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The Teacher as Advocate.

Mikey

A recent return to my old high school yielded the belief that public school teachers, already burdened with unforgiving hours, pressures, and low salaries, might also be an untapped resource of effective social advocacy.

Nearly 13 million children live in poverty in the United States. Moreso, 39% of children live in low-income families that cannot provide securely for their children’s basic needs. In my hometown, for example, that number has rapidly increased with the rise of low-wage service work at nearby casinos and the fall of manufacturing and higher-wage labor in the defense industry. Teachers at my old public high school reported that the school has stepped in institutionally as social service provider. More than just a place for pedagogy, the school is increasingly providing meals to children in the morning, at lunch, and after school; serving as a safe place to stay into the night; and intervening into the child’s health. Further, an influx of recent immigrants means that there are now 32 languages spoken at the school. It has quickly become a different school with a new set of challenges.

Locally, statewide, and nationally, there are a number of public policies that could help these working families raise themselves and their children out of poverty. The casino workers are currently banned from unionizing. Work support policies such as increases in the earned income tax credit, child care subsidies, and food stamps can help. So, too, can asset-based policies that help families save more, own more, and claim their stake in the economy. And there is no way to overstate the importance of health care – for the children, for their families, that is always there and can never be taken away.

But who is to stand up? These families are working two shifts at the casino – relying on the meals provided to the workers in the casino employee cafeteria. Many don’t speak English, can’t vote, don’t own a car. Living paycheck to paycheck, these are not the folk at every PTA meeting, town hall event, or Board of Education hearing. I believe teachers – already doing so much – can fill that void.

Despite constant political assaults on “the teachers’ unions” and often real concerns with teacher performance, in many places teachers are revered for doing noble work. They are often the first to see rapid changes in the social and economic environment as it pertains to children. And teachers often have working relationships with those parents able to claim their stake in school, local, and statewide governance. In short, teachers are listened to, and children put a human face on social and economic developments too easily looked at as “problems of them.”

46 thoughts on The Teacher as Advocate.

  1. I don’t mean to be flip, but I don’t really understand the point of this post.

    Are you asserting that teachers should be lobbyists, or politicians, or otherwise stand in for disenfranchised parents at PTA meetings?

  2. An old teacher of mine in Grad School once said, “A professor isn’t much of a professer if they don’t profess anything.”

  3. So, Mikey, are you going to be providing the funds to increase the pay and benefits of already overworked, underpaid teachers?

  4. The NEA and local affiliates already do a lot of social advocacy, including lobbying for a higher minimum wage, immigration rights and universal health care. My little bitty district recently raised a bunch of money for a student who needs dialysis – and went without athletic equipment and other things considered basic in a rich district to do so.

    On an individual level we buy extra winter clothes and food for the kids, set up links with housing and health care agencies and try to find extra teaching support when needed – you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get SPED assistance for a child who doesn’t speak English.

    As for teachers being revered for doing noble work… news to me.

  5. I agree with Sniper– teachers already do so much, through the NEA and just in individual efforts with students, that I’m not sure what else you want them to be doing. Also, like Miranda says, asking such overworked and underpaid workers to add on still more unpaid work seems disingenuous, to say the least.

    And “teachers are listened to”? If I didn’t know before, this quote guarantees that you are not a teacher :).

  6. And “teachers are listened to”? If I didn’t know before, this quote guarantees that you are not a teacher :).

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    Takes breath.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    Seriously, if teachers were listened to even, say, 30% of the time my life would be so much easier.

  7. Check out the cover of the NY Times from this past Saturday. It’s about my brother, a teacher in Harlem, who organized a baseball team for his middle school, because they have nothing else. The story earned him calls from local rich and powerful people who want to help out the kids and the school. It’s awesome.

  8. Jeez, did Mikey run over your puppies or something?

    Mikey, you’re right that many teachers are uniquely positioned to see and affect what’s happening in underserved communities. However, I’d prefer they focus their efforts in the classroom to address inequality, since one of our nation’s most appalling injustices is the fundamental disparities in our public education system. There is a lot that teachers and administrators can do to improve the education of minority and poor kids, even if the states won’t come through with adequate funding. But that’s happening rarely enough that I shudder to think of teachers spearheading a yet grander plan for social reform.

