sc94597 said:
Well yeah, because other professional (degree requiring) jobs produce more and have greater costs to get there. Doctors and lawyers have various insurances they must pay into, and go to school for 8-10 years. The same is true for college educators, research scientists, etc. Engineers and programmers make a lot of money from their employment, and have an advantage of being in short supply, while teaching is not so much an under supplied position (as a generalization, certain subjects, such as STEM need a lot more teachers.) As with anything else, wages are subjected to the laws of supply and demand. If there is a lot of demand which the supply can't meet, then employers are going to entice people with higher salaries. If two people can fill every one position, the salaries will drop. The average hours teachers work are comparable to other professional jobs, hovering between 45-55 hours per week (think of how much a doctor is on call or the amount of work an engineer/programmer does at home, teachers aren't the only ones who work off-hours.) One must also consider that the teachers working the higher number of hours are the ones who are older and are consequently paid more. New teachers have fewer responsibilities because they are starting out and are not involved in so many extra activities. (Source for this at end of page.) I don't see the relevance of your summer comment. For other occupations people must work summers and that is included in the final salary that you look at for being so much higher. Having said that, most teachers do get summer positions elsewhere and can make money on top of their already above-median salary. What is so horrible about that? All of my high school teachers except for two had bachelors only in the subject they were teaching. The ones who had higher degrees were paid more (a Biology teacher with a masters in Biology, and an English teacher working on her doctorate.) Doctors in other countries don't have so many hoops to go through nor as high insurance costs like this one, and teachers in other countries are MUCH more qualified. This is clear enough by the results. Apples to oranges. Tenure is something not many other jobs have, regardless. You know you'll always have a job regardless of external factors. http://teaching.monster.com/careers/articles/4039-when-where-and-how-much-do-us-teachers-work Teachers aged 50 and older who were employed full time worked more hours per week than teachers who were younger- 6.7 more hours than teachers in their thirties and 5.1 more hours than teachers in their twenties Average working hours per week Ages 20-29: 37 hours per week Ages 30-39: 36 hours per week Ages 40-49: 40 hours per week Ages 50-59: 42 hours per week I found this statistic especially interesting since all of the schools where I have worked the veteran teachers seemed to be out the door at the end of the day while the new teachers where still perfecting their bulletin boards and planning lessons. Maybe it’s because those veteran teachers were choosing to do their work at home (see below.) |
Those ages/hours aren't correct for most I know, including myself. I myself am 24, about to be 25, and spend way more than 37 hours per week (lol that number is a complete joke) as do other new teachers in my building. And by the way, the hours I mentioned earlier (sometimes reaching as much as 65 per week) is JUST talking about the teaching job (not including clubs, teams, or other school activities that we are involved in).
Again, not sure what kind of school you went to but all the schools I went to had a lot of people that got their masters (most straight after their bach) and most teachers I work with have their masters. I find it uncommon, unless they are young like me, for a teacher to just have their B.S. and not at least a masters if not higher.
And newer teachers have far more trainings to go to than older teachers, so we may not be involved in sports/clubs as much right away but it all works itself evenly. Being a teacher means you are busy, plain and simple.
