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I mean, the HS teacher that told me this had a masters in Mech E. Or so he claimed, hmm...

smnrchrds 6y ago
He must not have been the top of his class if he had ended up a HS teacher. Which is actually kinda sad. Pay and working conditions for teachers shouldn't be so that being a teacher is regarded as a failure.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Is it regarded as a failure? Teachers in public schools work part time for 25 years and get a scaling pension they “negotiated” with the politicians their union dues elected. I’d call them fantastic winners. Grifters? Sure. But certainly not losers.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Teachers in public schools work part time Typically full-time and usually year round, though some work seasonally for about 3/4 year (but still full-time), with commensurately reduced annual pay.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      You are simply full of it. Public school teachers are booked for around 180 days of teaching + admin work. I read my tax bill. This is like 36-38 (38 being generous) weeks of work per year. It’s 3 months off.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > You are simply full of it Except your calculations support exactly what I said. > It’s 3 months off. Yes, it's typically 3 months off if they don't work summer session in a traditional schedule. Which most who are able to (there are reduced available positions) do. Hence, the full-time but, for some, 3/4-year seasonal full-time that I stated.
        nemo44x 6y ago
        They get paid for that extra time if they choose to work it. Otherwise a teacher works 30 hours a week when normalized to a 48 hour work year. This is part-time work. But they get golden health care, pension, and early retirement. Good for them. This is why teachers aren’t suckers as the OP suggested. They’re in on a great scam. Good for them. The sucker working retail could only dream.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Otherwise a teacher works 30 hours a week when normalized to a 48 hour work year. This is part-time work. No, it's full-time seasonal work. > The sucker working retail could only dream. Retail generally doesn't require a four-year degree, plus a post-graduate credential as a basic qualification. Compared to professions that do, schoolteachers pay and benefits are between unremarkable and substandard.
        nemo44x 6y ago
        Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. They have public sector unions that negotiate their compensation. I don’t think it’s teachers that are being bullied here.
        tehwebguy 6y ago
        > Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. Many already have, as the local and state governments that control these pensions and benefits are constantly changing.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. Let's not; considering it doesn't make their total pay and benefita particularly good for the entry requirements, though it makes it somewhat less bad, leaving them only 11.1 percent behind comparable professions instead of 18.7 percent considering pay alone, as of 2017. https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/ https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/
  - havelhovel 6y ago
    My parents, both with master’s degrees, worked at least eight hours every day teaching, grading assignments, and then preparing for the following day. I would guess about ten hours on average, seeing as I was mostly left alone as a child while my parents worked over the kitchen table. Yes, they don’t teach during the summer. Their pay reflects that. I won’t even touch on personal expenditures for supplies. Grifters?! My lord. Teachers are criminally underpaid, highly educated adults who shape society’s future while fighting its current failures. All while being inexplicably hated and ridiculed by students, parents, and I guess HN. No need to take my word for it: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/us/teacher-pay-myth-misconception/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/us/teacher-pay-myth-misconcep...
    - SamReidHughes 6y ago
      The article cites the BLS for other professions so why not take the BLS's word for teachers, too? https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      > ...shape society’s future while fighting its current failures. All while being inexplicably hated and ridiculed by students, parents, and I guess HN. I’m not sure how to interpret this. Are you saying they indoctrinate kids? Do they exist to teach kids __how__ to think or __what__ to think? Which current failures are they fighting? As to my previous comment about “grifters”, I’ll admit that was too cynical and over the top. I don’t think individual teachers are. However, their unions are pretty close.
      - michaelt 6y ago
