8 ms·

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking fr

by timjahn 15y ago

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc). Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and curriculums often have to be prepared for the following year. She's been doing that for a bit already whenever our little guy naps. The other part of overlooked is the emotional toll. In my wife's case, she's dealing with high school freshmen, juniors, seniors, all who are one hell of a handful most of the time. Last year, she had a class that had her crying more than a few times. The kids were literally trying to make her cry. But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference. (For the record, my wife's district actually pays pretty well, so I don't think she's underpaid).

roundsquare 15y ago
"But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference." If you ask me, that's all the more reason to increase pay and remove the near absolute job security. (Note: I haven't independently fact checked the job security so if its wrong please let me know). Given how important the job is, doesn't it make sense to align the incentives properly? For the most part, when I hear people disagree with this, they tend to bring up specific problems with things like No Child Left Behind. Its hard to disagree that using bad techniques to measure teacher performance is a bad idea and I don't have a specific better solution, but I don't think that means we should stop trying.
- pmb 15y ago
  Do you know of any good techniques to measure teacher performance?
- timjahn 15y ago
  I agree that it's a good reason to increase pay and possibly remove job security. And yes, once a teacher is tenured, barring any obvious crazy behavior, they are basically guaranteed their job regardless (at least in Chicagoland). There are pros and cons to that - my wife and I discuss that subject often. I don't like the idea of tenured teachers not taking that responsibility seriously and just slacking off. My wife argues that it helps the good teachers make real change (since they can't before being tenured for fear of being fired). No Child Left Behind is a big problem if you talk to any teacher. In my wife's district, they will soon be implementing some incentive based teaching practices, where portions of a teachers pay will be tied directly to student performances. And since all high school teaching is geared toward good ACT scores, it will all basically come down to ACT scores (which it does a lot already).
jseliger 15y ago
"Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc)." That might be true for her. Nonetheless, the plural of anecdote is not data; as I observe in the post: "According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the average teacher works slightly less than 40 hours per week. If you have better data, I’d like to see it. Note too that people getting teaching degrees at the graduate level get substantially lower GRE scores than those in almost all other disciplines. This will come up later."
- T-R 15y ago
  Not that I have any reason to doubt the BLS data, but does anyone know of any other data on the issue? Everyone seems to be citing the same pdf.
  - odd_sort 15y ago
    I think what makes people question the data is that the average hours of work per week match up pretty well with the time a teacher spends at school, which is insufficient to cover duties like planning lessons and grading papers (see for example any work-to-contract strike). In any case, the ATUS specifies that its questions are about work done for pay/profit or free for a family business (since teachers typically work more hours than stated in their contract, a lot of work they do is not for pay).
    - timjahn 15y ago
      Bingo.
- vacri 15y ago
  The BLS data being based off the survey question "How much work did you do yesterday" and extrapolating from that, instead of something more direct like "how much work did you do last week". Anyway, Google is loaded with heaps of research into teacher workloads, this line "if anyone has better data, I'd like to see it" is just a handwaving throwaway line. But if you really do have a problem with anecdotal data, why do things like bring up Bill Gates, who is not only an anecdotal point, but an obvious outlier at that?
noonespecial 15y ago
You wife is underpaid. She cares. The guy in the class right next to her is overpaid at the very same salary. He doesn't care. That's the super-hard to solve problem a the center of this debate.
jhaglund 15y ago
I think we should all get a few months off a year. I wish the people complaining about teacher "vacation" benefits would instead demand more vacation time for themselves.

by timjahn 15y ago

roundsquare 15y ago

"But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference." If you ask me, that's all the more reason to increase pay and remove the near absolute job security. (Note: I haven't independently fact checked the job security so if its wrong please let me know). Given how important the job is, doesn't it make sense to align the incentives properly? For the most part, when I hear people disagree with this, they tend to bring up specific problems with things like No Child Left Behind. Its hard to disagree that using bad techniques to measure teacher performance is a bad idea and I don't have a specific better solution, but I don't think that means we should stop trying.

pmb 15y ago
Do you know of any good techniques to measure teacher performance?
timjahn 15y ago
I agree that it's a good reason to increase pay and possibly remove job security. And yes, once a teacher is tenured, barring any obvious crazy behavior, they are basically guaranteed their job regardless (at least in Chicagoland). There are pros and cons to that - my wife and I discuss that subject often. I don't like the idea of tenured teachers not taking that responsibility seriously and just slacking off. My wife argues that it helps the good teachers make real change (since they can't before being tenured for fear of being fired). No Child Left Behind is a big problem if you talk to any teacher. In my wife's district, they will soon be implementing some incentive based teaching practices, where portions of a teachers pay will be tied directly to student performances. And since all high school teaching is geared toward good ACT scores, it will all basically come down to ACT scores (which it does a lot already).

jseliger 15y ago

"Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc)." That might be true for her. Nonetheless, the plural of anecdote is not data; as I observe in the post: "According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the average teacher works slightly less than 40 hours per week. If you have better data, I’d like to see it. Note too that people getting teaching degrees at the graduate level get substantially lower GRE scores than those in almost all other disciplines. This will come up later."

T-R 15y ago
Not that I have any reason to doubt the BLS data, but does anyone know of any other data on the issue? Everyone seems to be citing the same pdf.
- odd_sort 15y ago
  I think what makes people question the data is that the average hours of work per week match up pretty well with the time a teacher spends at school, which is insufficient to cover duties like planning lessons and grading papers (see for example any work-to-contract strike). In any case, the ATUS specifies that its questions are about work done for pay/profit or free for a family business (since teachers typically work more hours than stated in their contract, a lot of work they do is not for pay).
  - timjahn 15y ago
    Bingo.
vacri 15y ago
The BLS data being based off the survey question "How much work did you do yesterday" and extrapolating from that, instead of something more direct like "how much work did you do last week". Anyway, Google is loaded with heaps of research into teacher workloads, this line "if anyone has better data, I'd like to see it" is just a handwaving throwaway line. But if you really do have a problem with anecdotal data, why do things like bring up Bill Gates, who is not only an anecdotal point, but an obvious outlier at that?

noonespecial 15y ago

You wife is underpaid. She cares. The guy in the class right next to her is overpaid at the very same salary. He doesn't care. That's the super-hard to solve problem a the center of this debate.

jhaglund 15y ago

I think we should all get a few months off a year. I wish the people complaining about teacher "vacation" benefits would instead demand more vacation time for themselves.