  9. A recent return to my old high school yielded the belief that public school teachers, already burdened with unforgiving hours, pressures, and low salaries

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005, public school teachers on average was paid 36% more per hour than the average non-sales white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker–about $34.06 per hour. This does not, in my mind at least, qualify as a “low salary.”

  10. Shankar, those statistics would be relevant but for the fact that much of the work of teaching, especially in public schools, does not happen “on the clock” while the teacher is at school, but instead “after hours”– work like lesson planning and grading, which can take several hours per day, especially in the beginning years.

    To make a lot of money in education, you have to be an administrator, not a teacher.

  11. Those hourly rates are calculated based on annual salaries. For example, another source (The American Federation of Teachers, surely not predisposed to highball the numbers) found that the average pay for a public school teacher in the 2004-2005 school year was $47,602/year. They’re not making lawyer or I-banker money, but that’s not a shabby salary.

  12. …that’s not a shabby salary.

    Sure, unless you’re trying to support a family and pay off student debt and have nice things.

    Not everyone needs a million dollars a year, but for the importance of what teachers do I think they ought to be paid more.

  13. And again, the amount of off-clock work is difficult to measure. Once that gets figured in, they’re making significantly less per hour.

  14. Sigh.

    Teachers, in the US, are traditionally women. And they still are mostly women. For decades, the pay for teachers was kept artificially low by making it one of only a handful of acceptable careers for women, ensuring the supply of teachers would exceed the demand.

    It isn’t just that teachers are badly paid. They’re also expected to have an education level far higher than other jobs at that pay rate. And they have to pay for that education – effectively lowering their real pay as they pay off the loans that covered their required education.

    With budget cuts, I know teachers who wind up buying their own chalk, construction paper, markers, crayons for their students, cleaning supplies, etc. Basic supplies needed for work, that in any other field would be paid for buy the business, not the employee.

    The more teachers are expected to do, the less teaching makes sense as a career, from an investment/return perspective. (Because the extra requirements are never matched by an equal increase in pay.) That’s not a way to get a good pool of teachers, and it isn’t a way to get good work from those who decide to teach.

    And now you want them to organize and achieve social and political change, on top of everything else.

    How does this differentiate from all of the dozens of other plans for social improvement that start with the assumption that women should do the work, and without being paid for the work?

  15. Those hourly rates are calculated based on annual salaries. For example, another source (The American Federation of Teachers, surely not predisposed to highball the numbers) found that the average pay for a public school teacher in the 2004-2005 school year was $47,602/year. They’re not making lawyer or I-banker money, but that’s not a shabby salary.

    We’re still dealing in averages. Compare what a teacher (gov’t employee, remember) makes teaching at a mid-reputation public school in NYC with what a teacher makes at a rural public school in Indiana. There’s a huge difference in the kind of population that the teachers teach, the class sizes, the state expectations, and more. Hearing people say, “$40,000 is enough. What the hell do they want?” is insulting. A public school teacher continues his or her education throughout their careers to keep up with state licensure, many have the equivalent of non-thesis PhDs, or at the very least Master’s degrees. And what? You want to dimish that?

    FWIW, Bill Richardson, if I recall, is proposing a minimum wage for teacher salaries to lessen the gaps for those who aren’t working in gaga-reputation urban schools. In my tri-county area, as a rookie teacher, I could range from $27-50Gs a year doing the same job in a small rural school as in the one around the block. Big range. I’m not even going to get into out-of-pocket expenses expected of teachers and the problems with school funding in general.

    Like Mikey brings up (as well as others) teachers and administrations are already doing quite a bit to further the social good by filling in some needs for children that aren’t being met outside of school. Futher, the school is one of the last social institutions in the U.S. that most all people are in contact with at one time (think of church), and that alone brings a lot of power to its influence as an institution, especially one that aims to propel a greater good for all its members. This is a good thing.

