, I was one of 30 or more students. Yes, we were the end of the baby boomers. I hope my punctuation was correct! In high school, when I took 1 year of typing I was in my eyes demoted from an academic student to a general student. I guess my 4 years of Spanish, chemistry, biology, algebra I and II, geometry, physics, and academic speech meant nothing. Schools just don’t make sense. We took our daughter out of school at age 17 to attend a local community college to complete her junior and senior years in one, plus she went to college with 18 free credits. Well, her mom is just a general student. What does she know? Yes, I proofread this comment as I was taught. 💙
I feel like most of these teacher stories are from the south and red states. Not saying it's paradise in blue states but the benefits and pay are certainly better.
I agree. I live in a mid Atlantic state. In my school (middle) teachers start in the low 50s and routinely retire at 6 figures. Benefits are pretty good as well.
I became a teacher after doing another job for 25 years. I’m in my 3rd year teaching middle school, and it will most likely be my last. Too much stress, not enough money, and poor benefits. Coupled with horrible student behavior and disrespect from students/parents. Large class sizes, and I’m on my own.
The worst time to get into teaching, unfortunately.
When I saw that one of my high school teachers had a salary of $32,000 a year I was disgusted. She literally needed another full time job tutoring just to barely make it by. I’ll never complain about any teachers that I’ve ever had ever again.
I agree, my state pays a flat rate of five hours a day with no overtime. School goes from 8:30-3:30 and I don’t get an hour break for lunch. On top of that I’ll be teaching five classes usually three to four sessions a day as we have looong periods, plus 80mins of yard duty allocation a week, plus covers. Then there are all the meetings after school hours. It’s above and beyond five hours of pay a day.
Nothing will be done until fed up teachers join together and walk out
I was a HS teacher and university professor for 20 years in an urban area. I taught Art, and after earning my PhD, I was also a teacher educator for 10 years working with university undergrad and grad students preparing to enter the workforce as new teachers. It was my dream to be a teacher, and when got into it, I switched careers from being a full-time Graphic Designer into education, but I did it with my eyes wide open (both my parents were teachers)... or so I thought.
I really felt I knew what I was getting into, but I wasn't at all prepared to deal with everything these teachers discussed. When I first started out in 2003, after completing my master's program and student teaching and getting my license, each year there were a handful of days here and there where I felt I was up against a wall, or that really shook my faith in myself and my choice to become a teacher. But by the end I felt I was living in a never ending nightmare, and I would sit in my car for 20 minutes every morning, near tears, talking myself into going into the building to face another day of chaos.
By my estimation, 2016 is when the real down-turn began in schools, way before the pandemic made it all worse. It was a subtle shift at first, but that's when I started noticing real negativity start to take over the attitudes of many more kids and parents towards us. That's also when I noticed more and more kids develop an apathy for learning that was impossible to penetrate with even the most creative lessons, activities, and field trips. From there, the lack of respect and student apathy just seemed to grow exponentially every year, like it was contagious.
That's also when discipline policies in so many schools and districts became almost non-existent. By the end of my last year, it was more work for me and more of a punishment for me to try to hold kids accountable for missing homework and disrupting class than it was worth. Even when a student was violent with another student, or when they verbally abused me, threatened me, or tried to physically harm me, I had no real support. And forget about giving a student detention or any kind of consequence for their actions because the parents would just let kids get around it by letting them stay home.
In the end, two years ago, I just couldn't take it anymore and I had to get out. I felt like I was in an abusive relationship. Every year I would start out full of energy and hope that things would be different, and every year really ended up being worse than the one before. Yet I stuck around, trying, in vain, and going back year after year to fulfill my personal mission to affect positive change "for the kids". I sacrificed my own physical, mental, and financial health for two decades, and I justified it to myself constantly by saying it was my calling, that there are "other rewards" for teaching besides money that make it worth it, and "the kids need me" -- all the tropes we're fed by the media and society to justify how poorly teachers are treated and paid.
But now that I'm out, I honestly can't recommend in good faith anymore that anyone pursue a career in education. I was constantly left twisting in the wind rather than being supported by parents and my administrators, who were supposed to be my allies, and no one should have to feel that way when they're just trying to do their job. And here's the kicker -- I taught an ELECTIVE; a subject everyone says they "love", a class so many said they looked forward to every day, AND I was consistently nominated for awards! But it just became too much. And, surprisingly, as hard and as heartbreaking as it was to leave (I cried for two weeks) and make a career switch back into the corporate world, I honestly don't miss it. I really thought I would especially miss the kids more, but I'll take the mundanity and banality of dealing with complacent adults in the corporate world any day over the emotional rollercoaster and constant flood of frustration I used to experience daily.
