This really is frightening. About 10 years ago, I made a pretty accurate and detailed map of my High School using Doom, complete with new textures and sprites (of real teachers). I was enrolled in architecture classes at the time and had installed it on the computers at school. Fortunately my teacher thought it was really impressive and showed what I knew about autocad and mapping; He also thought it was hilarious killing himself in the actual tech room.
About 2 weeks later, the Columbine incident occurred. Without even discussing it, my teacher and I agreed that it should probably be removed from the school computer (for obvious reasons and the fact nobody was getting any actual drafting done). Years later I thought about just how much shit could have come down on me. Today, I am a recent graduate of an Elementary Education program and I teach in a 5th grade classroom and happen to be one of the biggest pacifists I know. What kind of outcome would my life have had if the school deemed me a serious threat and a "terrorist", expelled me from school and sent me to the local reform school? It's frightening to think what this scapegoating and fear mongering does to us and children.
Not quite true... the Americans with disabilities act doesn't FORCE you to allow access and employment of ANYONE with a disability... the act says businesses must make reasonable accommodations. Is it reasonable for Ford Motor company to add an expensive wheelchair ramp to their corporate office? Absolutely. Is it reasonable for my former employer, a small, individual-owned day care center, to have an expensive wheelchair ramp built? No, that would be too costly and thus, not reasonable.
...and passed by a Republican controlled Congress. The Republican party owns this as much as the Democrats... which really highlights your point of "just as much panderers".
Ahh yes, I'll begin by saying you are putting words into my mouth.
Well then, I'm glad we understand one another, because you're doing the same thing. I don't recall complaining or asking for your sympathy when talking about retirements, merely stating differences. I only talked about the differences, never once stating an opinion on the matter... only providing the other perspective. I don't see where I asked for your pitty.
Paid just fine? Depends, this is what the argument has been about from the beginning of this discussion. From what I see there is an inherent and ingrained bitterness of government employees by people in the private sector. Who knows why, but there is a definitely animosity towards civil servants as though they don't deserve what they've worked for and they have it easy. Maybe you should look at it from another vantage, maybe it's just different. Public sectors jobs have their OWN share of problems, many are similar to Civil Service positions. There is tremendous ineptitude at the top of the corporate ladder and rampant cronyism and egregious pay inequality. Government Jobs have tenure issues and incompetence issues... to me it seems like the problems are the same, just different fields. 401ks, retirement benefits... private jobs pay more so you can put money away... it's just a different approach to retirement and pay.
One need only look at my initial argument... and YOURS as well... Teachers are paid fine, which you agree... but it just happens their 9 months = 1 year of work. (However, I make less than 30,000$ a year... there are plenty of fields I could have gone into that would have paid me a hell of a lot more.) But whatever, this is just pointless rambling:P
Pensions are nice... once you work for 30 years. A 401k you can take with you, it doesn't disappear if you fail to finish 30 years at the same job. Considering the vast majority of New Teachers quit after 5 years, that's a lot of work time eaten you could have been saving money.
The replies to my comment and the bulk of comments in this thread illustrate why it doesn't pay to be a teacher. It's the only licensed and educated professional career I know of that every Joe-Sixpack and their brother thinks they can do better. Why bother requiring an education or licensure to teach, apparently they have it easy and their work isn't difficult. Honestly, I never hear people complain that "Programmers are so lazy, they hardly work... I could do their job." or "Pharmacist just give out drugs in bottles, I could do that... they don't know how easy they have it."
But seriously, the bulk of all teachers are well educated in content, management, psychology and know their respective curriculum well, and they work hard at their careers. What's with Slashdot's vitriolic and absurd hatred of teachers?
Um, I'm not "off Base" because I do know something about this... I am a teacher (IAAT?) I have never worked in a district where teachers get breaks, nor have I ever worked in a district where teachers get more than a half hour for lunch. That's it, one half hour lunch. There IS a specialist period, I referred to it above, it's called prep period. During that time it's hardly a break, I always have a ton of work to do or our team has meetings we go to.
I know you were attempting to discredit my post by citing sterotypes and anecdotal stories of teachers not working, but I don't think you would have gathered from my original post that I AM a teacher (for good reason, I left my post as career neutral as I could). My lord, yes I DO assign a LOT of in class work... what am I doing during that time? Working! When children are working on assignments you think you can just take a break? You must be constantly on the move to help answer questions, offer assistance present information differently with other tools to help some students make sense of information. I've never had a minute to sit still even when students are given in class work or large group projects, there is always work to be done and students to help.