  16. When I taught, my paycheck said I worked a 35-hour week. If I worked fewer than 60 hours in any given week, it felt like vacation.

    My last year teaching (03-04) I made around $37,000 not including extra pay for summer work. I also spent $2000 on required courses, for which I was reimbursed about $800. I spent about $1000 on supplies for my classroom and things that my kids needed, including things like a hairbrush and ponytail bands for a girl put in foster care. Teachers do that all the time, by the way, buy stuff for needy students and have it given to them by the school social worker so it doesn’t come directly from us. So I made a lot less than my paycheck said too. Sure, I could have not bought paper for the Xerox machine, but since I actually needed to have teaching materials, I bought the things I needed. When I moved to a non-profit job in 2004, it took some adjustment to realize that if I needed folders, the company would pay for them, and the answer wasn’t, “It’s one box per teacher per year.” 100 folders per year. I had 160 students. What was I going to have them do, share folders?

    Oh, and that $37k? The median household income where I live is $75k. Guess what mortgages or and rents look like around here. I lived paycheck to paycheck and did not go out to eat or to the movies. I did not have cable and did not buy clothing. I could pay my rent, utilities, and car payment (and I have a Honda Civic), and that was pretty much it. The only way I ever had any extra money was to tutor on the side.

  17. If public elementary and secondary school teachers are underpaid, then what about college and university faculty in the increasingly more prevalent category of lecturer/adjunct? From the Michigan Daily:

    [A]n Ann Arbor public school teacher with a doctorate will start at a salary of $44,345 and rise to $76,435 over ten years.

    But the average salary of a full-time English lecturer with a doctorate at the Ann Arbor campus is only $38,388.

    Teachers are paid more than many college lecturers and get far more job security. I have yet to see a convincing argument that teachers are any more underpaid than most American workers.

  18. And now you want them to organize and achieve social and political change, on top of everything else.

    How does this differentiate from all of the dozens of other plans for social improvement that start with the assumption that women should do the work, and without being paid for the work?

    This is also what I was trying to get at, this attitude, with my last paragraph up there in mod. Many people going into teaching aren’t doing it as a stop-off point, and social justice issues are a regular part of teacher training pedagogy. These are people who are activists by trade. The point is that as a government employee, they ought to be subsidised for all the things they can (and do) do already to fill in where other social agencies can’t or don’t. Only the government can rectify that, through revamping school funding and taking a hard look at the realities of teacher pay.

    The programs are already out there, and people are willing to take part. But not if they’re going to spend 16 hours a day working without additional incentives. Feeling good about yourself as a teacher/activist isn’t enough unless you’re a saint.

  19. By the way, I just finished a doctorate in a science field. There are many temporary teaching/research positions offering about $37K and I’d be happy to get one.

  20. . I have yet to see a convincing argument that teachers are any more underpaid than most American workers.

    With your degree you should have an easy time finding full-time work in the cushy, overpaid public school system. What’s holding you back?

  21. With your degree you should have an easy time finding full-time work in the cushy, overpaid public school system. What’s holding you back?

    It would actually be pretty difficult; for one thing, I’d need a certification. And I’m not making any claims as to how hard or easy teaching is, since my only experience is with being in public school myself and teaching undergraduates. I would be quite happy with a teacher’s salary to teach undergrads and do research, which would probably be easier than being a public school teacher for me because I like it so much.

  22. Re: college lecturers, a lot of it has to do with different requirements, I think. A lecturer is expected to be doing research and teach occasionally; a schoolteacher is expected to teach all day five days a week.

  23. The comparison between university lecturers and teachers misses two important points that have already been pointed out. One, as many others have already stated, average pay is an average. Teaching in a private school pays as little as $17,000 per year in my area. Two, teachers spend vast amounts working “off the clock”. The lecturer example really highlights this for me. My husband was a university lecturer at a large public university while I was a teacher in a large public district. He had TAs to prepare and grade tests, quizzes, and exams, didn’t have to assign or grade homework, and did not have to deal with students much on any given day. When he was through lecturing, that was it, and we were making roughly the same salary. He did research on his own (as in, for his own edification), and he had to prepare lecture notes, but that was pretty much the extent of his work. Compare that to the hours I spent planning, grading, dealing with parents, attending staff meetings and professional development, and, well, the jobs aren’t really comparable.

