Do you support the U.S. teacher strikes?

[Solid-Stark]

Darashiva said:

contestgamer said:

30+15 hours is about the average workweek, except you get to spend a third of it at home grading etc. Try working in a factory 8 hours a day for 20k a year and see how you like that.

You clearly just don't understand what teacher's do. It's so far removed from just holding lessons and grading tests on your free time. So here's a few things you might want to take into account as well, besides the 30 hours of lessons and 15 hours of working at home. Parent-teacher conferences, students who require constant additional help during every single class you hold, which might include up to 30 students at once. This would mean that in a class where 27 students can study normally, that would still leave three students who might require constant supervision to be able to get anything done at all, which leaves those 27 students with little to no attention from the teacher.  Of course then there's the fact that a teacher is generally expected to be available for parents to contact about matter regarding their children at almost all times. That's not even close to everything, but just a start. You're lucky if you get away with a 40 hour work week as a teacher.

And the thing is, it's not ultimately the teachers who suffer the most from schools not having the funding and teachers not getting compensated properly for the work they do. It's the students who'll eventually pay the most for this, since they won't be getting a proper education when there are no more qualified teachers to do their job.

I appreciate what you've said in this thread. I'm a current teacher, working 60 hours a week on average, arriving early and leaving late, and I still have more to do at home. I opted for this career when I was young and my philosophy on why I do this has changed over time, but I am in this for my students and community because our race and academic achievement is historically poor.

The "good teacher" has become rare because conditions have pinned teachers to come up with creative ways to cut corners in pedagogy. These teachers are then seen as lackluster, and then the shortcomings in education tend to fall on "poor teachers".

At my school we have no counselors so those responsibilities are put on instructors (something that was not in our contracts and not told to us at the time). Of course the pay only reflects to being an instructor, and it isn't very good either. We get continuously bombarded with additional mandatory responsibilities. If a student did not pass a semester, we plan the night school course regardless if we teach it or not. Apparently same will go for summer school.  If we don't like it, then we can give up the job. Of course no one is going to do this because we all have to make ends meet. Oh and it's a charter. We strike, and we lose our jobs.

It's not hard to see why there is a huge teacher turn over rate, and why there are few people preparing to become teachers. No one wants to do it. Especially math and science. I have told my students that I am committed to seeing them graduate. After my current class graduates, I may look to do something else.

Just had to get that out.