13 ms·

This is anecdotal evidence, but my mom was a teacher and she was getting paid 85k, had no masters, didn't work at all during the summer, and didn't work at home

by smabie 6y ago

This is anecdotal evidence, but my mom was a teacher and she was getting paid 85k, had no masters, didn't work at all during the summer, and didn't work at home at all (<8 hour work day).

acdha 6y ago
More power to her — that sounds a lot better than any of the teachers I know. For me, the biggest push here is that we've had a generation or so of our society collectively telling everyone that the future for good jobs is STEM, STEM, STEM or maybe STEM. If we actually believe that, we should be paying and treating teachers well because we are targeting education-intensive subjects and because we need to hire teachers who have an understanding of subjects which pay well. Teaching shop was a great job option for a contractor who was getting older and needed the benefits but that dynamic doesn't apply to someone who can teach most STEM subjects can often get comparable benefits and likely better pay, and enjoying teaching only goes so far to compensate the various drawbacks.
ncphil 6y ago
This isn't your mom's educational labor market. The stats are there to support most assertions in the above reply. They're just inconveniently scattered across the states and not all electronically accessible. I wonder whose interests that serves? When I taught in inner city Paterson back in the mid-90s most teachers worked at least two jobs but still spent many extra hours a week outside normal school time on phone conferences with parents, curriculum development and grading tests/papers, because they all had a full load of classes with 35+ students each. Things weren't much easier down here in NC two decades later where my own kids were in school (our district has a year-round calendar -- so no summers off for teachers). The master's requirement exists in NY, but practically discouraged in other places because school districts didn't want to pay the differential. Sure, none of this approaches the often 24x7x365 experience of many sysadmins and devs (my own tech experience for over 20 years), but it's also far from the bankers' hours myth that's been pushed since at least the 80s.

by smabie 6y ago

This is anecdotal evidence, but my mom was a teacher and she was getting paid 85k, had no masters, didn't work at all during the summer, and didn't work at home at all (<8 hour work day).

acdha 6y ago

More power to her — that sounds a lot better than any of the teachers I know. For me, the biggest push here is that we've had a generation or so of our society collectively telling everyone that the future for good jobs is STEM, STEM, STEM or maybe STEM. If we actually believe that, we should be paying and treating teachers well because we are targeting education-intensive subjects and because we need to hire teachers who have an understanding of subjects which pay well. Teaching shop was a great job option for a contractor who was getting older and needed the benefits but that dynamic doesn't apply to someone who can teach most STEM subjects can often get comparable benefits and likely better pay, and enjoying teaching only goes so far to compensate the various drawbacks.

ncphil 6y ago

This isn't your mom's educational labor market. The stats are there to support most assertions in the above reply. They're just inconveniently scattered across the states and not all electronically accessible. I wonder whose interests that serves? When I taught in inner city Paterson back in the mid-90s most teachers worked at least two jobs but still spent many extra hours a week outside normal school time on phone conferences with parents, curriculum development and grading tests/papers, because they all had a full load of classes with 35+ students each. Things weren't much easier down here in NC two decades later where my own kids were in school (our district has a year-round calendar -- so no summers off for teachers). The master's requirement exists in NY, but practically discouraged in other places because school districts didn't want to pay the differential. Sure, none of this approaches the often 24x7x365 experience of many sysadmins and devs (my own tech experience for over 20 years), but it's also far from the bankers' hours myth that's been pushed since at least the 80s.