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Forums - Politics Discussion - Do you support the U.S. teacher strikes?

contestgamer said:
VGPolyglot said:

I'd say they're doing a good job if they're encouraging students to become socialists.

You're under 20 though, we cant have global policy being decided by people that young that dont have sufficient experience and knowledge in the existing systems yet.

Ah nice, so essentially you're smart enough to know what's right and I'm too stupid to myself.



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Aeolus451 said:
Darashiva said:

Teacher's getting summers off is a complete misconception of what they do for work, at least if you're a good teacher. It's technically true that teachers have a long summer vacation, but in reality, it's not really longer than in any other profession because they have to spent a lot of their time during summer planning next year's courses and lessons, not to mention curriculum. In addition, the reason teachers have a relatively high hourly wages is because they have to work outside their normal working hours planning lessons, grading tests and so on. If a teacher has on average around 30 hours of lessons a week, he or she has to spend at least another 10-15 hours every week planning that stuff during what is technically their freetime. And yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about since I am a teacher, though not in the US.

 Teachers in the US don't have to do all that. Curriculum and all that is decided for them. If they want to do elaborate lesson plans or do stuff that's not in the text books, that's completely their choice. They get the summer off unless they're doing extra things like summer school. They're getting paid alot considering the time they get off and it's office work. I have a friend who works in IT for the school system and I asked him about this topic. They're just wanting to get paid alot for their job and they're using an appeal to emotions "getting grossly" to get it. Alot of them work an extra job during the summer for extra money or something to do. They don't have to buy a new car every year or have a huge house or brand name everything. Alot of people like to live beyond their means and they feel like the they're not making enough. 

Haha, what!?  Glad your friend told you all about it.  As an actual teacher, I can tell you that my curriculum is certainly not decided for me.  There are obviously core standards I have to cover, but that doesn’t mean they give me a lesson plan to teach it.  The standard is like one sentence that I have to make into a two week long unit.  Honestly I can’t remember the last time I worked less than 60 hours in a week.  So much more than just lesson plans, you got various school committees you have to take part of, after school tutoring, extra curricular organizations, conferences, iep meetings and all the paperwork involved in that, and then grading all that homework.

 

personally, I’m not taking part in any protests.  You don’t become a teacher because of the money.  However, if you are trying to say teachers aren’t underpaid it is just an ignorant comment.  No offense.  Most people don’t actually have any idea what goes into being a teacher.  It is way more work than you would think.  

 

The more important issue is with teacher rentention.  They require teachers to get these nice college degrees in order to get their license, and then pay them almost half of what they could get in the private sector with that degree.  This is why we can’t keep any math teachers around for example.  The fact of the matter is that teachers have all the qualifications to go out and get much better paying jobs, which is why teaching has become a revolving door profession and why we have one of the worst teacher shortages we have ever had right now in this country...



spurgeonryan said:
No, because usually they are just about teacher raises. A good teacher could teach from a 1950s book if they wanted to.

So... just ignore any new information since then?  Should we teach them duck and cover because of the Soviet nukes pointed our way?  Or basically stop teaching math at prealgebra?  Let’s have all the students write their essays and research paper with and pencil and paper.  Obviously the internet isn’t helpful for research or any educational purposes, students don’t need access to that.



gergroy said:
Aeolus451 said:

 Teachers in the US don't have to do all that. Curriculum and all that is decided for them. If they want to do elaborate lesson plans or do stuff that's not in the text books, that's completely their choice. They get the summer off unless they're doing extra things like summer school. They're getting paid alot considering the time they get off and it's office work. I have a friend who works in IT for the school system and I asked him about this topic. They're just wanting to get paid alot for their job and they're using an appeal to emotions "getting grossly" to get it. Alot of them work an extra job during the summer for extra money or something to do. They don't have to buy a new car every year or have a huge house or brand name everything. Alot of people like to live beyond their means and they feel like the they're not making enough. 

Haha, what!?  Glad your friend told you all about it.  As an actual teacher, I can tell you that my curriculum is certainly not decided for me.  There are obviously core standards I have to cover, but that doesn’t mean they give me a lesson plan to teach it.  The standard is like one sentence that I have to make into a two week long unit.  Honestly I can’t remember the last time I worked less than 60 hours in a week.  So much more than just lesson plans, you got various school committees you have to take part of, after school tutoring, extra curricular organizations, conferences, iep meetings and all the paperwork involved in that, and then grading all that homework.

 

personally, I’m not taking part in any protests.  You don’t become a teacher because of the money.  However, if you are trying to say teachers aren’t underpaid it is just an ignorant comment.  No offense.  Most people don’t actually have any idea what goes into being a teacher.  It is way more work than you would think.  

 

The more important issue is with teacher rentention.  They require teachers to get these nice college degrees in order to get their license, and then pay them almost half of what they could get in the private sector with that degree.  This is why we can’t keep any math teachers around for example.  The fact of the matter is that teachers have all the qualifications to go out and get much better paying jobs, which is why teaching has become a revolving door profession and why we have one of the worst teacher shortages we have ever had right now in this country...

Pretty much yeah. Like I said earlier, I'm a teacher as well but not in the US so I can't really speak from first-hand experience there, but there seems to be so many misconceptions and just plain ignorance regarding what teachers actually do in their jobs that I no longer wonder why there's so much misguided opposition to this. 



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.

 



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VGPolyglot said:
contestgamer said:

You're under 20 though, we cant have global policy being decided by people that young that dont have sufficient experience and knowledge in the existing systems yet.

Ah nice, so essentially you're smart enough to know what's right and I'm too stupid to myself.

No, you can have beliefs, but they cant guide policy if you're under 35.



contestgamer said:
VGPolyglot said:

Ah nice, so essentially you're smart enough to know what's right and I'm too stupid to myself.

No, you can have beliefs, but they cant guide policy if you're under 35.

And I assume you're exactly 35 years old?



Aeolus451 said:

I'm against the strikes. The quality of their work is questionable considering that kids are eating tide pods these days for clicks and becoming socialists out of college. 😽 😹 They also make a decent amount on average.

So you don't support them because the kids follow group mentality and because college professors tend to politicize? That doesn't relate to this story at all.



VGPolyglot said:
contestgamer said:

No, you can have beliefs, but they cant guide policy if you're under 35.

And I assume you're exactly 35 years old?

Nah 37



contestgamer said:
VGPolyglot said:

And I assume you're exactly 35 years old?

Nah 37

Ah, so you're conveniently just above the cut-off rate.