I'm sorry you had 1 or 2 teachers who were not proficient at their jobs, but citing a couple bad people who taught you hardly discredits anything I've said. OBVIOUSLY there are bad teachers, dozens of books have been written about it. I agree to some extent that tenure and unions have helped create an environment that keeps some unqualified professionals in their job. You asked why we can't pay better teachers more. A noble proposal and a few are out there (MN is trying QComp), but all ideas I have heard are ultimately flawed. How do you guage how "good" a teacher is? Test scores? They don't reflect how good a teacher is. Putting in extra hours? better... but suppose someone choses to do their work at home rather than stay in the building, how do you pay them for that? pay for teachers who go above and beyond is a noble idea... but nobody has a clue how to fairly implement it. There is no tangible quality like "making money" liek the private sector you can use to show how good someone is at teaching.
Neither you nor the other reply to this post have actually addressed anything I argued. Teachers work the same amount of time during their year of work as other professions. You might not see it since you don't teach but I've worked both Teaching and Private work and I worked the same... but for different lengths of time during a year. Again, I'm not bragging or asking for sympathy, but I'm tired of this "Teachers got it easy, they don't work". Please, please enough.
I shouldn't expect anything else though, it is too easy to see the Bias this community has against teachers. Every post I've ever made about teaching hardly garners a single upvote and I actually fear for a -troll rating when I talk about working as an educator. If nothing else, I believe my posts are an interesting insight into this topic that apparently people here don't want to read about.
Could I please stop hearing this "Teacher's don't work all year" rhetoric. Technically Nobody works all year. Teacher's work roughly 180 days a year depending on the state, and other full time positions work maybe 260 (5 days a week x 52 weeks) also subtract your paid vacation time and holidays, say another 20 days so a full 240 days a year. That's 40 more days of work.
Next time you go to work (if you work a standard 9-5 job) think about your 15 minute breaks and hour lunch, Teachers don't get that. One half hour lunch and an hour of "prep Time" when students aren't in your room... but this time is used for getting more work done, it's not a break. That's a Full hour a day of "time off" regular full time employees get that teacher's don't, so every 8 days is almost another full day of "work". Over the course of a year is almost 30 days of "work time".
This doesn't even account for the 4+ hours of unpaid work done when we get home. Go home after a long day of work and grade 25 biographies, 25 math assignments and 25science journals. It's a lot of work in addition to spending a couple more hours getting all the materials ready for the next day, lesson plans, worksheets, schedule... these things take time to prepare... time we're not technically paid for. My math is pretty weak, but I think it illustrates that, in a 180 day work schedule, teachers work a full year's worth of work time for your average 9-5 job. That $47,000 you cited (which I WISH I made that much), pays for a full year's worth of work. Do teacher's "work" 240 days a year like most jobs? No, but they obviously put in the same amount of hours working as a full 240 day job.
That's just the minimum ammount of extra time required to make a classroom run effectively. The real teachers that are going above and beyond to make every day of class exciting, are putting in extra hours to design props, models, miniatures, decorations for the room, costumes... you name it. Those take countless more hours to prepare. Of course not EVERY teacher goes to those lengths, but some do and they get paid the exact same as a teacher who does less.
I'm not saying "boo hoo teachers work a lot" I don't want sympathy, but people just like you regurgitate this myth that teachers do less work for the same pay, when I'm trying to illustrate that it's probably even. I understand some jobs people feel compelled to work at home, extending their 240 day work schedule longer, or they put in more hours at the office... but teaching requires that every day. If you take nothing else from this post, I'm not trying to advocate teachers work harder than anyone else at their job, but that... they work just as hard. It just happens to be crammed into a shorter time frame. So please, stop regurgitating this common stereotype.
Fast forward to November... 5 billion years from now.
The Sun has expanded into a Red Giant and engulfed the Earth. There are no longer any children clamoring for video game consoles. Humans have since gone extinct over 4 billions years ago and the only traces of our existence are electromagnetic signatures traveling the cosmos.
I win!...or lose, I guess it depends how you look at it:P
Is this soapbox hour? Do you have anything to back up your claims? I teach Elementary School neither myself nor my colleagues teach that way. There is always time in class to answer questions, we don't rely on homework to take the place of individual instruction. Grading during class, what in God's name are you talking about? The only time during school hours anything can be graded is during prep time when students are at specialites (nice how the arts are relegated to a "special" time of the semester... but that's a different rant). At no point in time are most teachers grading work while students are in class, it is done outside of class, on our time, when we are not getting paid for it.
Seriously, you must one single anecdotal instance you are extrapolating from or, most likely, you are just full of it. Who keeps modding your garbage up?
Oh please, this is hardly insightful. Assigning homework makes MORE work for teachers. Have you tried grading 25 student journals, 25 spelling tests, 25 DOL (Daily Oral Language) worksheets, 25 Math worksheets, 25 science labs... all while still planning curriculum for the current and upcoming weeks? The more you assign to gather assessment, the more workload you place on yourself to grade. Of course there are lazy teachers, but a handful of bad people in a profession do not "all" make.