  24. Some lecturers have 5 classes a semester, but I guess that’s still only about 20 hours a week of in-class time. And it’s also true that they often hope to transition to tenure-track positions, which pay more than public school teacher salaries but not as much as industry (if you’re in a field that has industry jobs.) But the probability of getting a tenure-track job, and then tenure, isn’t great. So the lack of job security can be both good and bad.

  25. I would be quite happy with a teacher’s salary to teach undergrads and do research, which would probably be easier than being a public school teacher for me because I like it so much.

    I enjoyed teaching undergrads and other adults too. It was easy and fun and I still get letters from those students thanking me. Teaching public school is a completely different kettle of biting fish.Teaching is the only jobs I’ve had – and I’ve had a few – where I didn’t feel competent after a few months. It took four years to even get close. My other jobs were also considered mentally or physically demanding, or both, but teaching is harder, no question.

    Why do I do it? Like a lot of public school teachers, I almost quit after the first year, but after five years I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m doing a little bit. The kids give me a rough time but they like me and they get good results in my classes. I teach literacy to low-income kids and I consider this important work. My job is often absolutely heart-breaking, and maybe someday I’ll flee to something easier, but the kids need me and that’s what keeps me in the profession – for now.

    By the way, I used to work in Canada where teaching is actually a well-paid and well-respected job. There’s a big difference.

  26. Why is it an either/or situation between teachers and college lecturers? Can’t we just say that both positions are sorely under-paid?

  27. Teachers are paid more than many college lecturers and get far more job security. I have yet to see a convincing argument that teachers are any more underpaid than most American workers.

    Why frame it as if teacher pay and lecturer pay is a zero-sum game, or as if you can’t make the case that lecturers are underpaid without arguing that teachers are sitting pretty?

    Seems to me that primary school, secondary school, and college teachers are all underpaid and undervalued in the US. One of the three professions may be situated in one respect, another in another, but they’re all subject to what is ultimately the same crunch. You don’t improve the status of one kind of educator by grousing about how good another kind has it — you lift them all up by making the case for education, and for improving the working conditions of teachers across the board.

    And to Mikey, I’ll echo what others have said — teachers are, as a profession, among the most politically and socially engaged folks in the country. They’re already doing the work you think they should be doing.

  29. I guess that I think that most of the workers in the bottom 80% of income are underpaid; lecturers just happen to be an example I’m familiar with.

  30. As a grad student and daughter and sister of K-12 teachers, I’d just say that I’m in favor of more money for everyone. And much more prestige for K-12 teachers, because it’s a difficult, important job that doesn’t get the recognition it’s due.

    Having said that, I think that K-12 teachers are situated somewhat more problematically than Mikey’s post lets on. My mom spent much of her career as a white teacher in inner-city schools, and it’s a pretty fraught situation, even for the best, most-committed teacher. Same with non-immigrant (or even less-recent or more-middle-class immigrant) teachers in immigrant communities. Teachers bring their own expectations and prejudices to that kind of situation, and they’re sometimes as much part of the problem as part of the solution. So while I’m all for teachers advocating for their students, it’s also worth pointing out that students may not consider teachers natural advocates for them. And it’s important for communities to produce their own leaders, rather than having even the most informed and involved outsiders speak for them.

  31. Seriously, I have been trying to resist getting on the “who decided Mikey” should post here pile on, but really who decided to let this guy out of the shallow end of the pool without his water-wings on?

  32. So while I’m all for teachers advocating for their students, it’s also worth pointing out that students may not consider teachers natural advocates for them.

    Excellent point. Most teachers I know either do their political advocating for causes in a general way or go through an agency or some other go-between. If I think a kid needs glasses I’ll have the family liaison call the family and offer a voucher, for example. When kids need Christmas presents we all buy things from a list, wrap them and give them to the counsellor who delivers them to the parents.