BOTTOM LINE: There are three factors that could easily be addressed that would help schools and districts recruit and retain teachers. First, pay teachers a respectable salary truly commensurate with their level of education and experience. STARTING salary should be $60-70K at least. When teachers working full-time qualify for food stamps, there's no way you're going to recruit or retain even the most dedicated people, and there's no way anyone is going to respect someone working full-time who is earning less that someone working at Costco. And no amount of "other rewards" or warm fuzzies that supposedly come from teaching is going to pay the bills. FINANCIAL REWARD FOR A JOB WELL-DONE IS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE OF PERFORMING MEANINGFUL, IMPACTFUL WORK. Is anyone crying right now about a lawyer or doctor or engineer retention or recruiting problem? No. Because people in those professions are paid commensurate with their education an experience, so they keep doing the jobs -- and those jobs can be just as thankless and fraught with difficulty as teaching.
Second, districts need to create and enforce student accountability policies and procedures that support teachers and students' success while discouraging disruptive and violent behavior. Many other places in the world with the same amount of linguistic, cultural, normative, geographical, and income diversity as we have in the US have figured out how to do this. School boards and school leaders, instead of their constant belly-button gazing, need to look around a little bit at what other countries do in regards to this and mimic SUCCESSFUL (not necessarily the most efficient or "easy") solutions. I'll give you a hint -- start with Australia and Finland. Right now our school boards and district-level leadership waste WAY too much time playing the role of "morality police" and posturing for political gain instead of doing real policy work that actually improves schools and the experience of school that kids get.
Lastly, districts need to stop hiring their leaders from within and stop making the system administrator heavy. There are way too many district-level administrators in most school districts, and most of these expensive positions are there to do nothing but create unnecessary distraction and work for teachers. Then the "hire from within" mentality just creates a vacuum that perpetuates the norming of this while allowing a profound lack of imagination to thrive. I can't tell you the number of administrators I encountered throughout my career who were students in the district they ended up working in. If a system wants to actually change, it needs fresh ideas and perspectives, not more of the same people who have all been indoctrinated to the same level of mediocrity or failure. It's like making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Eventually the copy will not be legible or discernible as useful and is just wasting resources and taking up space.
These solutions ARE all within reach, and will start to address some of the toxicity that has taken root in our education system. To start making this change, VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS for people who want this type of real change instead of voting for people who have a great Instagram feed and are just out for themselves and their own little personal agenda.
After these three things are tackled, then work can start on reduced class sizes, increasing operating budgets, improving school culture, and creating true equity in our schools. Until these changes are made though, I fully support those who are leaving because they can't take it anymore. A hiring and retention crisis, as damaging as it would be for the kids, may be the only way necessary change will come about. I also advise anyone thinking of going into teaching now to spend 6 weeks shadowing a teacher at the end of the year, then seriously re-evaluate your options. Teaching may feel like a calling, but you'll end up sacrificing more than you realize!
As a sped teacher I spend one weekend day per week catching up on paperwork. It’s insane. One reason we can’t catch up is due to covering responsibilities in the building when we are short staffed or due to student need absorbing planning time.
all teachers need a clerical assistant over 20 years ago. copying papers, etc.
I left teaching (middle school science) after 8 years (2005-2013) to mow grass and trim trees. I own my own company now, for 2023 I paid myself $140k. I don’t miss teaching at all.
I'm a credentialed computer teacher in California. I teach 500 students between the ages of 4 and 14 each week. I see each class for an hour. I have comouter science standards I must teach, but I'm given no curriculum or pacing guide. I have to create it all. I get 30 minutes of prep time each week. 30 minutes to develop 10 grade levels of curriculum plus maintain all the equipment. Now the district is trying to add another class every day to my schedule. I guess they think I have too much free time. 😂😢
California is the state I said I'd never teach in because 40 kids in a class
It’s about 35 students.
Some places don’t value teachers at all. Discipline is downright dangerous and degrading. A quarter of a century and I don’t know if I could do it in this day and age
We are in contract negotiations right now. We polled our membership, on average, teachers in my district are donating 10 hours a week (a large suburban district). We calculated what that meant in terms of being paid for our work. Our district is getting $65 million in free labor from our teachers.
You are so right!
Sad you make more at Costco than teaching 😢
Definitely don't teach in that state
As much as I have a passion for teaching, I just don't see it feasible on multiple fronts to carry on much longer. I love teaching my grade level and content, but every year its just something else. I first response to most people who ask (or don't ask and I tell them anyway) is the lack of half decent pay, but in truth that only scratches the surface of the compounding issues we're facing. I really hope my plan to get out and do something besides teaching works.
Teacher's Aide here! We exist! I am a Resource TA. The SPED teacher for the grade is my supervisor. I work in two different classrooms, ½ day in each. The classes have 25 students each. I work with any student who needs my help but have a caseload of 16 students whom I particularly assist. I make *well* over $10/hr and have full benefits.
New England. Blue State.
I was in a district where, after I put in notice I was leaving when my contract ended, I’d routinely come in early, stay late, and work through most lunches to get everything done. One of my friends (who still teaches there) would tell me “You’re done. You’re not coming back. Go home.” The reason I didn’t was so everything put on me wouldn’t get tacked on to teachers who still work there.
