lazs...
While I agree with you about a great many things, I've gotta take exception with what you said about teaching.
And for all the sundry who still believe that teachers get paid twelve months of the year for doing only nine months work you must be incredibly thick-headed....or due a tax refund to compensate you for the failure of the public school system to properly prepare you for life in a world that requires coherent thought.
Teachers only get paid for NINE months of work. That pay is stretched into enough payments to cover a twelve month period. Try to grasp the concept. The three months of "vacation" in the summer is actually a period of unemployment. Part of that time, at least for teachers in Arkansas, must be taken up with state-mandated training amounting to two weeks of attending extremely boring and often useless "educational workshops." Since teacher salaries are best categorized as being only fair secondary incomes for a family, many teachers spend the summer months looking for part-time employment.
I often spent my summers painting houses or doing light carpentry work to earn extra money to buy the little niceties of life that the regular monthly paycheck did not cover.
I've laid insulation, re-shingled the roofs of houses, scraped and primed and painted houses for a small pittance of what I could have earned if I had worked for a construction company because selling my services cheaply was the only way I could compete. The one saving grace about that type of construction work was that I did not have to bring it home with me.
The last year I taught in a public school I had 107 students. Teachers in bigger school districts have more than that. I always took my teaching seriously, so I assigned and graded papers after each days' lesson. Six classes a day. I could NOT leave that work at school. Most nights I graded papers until 10:30 or 11:00 at night. I graded papers on Saturday and Sunday. If I went to visit my parents I took papers with me. If the wife and I took a trip to Little Rock to do some shopping I took papers and grade-book along. There was little spare time that I could call my own.
Being a man, I was expected to break up, or attempt to break up, any and all fights that occurred on campus. After one such scuffle I found I had been sprayed quite liberally with the blood of one of the combatants. I've taken knives and num-chucks off of students. I've parked the bus I happened to be driving on a route, set the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, crawled under it and pulled to the safety of the curb it a first grader who had just crawled under it.
After 26 years of experience and being the proud recipient of a master's degree I had maxed out my take home pay. I was the highest paid instructor in my school. Maximum net take-home pay....$2,200 a month. The wife and I and two sons and one son's fiance live in a double-wide "modular" home. I drive a used Chevy Cavalier.
Total amount in savings after almost 30 years of teaching....zilch....none.... nada.
Three years ago I left the teaching profession and began drawing my retirement of $1,600 a month. I teach full-time, year-round at a juvenile facility run by a private company. The extra money has been a life-saver for the wife and I. If I had not quit teaching in the public schools we quite probably would have had to declare bankruptcy.
I'm sure most of you guys work hard to earn your money. I respect that. So please stop spouting all those tired old cliches and myths about teachers not earning their pay...or having an easy job.
Brother, I've EARNED every cent I ever got from the profession.
Regards, Shuckins