    Of course, nobody has yet mentioned the toughest part of being an educational professional: when you make an error in spelling or punctuation, there’s usually someone to get all snippy on your ass.

  33. Averages are averages, and that’s problematic indeed. You need to take into account regional cost of living, for one thing — oh, boy, do you. I have taught at independent schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where there is plenty of money to go around, and the salaries are generous. A new teacher with a BA starts, generally, around $40K in that environment; one with an MA slightly higher.

    They’re having trouble getting teachers. Why? Because at those salaries, the teachers can’t afford to live near the school. Most of the young teachers are commuting over an hour, sometimes two. Easier to go look for jobs out in the suburbs. If they’re having trouble, you wanna talk about what the public schools in the less desirable neighborhoods are doing?

  34. Last year I taught at a 100% economically disadvantaged and racial minority elementary school in a neighborhood that is notorious for being very poor and very violent. I can feel my blood pressure shoot up the moment anyone starts talking about teaching being overpaid.

    In addition to the 7:30am to 3:15pm official duty time, we typically arrive early to set up, and days where we got out before 5 were “early” days for most of us. I put in eleven to twelve hour days frequently. We did after school tutorials and Saturday school. We went on unpaid weekend enrichment trips because we knew that if we didn’t, those kids would never get those kinds of experiences. We all bought things for our classrooms, for our kids. I bought several kids tubes of chapstick during the winter because their lips were cracking and bleeding. The kids knew which days were payday for us, and rejoiced, because those were the days I’d show up with a bag from the used bookstore for them.

    Teachers are expected to do some things that we are growing increasingly uncomfortable over. The poor schools can’t afford counselors, so classroom teachers are thrust into that role. I had children who were severely emotionally disturbed. I had an unmedicated ADHD, psychotic, and possibly schizophrenic child with a history of bringing knives to school. I had to call child protective services more than once, and I very much fear retribution from the families I called them on. The school administration urged me to call, but they aren’t going to do anything to protect me. Even though I am not a special education teacher, 75% of my students last year were special needs.

    All teachers are expected to not only just cope with learning disabled, emotionally disturbed students with behavioral disorders, but we’re expected to produce high test scores with them. I was heavily penalized on my annual performance review because, though most of my class is learning disabled and all of them are limited English proficiency students, they didn’t perform on or above grade level.

    The accountability thing is out of control. I could honestly spend eight hour days doing nothing but paperwork and documentation. Forget teaching. I could fill my time doing the paperwork and I’d still never be caught up.

    I try so hard to be an advocate for my kids. But who the hell is going to go to bat for me?

  36. Dealing with the special education bureaucracy for the past 7 years has given me some interesting insight into the educational profession. My mother was an elementary school teacher, so I was raised to respect teachers and the profession, but I have to say that its been hard to maintain that feeling in the face of what we deal with.

    We have been in three different school systems and while I have occasionally had that teacher who went above and beyond for my child, for the most part there has seemed to be an attitude to do the bare minimum. And when I mean they won’t do anything extra, what I’m talking about is things like printing my son’s test on 2 pages versus 1 (to have less stuff on each page). I can’t begin to tell you the resistance I got about that. And just to be clear, my school has lots of parent volunteers who do copying and no shortage of copy paper and a state of the art copy room, so its not about resources. And, my son, who has a disability, is entitled to reasonable accommodations, so this isn’t a frivolous request either.

    I have on more than one occasion waited weeks to have a meeting to address an issue in my son’s IEP, only to have the teachers get up and leave because it was the “end of the contract day” (usually 4:00 p.m.), which means the meetings have had to be pended until we could find a mutually beneficial time (sometimes this takes another so many weeks to do). Generally, I’ve seen a lot of behavior that would be unacceptable in my own workplace. So its difficult for me to respect them as professionals, because what I see, in my own experience anyhow, is clock-punchers.

    Of the three school systems we have been in, two have been more than sufficiently funded and the teachers were paid more than me (I have a degree, 20 years of experience, and work as a technical professional year round and their salaries better mine.) Many of the teachers in our school live in the more affluent neighborhoods surrounding our school.