I’d also have to maintain a system that broke on me multiple times (whilst I told Admin it needed to be fixed and how I’d suggest fixing it) and filled the room with weeks old fish excrement. (No, I wasn’t “formally” trained to handle said waste)
Im at the top of my column and calculated my salary for my contracted working hours. It came out to $3.59 per hour per kid. (My numbers were checked by myself and the Union before I presented it to the board for negotiations last year.) Thats LESS thAN HALF of what babysitters make around here. We settled the contract and got a raise. **YAAAYYYY** Now I am making $3.62 per hour per kid. (1% raise). **sigh**
In Australia (at least, in Queensland) the teacher's union won a class cap of 28 for years 3-10, and 25 for prep-2 and 11-12; it's becoming much harder to find teacher aides but we still have them in schools.
School Districts have caps but it depends on the state population
I have 32 years in and still enjoy teaching, but not the students 😡Let’s say the quiet part out loud, kids these days are almost impossible to teach. If parents want us to have a doctor patient relationships with each student so we can form a “relationship “ that will make them love learning, we need to be paid like doctors. Remember education saves lives😂
all teachers need a clerical assistant over 20 years ago. copying papers, etc but not for $10 hr.
I left Costco to be a teacher. Biggest mistake of my life.
I'm a teacher's aid in an Elementary school library and I will be finished with my Bachelors of Science in Psychology and no, I am not staying in education....I am going to the mental health profession.
Oh, a connection to me, a first grade teacher. I too am expected to be a mental health professional. However, my master's degree is in teaching reading. I have the reading interventionist credential on my license (along with teaching language arts k-12). The mental health expectation is only one of many duties added to my workload. Professional development, constant data scrutiny, administering developmentally inappropriate assessments, and other optically-appealing (for the public?) non-teaching activities make my job exhausting. I truly love my students. I love the excitement we feel as a learning community when we engage in truly worthwhile exploration. However, I do not have the time to plan and organize as other professionals do. I have very little support. The students who come to me are increasingly impacted (families are overwhelmed). Corporate greed and misdirection (thanks Bill Gates for weighing-in from your billionaire ivory tower years ago with your skewed/ignorant perspective) by companies like McGraw Hill, NWEA, Acadience Learning, Pearson, and others have a bottom line dependent upon ubiquitous assessment of children k-12. The wonder and opportunities of learning is horribly hampered by these now-entrenched practices.
I stay (for now) out of love. It's the strangle-hold of caring teachers everywhere.
I already saw this on Crying in my Car Podcast 😉
My sister is desperate to leave the profession. I left when the pandemic started and we had to go virtual or risk my life. Today, I tutor and make $50 an hour 😊
This year, our elementary school was informed that we’d be tutoring, before and after school, four days per week, FOR FREE. It’ll be interesting to see how many of us refuse to sign our “contracts” in February.
@@angelat.8997 I feel for you and for the children this will affect. Virtual hugs.
How do you make up the difference? Unless you taught in a non-union area
Great podcast! I would like to let you know that if you don't teach for 30 years you will not receive a full pension. Only 6% of teachers receive a pension for 30 years. They lose everything which includes: salary, medical, retirement, dental, and disability, You are working for nothing when you leave - most teachers only last 15 years! They have been financially exploited.
I agreed
When I was a kid, teachers were respected more. My dad always sided with the teacher. So I became a teacher. Times have changed. This whole entitled mentality, more work, low pay….it should be no surprise to anyone that teachers are leaving the profession.
If you’re a teacher and you can get more money at a Costco , then you know you’re being taken advantage of. What they probably not also saying is from that Teachers salary, they probably also spent money on getting stationary, etc for the students to use. Stuff the school administration itself is supposed to supply.
100% agree
😢😢😢😢😢❤😢😢
All teachers should quit. Maybe then they'd get some respect.
over 30 sometimes in the district i was a sub at for 10 years, many times kids don't want to do their work at the admins don't care. NC is a horrible place for teaching and subbing.
In 1964 my classes throughout elementary school, I was one of 30 or more students. Yes, we were the end of the baby boomers. I hope my punctuation was correct! In high school, when I took 1 year of typing I was in my eyes demoted from an academic student to a general student. I guess my 4 years of Spanish, chemistry, biology, algebra I and II, geometry, physics, and academic speech meant nothing. Schools just don’t make sense. We took our daughter out of school at age 17 to attend a local community college to complete her junior and senior years in one, plus she went to college with 18 free credits. Well, her mom is just a general student. What does she know? Yes, I proofread this comment as I was taught. 💙
People are asking the wrong questions. There's PLENTY of money going into the school system. Where is it all going?
The administrators!
I feel like most of these teacher stories are from the south and red states. Not saying it's paradise in blue states but the benefits and pay are certainly better.
I agree. I live in a mid Atlantic state. In my school (middle) teachers start in the low 50s and routinely retire at 6 figures. Benefits are pretty good as well.
The pay & demands definitely give it away. I guess they say "Well at least you can still afford to put a 20% down-payment on a house!"