Comments on: Teachers, take 3

By: jodi

jodi — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:10:25 +0000

i’d just like to throw in a little fact I became aware of recently while looking for work: a high school teaching position at a school in Portland is offering $10 an hour to start. Ten fucking dollars an hour. You touched on how teachers make peanuts, but this is ridiculous. I know teachers are merely human. But as a kid and young adult, I looked up to my teachers as mentors and role models. I had good ones and I had bad ones. If I’d known they were making the same salary as some people who flip burgers, I would have been infuriated and possibly found that my teachers simply are mortals. Respectable mortals, for what they do, what they put up with, the importance of their role in maturing young adults.

Motivation is a key for humans. We need benefits, encouragement, rewards. Maybe if teachers were paid a bit better, they might be more motivated to be a better teacher, so their students don’t remember them as a doosh twenty years later.

That rant aside, I’m curious to find what your thoughts are on home schooling.

By: Danielle

Danielle — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:24:47 +0000

Well, I don’t have much to say about the public school system beyond (or below) university level. Because I guess I was one of the “spoiled brats” who went to Catholic schools through high school. But the thing was, compared to everyone else I went to school with, I wasn’t spoiled at all. See, my parents could never really afford to send my sister and me to private school, so we got a shitton of financial aid (and in high school, for every $100 of finaid I got, I had to do an hour of service…I routinely did 40+ hours of service just to pay that off) and never took vacations, never got nice clothes, etc., etc. Elementary school was the worst because even though you wear uniforms, there are other ways to show off your money…and I wasn’t one of those kids. If I wanted the nice Adidas shoes, I had to babysit for hours on end to buy them myself. And I had my fair share of bad teachers in elementary school. It wasn’t really until high school where I saw the benefits of going to private school (and I actually liked it). Now, at the university level, just like, I’m sure, at other levels of public ed, there are a lot of politics surrounding pay, etc., etc. I think that everyone has the right to a good education, of course. And it scared the shit out of me seeing some of the people in the ed program at WOU. How are they going to teach their kids how to read and write if they can’t even spell basic words? I was floored. I think that, in addition to the points you’ve already made, if we are to really provide quality education to our kids, then reformation has to happen on all levels–including having a better filter for who can even get a teaching certificate.

By: Gloom

Gloom — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:11:16 +0000

Yeah. I remember the flying lessons.