  37. Moving away from salary discussions… there are a lot of teachers who understand the potential for radicalism/activism in their work.

    “You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not indoctrination. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What you are being taught is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture.”
    -Doris Lessing 1971
    The Golden Notebook

    If we hold this statement to be true, then we educators must think about the values we’re inscribing in our classrooms. There are lots of us who are thinking what kinds of values we want to share with our students. We usually call these practices critical pedagogy.

    Check out
    http://www.radicalteacher.org/
    http://rethinkingschools.org/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy

    another favorite:
    http://www.womedia.org/itselementary.htm

    “the first film of its kind to address anti-gay prejudice by providing adults with practical lessons on how to talk with kids about gay people. Hailed as “a model of intelligent directing,” It’s Elementary shows that children are eager and able to wrestle with stereotypes and absorb new facts about what it means to be gay or lesbian.”

  38. Teachers are well paid and respected in Canada? Where in Canada would this be?

    I get that things are better in Canada because our the way we fund schools is a lot better (i.e., not totally dependent on the tax base of neighbourhoods leaving schools in poor neighbourhoods high and dry), but they’re still plenty messed up. Toronto’s high school teachers went on strike three times when I was in high school – that’s almost every year – and the issues remain low pay and rising expectations in terms of the amount of prep time teachers are expected to put in, coaching, student advising, and leading before and after school activities.
    As for the social justice aspect of teaching, I’m sorta (pleasantly) surprised. The overwhelming majority of teachers that I’ve encountered in and about Toronto are quite conservative. Not necessarily politically conservative in the American sense, but very attached to the status quo. This is what always confuses me about these kinds of discussions about teaching – I get that there are teachers out there who are amazing and fighting for social justice, I just don’t know where they are. They certainly weren’t the education students at my university.

  39. Since my comment seems pretty negative, and perhaps inappropriate in this thread, the context is that I come from a family of very bright kids who were all pretty much pushed out of Toronto’s public education system. Kids who didn’t have the privileges and resources that my family has either drop out permanently and have to figure out how to get by without a high school education, or they’re expelled.

  40. Thank you, Lisa, for turning the conversation back to where Mikey seemed to aim his post: a teacher’s ability (and obligation?) to instill a sense of activism in their daily work. As a very recent graduate of a teacher eduaction program, (albeit a very liberal program) I can say that new teachers are being positively pushed in the role of activist.

    I agree with Mikey, the children are the faces of many social problems. But teachers need to do more than report on these issues, they need to turn their students into self-motivated activists themselves. We’ve all heard that the original aim of public education (way back in the day) was to create microcosms of our new democracy and create the next batch of democratic systems. While still important, we need to also create the next batch of protesters, objectors, and critical observers of our still-new democracy.

  41. My husband is a theater arts teacher at a suburban/rural high school in North Carolina. He arrives to work at 7 and leaves around 5 or 6. Except for the 40% of the time he has a play going on, and then he stays unti 7 or 8. Except for the week of the play itself, in which case he stays until 9 or 10. He is expected to produce plays as an unspoken part of his job, yet no one seems to feel compelled to offer to pay him for this extra time (like they do to say, the athletic coaches)

    The school just took on a pilot program where all the seniors have to complete a year-long project to graduate, and be mentored by a teacher. Total time it will take my husband to mentor his students over the course of the year- about 40 hours.

    Every flippin thing that happens in the auditorium, they expect my husband to be there to set up their lights and microphones- about 40 extra hours per school year.

    His evenings are dedicated to grading and planning, as is the afternoon and evening of Sunday.

    I could go on, but he doesn’t have any time left for me to go on about.

    I just don’t understand the rationale for paying teachers, police, social workers, etc. such insanely low pay to perform the work that keeps our civilization, well, a civilization. Everyone knows how much money it takes to have a reasonable quality of life. How do we, as a society, determine that it is totally cool to say that yes- we think that certain people should have to live lifestyles without vacations or cars with warming cup holders or anything more than a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. We, as the taxpayers who pay the salaries, know what these people make and it somehow seems totally allright.