        > Which current failures are they fighting? Depending on the teacher and school, everything from kids coming to school hungry or without supplies to obesity to discipline problems to cheating to bullying/cyberbullying to child abuse to uninvolved parents to mental health problems to anxiety to drugs to deficiencies in the curriculum to achievement gaps between genders, classes and races to lack of good role models to gang culture. That's not to say every teacher works to address all those things at once - at some schools they might not contend with any at all! But I've seen people call on the education system to do almost everything you'd otherwise expect parents to do.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    "part-time" is not something I would ever describe teaching as. All the teachers I've seen take huge amounts of work home with them, even on vacation. There may be a slight lull in the summer but it's filled with training, learning changes in the curriculum, etc. It's not uncommon for teachers to pay for classroom materials out of pocket because the schools are unable or unwilling to pay for them (this would be utterly ridiculous in many other industries). Teaching is something you go into because you enjoy it or it satisfies you on some level and you can put up with ridiculous workloads, not because it pays well.
- ivalm 6y ago
  You are the one regarding them as failures. I had a variety of teachers in school, some were very educated (PhDs), and simply found a calling in teaching. Not everything is about money, you shouldn’t look down on teachers.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    I think the public perception of teachers varies a lot between societies. In breaking bad it was clear that Americans don't think much of a guy who ends up teaching chemistry. If you go to other countries it's very different, eg in Switzerland it seemed totally legit to aspire to teaching. Salary was 120k according to the kid who told me.
    - grandchild 6y ago
      > according to the kid who told me Come on, you can do better than this and actually invest the minute to type this into your search engine of choice and verify: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers_how-well-does-switzerland-pay-its-teachers/43100034 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers... So according to this, Swiss teachers make between CHF 95,590 and CHF 110,590 annually. Cost of living is also higher in Switzerland, so it's a bit less than "120k" would suggest, but still a solid salary. Refer to the link for details.
      - lordnacho 6y ago
        It's in the ballpark, and will certainly get to 120K once you have some seniority. The point was more that a person thinking about what to do could admit to saying he wanted to be a teacher in Switzerland, whereas in the US it seems like making Walter White a teacher was the perfect way to say he'd somehow failed.
        salawat 6y ago
        Admittedly, if the choice is being a "successful" chemist, and bringing into existence VX gas, TNT, Phosgene, Thalidomide, Teflon, various industrial chemical wastes that tend to end up creating Superfund sites, and being a chemistry teacher... I may be getting pretty lame as I get older, but I think the Teacher strictly speaking has the quantifiably lesser destructive footprint of the two outcomes. Then again, the argument there is likely one against mixing business majors, industrial chemists, and more lawyers than you can shake a stick at. So... Yeah. Take it with a grain of salt and call me in the morning.
nemo44x 6y ago
It’s amazing a man would work for a masters degree and end up teaching mainly below average people at a public institution. What’s a masters degree worth?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jjj123 6y ago
  Good lord this comment is condescending. Some people are teachers because they want to be teachers, period. They find fulfillment in it. That’s not even touching the unnecessary dig at public institutions.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Did you go to public schools? I did. The student body is mainly uninterested, incapable, or irredeemable. Some great diamonds in the ruff to be sure. But certainly these people would excel regardless of a 1-off actual good teacher seeing as most of them are just mailing it in, like their student body. Why go to the trouble of getting a masters to waste it like this? FWIW I don’t believe teachers should need a bachelors. A 2-year trade school should suffice.
    - chowned 6y ago
      I sure am glad my fantastic public high school teachers didn't have your attitude. They sacrificed so much for so little, and I'll tell you what, they made a word of difference in at least one life: mine. From what I've learned of teachers, that's more than enough for them. Shame.
    - therealdrag0 6y ago
      I went to public schools. The majority of teachers worked hard and did well with what they had. And many of them had masters.
    - Digit-Al 6y ago
      It's "diamonds in the rough" not "ruff". Sorry to assume you spoke English as a first language ;-)