This decision to remove homework is probably 2 fold, alleviate student's burden in the primary grades AND help reduce teacher burnout. I think it's in the neighborhood of 1 in 4 new teachers quit the profession in the first 5 years, sighting burnout as the primary reason.
Your response could have carried so much more prominence and weight, but you chose to start your reply with the 'M$' slur. It was an instant bomb that told me not to read any further (I did begrudgingly, only to find a quality post hidden below). Can we please stop using this ridiculous denotation for Microsoft. Yes they're a tremendously wealthy company who throw their weight around inappropriately... but we're adults. We should be able to discuss the (de)merits of Microsoft without resorting to the equivalent of "poopy head".
I disagree that Myst was widely loved by audiences... I think Myst is a prime example of "right place right time" When Myst was released, people were buying their first PCs and they were coming with these awesome "CD ROM" Drives. People were dying to see what this $2000 dollar caluclator could do, and Myst delivered that. The game is not much more than a glorified Powerpoint presentation. It was filled with breathtaking 3D images and a "story" to accompany them. Even more amazing... players were treated to FULL MOTION VIDEO postage stamps (this was 1994 and I was truthfully blown away). Yes I played Myst and solved all the mysteries (some how), but looking back and trying to play the game again... I don't find it to be particularly fun, and it's almost a chore to play it. Who knows, maybe this "right place right time" bit made it important and fun for that period, but for me, the game hasn't aged well and the only thing it has going for it is the power of nostalgia.
Someone answer me, I'm not trolling here I want some sort of answer that makes sense to me... Why the fuck AREN'T these companies doing that?!? The Playstation 3 has been selling abysmally in the States and from the sound of other articles, not so well in Japan either. The 360 has positioned itself as a huge demographic outside Japan, and any company looking to make serious money on a product is going to have to release software for this platform. We know that Square has a raging hard on for the most sophisticated and gaudy visuals possible, and only the 360 and PS3 can offer that capability this generation. Is Square intentionally trying to sell very few games outside of Japan? What possible reasoning could the company have for being so foolish as to pass on releasing their product for the 360? Same goes for Metal Gear Solid 4... but that's more likely since, I believe, in the past all the MGS games came out for the XBOX... just later (I could be mistaken).
The National Energy Policy Development Group would spring to mind, the 2001 Energy Task Force headed by Dick Cheney which has refused to reveal the information of their policy and meetings despite being ordered to do so by courts. The Executive Branch has hid behind the "National Security" moniker to ensure that information is not released. A small ammount of information was released to the public, but nothing of any significance or importance.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying something like this would be more appropriate?
Nothing, because of doctor-patient privilege?
This really is frightening. About 10 years ago, I made a pretty accurate and detailed map of my High School using Doom, complete with new textures and sprites (of real teachers). I was enrolled in architecture classes at the time and had installed it on the computers at school. Fortunately my teacher thought it was really impressive and showed what I knew about autocad and mapping; He also thought it was hilarious killing himself in the actual tech room.
About 2 weeks later, the Columbine incident occurred. Without even discussing it, my teacher and I agreed that it should probably be removed from the school computer (for obvious reasons and the fact nobody was getting any actual drafting done). Years later I thought about just how much shit could have come down on me. Today, I am a recent graduate of an Elementary Education program and I teach in a 5th grade classroom and happen to be one of the biggest pacifists I know. What kind of outcome would my life have had if the school deemed me a serious threat and a "terrorist", expelled me from school and sent me to the local reform school? It's frightening to think what this scapegoating and fear mongering does to us and children.
Uh what? You can download any of the games/demos/XBLA games without paying a cent to Microsoft for Live. What are you referring to?
Not quite true... the Americans with disabilities act doesn't FORCE you to allow access and employment of ANYONE with a disability... the act says businesses must make reasonable accommodations. Is it reasonable for Ford Motor company to add an expensive wheelchair ramp to their corporate office? Absolutely. Is it reasonable for my former employer, a small, individual-owned day care center, to have an expensive wheelchair ramp built? No, that would be too costly and thus, not reasonable.
or... *gasp* it was a joke!
The password was gaben.
...and passed by a Republican controlled Congress. The Republican party owns this as much as the Democrats... which really highlights your point of "just as much panderers".
Ahh yes, I'll begin by saying you are putting words into my mouth.
:P
Well then, I'm glad we understand one another, because you're doing the same thing. I don't recall complaining or asking for your sympathy when talking about retirements, merely stating differences. I only talked about the differences, never once stating an opinion on the matter... only providing the other perspective. I don't see where I asked for your pitty.