    But Mikey’s right. Teachers should do more. Lazies.

  42. But Mikey’s right. Teachers should do more. Lazies.

    I really don’t think that Mikey was implying that teachers are lazy or that they don’t do enough. I think he was just pointing out that educators are in a unique position when it comes to advocacy and social justice, especially around issues that relate to children, and that many of these teachers are already taking laudable steps to promote progressive values.

  43. But teachers need to do more than report on these issues, they need to turn their students into self-motivated activists themselves.

    Be careful. Be very, very careful. It’s amazing what parents will complain about, especially in a middle-class or wealthy district.

  44. Be careful. Be very, very careful. It’s amazing what parents will complain about, especially in a middle-class or wealthy district.

    That is the absolute truth.

    Back to the public school teacher vs. lecturer debate, I’ve done both and I can say that, hands down, the college lecturer has the easier job. As a high school teacher, I have to design and plan the lessons, grade the papers, act as a sometimes counselor to the students, and deal with their parents and the school administration and all the paperwork and beaurocracy that goes with that. It is definitely more than a 7-3 job. As a lecturer (I don’t do research), I am expected to prepare lectures and demonstrations and then give it. I have TAs to grade grade and proctor exams, and as soon as the classes and office hours are done, I get to leave if I wish. The profs I know who do research have to get slightly more involved, but their teaching load is reduced proportionally, and they still get the TAs to do most of the heavy lifting.

    Right now, I am a full time substitute teacher for the local public schools (slowly working on certification–it’s amazing that a MS in physics with minors in math and american history aren’t enough to actually teach high school physics and the cost of going back to school full time to get it is prohibitive with two small children) and I teach physics/astronomy courses part time at the local university. Even the substitute teaching job is more involved and demanding than the university job, although I enjoy and get lots of satisfaction from both. But I can say that neither one pays nearly enough to actually live and support a family on. I’m lucky that my husband makes decent money and my pay is mostly to fill in the gaps. Most people aren’t nearly as lucky as I am.

  45. I have to say that while textbooks in the past have been criminally negligent about showing reality, especially the nasty, racist, and sexist aspects, the series I’m working with now is not too bad at all. It’s geared to immigrant and multi-cultural students and the editors have been pretty careful to include 1st person accounts. I have no choice in textbooks, of course, but I was lucky in that the director of curriculum is very much an immigration-rights advocate and anti-racist. There’s no, “The pilgrims invited the lucky Indians over for dinner….” crap.

    I’ve had some pretty great discussions with my kids about racism and sexism. I’m sure nobody will be surprised to find that while my overwhelmingly Mexican-immigrant children are very sensitive to their own story, they have trouble recognizing other forms of bigotry. I learn a lot from these kids – I hope it works both ways.

  46. I have on more than one occasion waited weeks to have a meeting to address an issue in my son’s IEP, only to have the teachers get up and leave because it was the “end of the contract day” (usually 4:00 p.m.), which means the meetings have had to be pended until we could find a mutually beneficial time (sometimes this takes another so many weeks to do). Generally, I’ve seen a lot of behavior that would be unacceptable in my own workplace. So its difficult for me to respect them as professionals, because what I see, in my own experience anyhow, is clock-punchers.

    Being a “clock-puncher” is necessarily unprofessional. Just about every profession has to pay attention to time spent doing the job and compensation. Lawyers bill by the hour, doctor’s time examinations according to the requirements of insurance. No one works without pay.

    (Well, except for “women’s work”, house-care, child care, and the various extra obligations people want to put on jobs like teaching and nursing.)

    It can seem unreasonable, from a parent’s perspective, for a teacher not to stay late “just this once” for a meeting. But what is “just this once” for a parent is a meeting of the sort that happens several times a week, or more, for a teacher, and staying late for each parent’s “just this once” adds up fast.

    The same thing for doing “no more than necessary” – If the teacher could devote all the time in the day to just one child, they could do more. But when you have a classroom (even a small special ed classroom) full of kids, you have to be aware of whether providing what one child needs means that you’re not providing for the other children as needed.

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