He must not have been the top of his class if he had ended up a HS teacher. Which is actually kinda sad. Pay and working conditions for teachers shouldn't be so that being a teacher is regarded as a failure.

nemo44x 6y ago
Is it regarded as a failure? Teachers in public schools work part time for 25 years and get a scaling pension they “negotiated” with the politicians their union dues elected. I’d call them fantastic winners. Grifters? Sure. But certainly not losers.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Teachers in public schools work part time Typically full-time and usually year round, though some work seasonally for about 3/4 year (but still full-time), with commensurately reduced annual pay.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    You are simply full of it. Public school teachers are booked for around 180 days of teaching + admin work. I read my tax bill. This is like 36-38 (38 being generous) weeks of work per year. It’s 3 months off.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > You are simply full of it Except your calculations support exactly what I said. > It’s 3 months off. Yes, it's typically 3 months off if they don't work summer session in a traditional schedule. Which most who are able to (there are reduced available positions) do. Hence, the full-time but, for some, 3/4-year seasonal full-time that I stated.
      - nemo44x 6y ago
        They get paid for that extra time if they choose to work it. Otherwise a teacher works 30 hours a week when normalized to a 48 hour work year. This is part-time work. But they get golden health care, pension, and early retirement. Good for them. This is why teachers aren’t suckers as the OP suggested. They’re in on a great scam. Good for them. The sucker working retail could only dream.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Otherwise a teacher works 30 hours a week when normalized to a 48 hour work year. This is part-time work. No, it's full-time seasonal work. > The sucker working retail could only dream. Retail generally doesn't require a four-year degree, plus a post-graduate credential as a basic qualification. Compared to professions that do, schoolteachers pay and benefits are between unremarkable and substandard.
        nemo44x 6y ago
        Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. They have public sector unions that negotiate their compensation. I don’t think it’s teachers that are being bullied here.
        tehwebguy 6y ago
        > Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. Many already have, as the local and state governments that control these pensions and benefits are constantly changing.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Let’s just forget about their sweet pensions and lifelong benefits package. Let's not; considering it doesn't make their total pay and benefita particularly good for the entry requirements, though it makes it somewhat less bad, leaving them only 11.1 percent behind comparable professions instead of 18.7 percent considering pay alone, as of 2017. https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/ https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/
- havelhovel 6y ago
  My parents, both with master’s degrees, worked at least eight hours every day teaching, grading assignments, and then preparing for the following day. I would guess about ten hours on average, seeing as I was mostly left alone as a child while my parents worked over the kitchen table. Yes, they don’t teach during the summer. Their pay reflects that. I won’t even touch on personal expenditures for supplies. Grifters?! My lord. Teachers are criminally underpaid, highly educated adults who shape society’s future while fighting its current failures. All while being inexplicably hated and ridiculed by students, parents, and I guess HN. No need to take my word for it: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/us/teacher-pay-myth-misconception/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/us/teacher-pay-myth-misconcep...
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    The article cites the BLS for other professions so why not take the BLS's word for teachers, too? https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    > ...shape society’s future while fighting its current failures. All while being inexplicably hated and ridiculed by students, parents, and I guess HN. I’m not sure how to interpret this. Are you saying they indoctrinate kids? Do they exist to teach kids __how__ to think or __what__ to think? Which current failures are they fighting? As to my previous comment about “grifters”, I’ll admit that was too cynical and over the top. I don’t think individual teachers are. However, their unions are pretty close.
    - michaelt 6y ago
      > Which current failures are they fighting? Depending on the teacher and school, everything from kids coming to school hungry or without supplies to obesity to discipline problems to cheating to bullying/cyberbullying to child abuse to uninvolved parents to mental health problems to anxiety to drugs to deficiencies in the curriculum to achievement gaps between genders, classes and races to lack of good role models to gang culture. That's not to say every teacher works to address all those things at once - at some schools they might not contend with any at all! But I've seen people call on the education system to do almost everything you'd otherwise expect parents to do.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  "part-time" is not something I would ever describe teaching as. All the teachers I've seen take huge amounts of work home with them, even on vacation. There may be a slight lull in the summer but it's filled with training, learning changes in the curriculum, etc. It's not uncommon for teachers to pay for classroom materials out of pocket because the schools are unable or unwilling to pay for them (this would be utterly ridiculous in many other industries). Teaching is something you go into because you enjoy it or it satisfies you on some level and you can put up with ridiculous workloads, not because it pays well.
ivalm 6y ago
You are the one regarding them as failures. I had a variety of teachers in school, some were very educated (PhDs), and simply found a calling in teaching. Not everything is about money, you shouldn’t look down on teachers.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  I think the public perception of teachers varies a lot between societies. In breaking bad it was clear that Americans don't think much of a guy who ends up teaching chemistry. If you go to other countries it's very different, eg in Switzerland it seemed totally legit to aspire to teaching. Salary was 120k according to the kid who told me.
  - grandchild 6y ago
    > according to the kid who told me Come on, you can do better than this and actually invest the minute to type this into your search engine of choice and verify: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers_how-well-does-switzerland-pay-its-teachers/43100034 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers... So according to this, Swiss teachers make between CHF 95,590 and CHF 110,590 annually. Cost of living is also higher in Switzerland, so it's a bit less than "120k" would suggest, but still a solid salary. Refer to the link for details.
    - lordnacho 6y ago
      It's in the ballpark, and will certainly get to 120K once you have some seniority. The point was more that a person thinking about what to do could admit to saying he wanted to be a teacher in Switzerland, whereas in the US it seems like making Walter White a teacher was the perfect way to say he'd somehow failed.
      - salawat 6y ago
        Admittedly, if the choice is being a "successful" chemist, and bringing into existence VX gas, TNT, Phosgene, Thalidomide, Teflon, various industrial chemical wastes that tend to end up creating Superfund sites, and being a chemistry teacher... I may be getting pretty lame as I get older, but I think the Teacher strictly speaking has the quantifiably lesser destructive footprint of the two outcomes. Then again, the argument there is likely one against mixing business majors, industrial chemists, and more lawyers than you can shake a stick at. So... Yeah. Take it with a grain of salt and call me in the morning.

nemo44x 6y ago

It’s amazing a man would work for a masters degree and end up teaching mainly below average people at a public institution. What’s a masters degree worth?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jjj123 6y ago
Good lord this comment is condescending. Some people are teachers because they want to be teachers, period. They find fulfillment in it. That’s not even touching the unnecessary dig at public institutions.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Did you go to public schools? I did. The student body is mainly uninterested, incapable, or irredeemable. Some great diamonds in the ruff to be sure. But certainly these people would excel regardless of a 1-off actual good teacher seeing as most of them are just mailing it in, like their student body. Why go to the trouble of getting a masters to waste it like this? FWIW I don’t believe teachers should need a bachelors. A 2-year trade school should suffice.
  - chowned 6y ago
    I sure am glad my fantastic public high school teachers didn't have your attitude. They sacrificed so much for so little, and I'll tell you what, they made a word of difference in at least one life: mine. From what I've learned of teachers, that's more than enough for them. Shame.
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    I went to public schools. The majority of teachers worked hard and did well with what they had. And many of them had masters.
  - Digit-Al 6y ago
    It's "diamonds in the rough" not "ruff". Sorry to assume you spoke English as a first language ;-)