Paid just fine? Depends, this is what the argument has been about from the beginning of this discussion. From what I see there is an inherent and ingrained bitterness of government employees by people in the private sector. Who knows why, but there is a definitely animosity towards civil servants as though they don't deserve what they've worked for and they have it easy. Maybe you should look at it from another vantage, maybe it's just different. Public sectors jobs have their OWN share of problems, many are similar to Civil Service positions. There is tremendous ineptitude at the top of the corporate ladder and rampant cronyism and egregious pay inequality. Government Jobs have tenure issues and incompetence issues... to me it seems like the problems are the same, just different fields. 401ks, retirement benefits... private jobs pay more so you can put money away... it's just a different approach to retirement and pay.
One need only look at my initial argument... and YOURS as well... Teachers are paid fine, which you agree... but it just happens their 9 months = 1 year of work. (However, I make less than 30,000$ a year... there are plenty of fields I could have gone into that would have paid me a hell of a lot more.) But whatever, this is just pointless rambling
Pensions are nice... once you work for 30 years. A 401k you can take with you, it doesn't disappear if you fail to finish 30 years at the same job. Considering the vast majority of New Teachers quit after 5 years, that's a lot of work time eaten you could have been saving money.
The replies to my comment and the bulk of comments in this thread illustrate why it doesn't pay to be a teacher. It's the only licensed and educated professional career I know of that every Joe-Sixpack and their brother thinks they can do better. Why bother requiring an education or licensure to teach, apparently they have it easy and their work isn't difficult. Honestly, I never hear people complain that "Programmers are so lazy, they hardly work... I could do their job." or "Pharmacist just give out drugs in bottles, I could do that... they don't know how easy they have it."
But seriously, the bulk of all teachers are well educated in content, management, psychology and know their respective curriculum well, and they work hard at their careers. What's with Slashdot's vitriolic and absurd hatred of teachers?
Um, I'm not "off Base" because I do know something about this... I am a teacher (IAAT?) I have never worked in a district where teachers get breaks, nor have I ever worked in a district where teachers get more than a half hour for lunch. That's it, one half hour lunch. There IS a specialist period, I referred to it above, it's called prep period. During that time it's hardly a break, I always have a ton of work to do or our team has meetings we go to.
I know you were attempting to discredit my post by citing sterotypes and anecdotal stories of teachers not working, but I don't think you would have gathered from my original post that I AM a teacher (for good reason, I left my post as career neutral as I could). My lord, yes I DO assign a LOT of in class work... what am I doing during that time? Working! When children are working on assignments you think you can just take a break? You must be constantly on the move to help answer questions, offer assistance present information differently with other tools to help some students make sense of information. I've never had a minute to sit still even when students are given in class work or large group projects, there is always work to be done and students to help.
I'm sorry you had 1 or 2 teachers who were not proficient at their jobs, but citing a couple bad people who taught you hardly discredits anything I've said. OBVIOUSLY there are bad teachers, dozens of books have been written about it. I agree to some extent that tenure and unions have helped create an environment that keeps some unqualified professionals in their job. You asked why we can't pay better teachers more. A noble proposal and a few are out there (MN is trying QComp), but all ideas I have heard are ultimately flawed. How do you guage how "good" a teacher is? Test scores? They don't reflect how good a teacher is. Putting in extra hours? better... but suppose someone choses to do their work at home rather than stay in the building, how do you pay them for that? pay for teachers who go above and beyond is a noble idea... but nobody has a clue how to fairly implement it. There is no tangible quality like "making money" liek the private sector you can use to show how good someone is at teaching.
Neither you nor the other reply to this post have actually addressed anything I argued. Teachers work the same amount of time during their year of work as other professions. You might not see it since you don't teach but I've worked both Teaching and Private work and I worked the same... but for different lengths of time during a year. Again, I'm not bragging or asking for sympathy, but I'm tired of this "Teachers got it easy, they don't work". Please, please enough.
I shouldn't expect anything else though, it is too easy to see the Bias this community has against teachers. Every post I've ever made about teaching hardly garners a single upvote and I actually fear for a -troll rating when I talk about working as an educator. If nothing else, I believe my posts are an interesting insight into this topic that apparently people here don't want to read about.
Could I please stop hearing this "Teacher's don't work all year" rhetoric. Technically Nobody works all year. Teacher's work roughly 180 days a year depending on the state, and other full time positions work maybe 260 (5 days a week x 52 weeks) also subtract your paid vacation time and holidays, say another 20 days so a full 240 days a year. That's 40 more days of work.
Next time you go to work (if you work a standard 9-5 job) think about your 15 minute breaks and hour lunch, Teachers don't get that. One half hour lunch and an hour of "prep Time" when students aren't in your room... but this time is used for getting more work done, it's not a break. That's a Full hour a day of "time off" regular full time employees get that teacher's don't, so every 8 days is almost another full day of "work". Over the course of a year is almost 30 days of "work time".
This doesn't even account for the 4+ hours of unpaid work done when we get home. Go home after a long day of work and grade 25 biographies, 25 math assignments and 25science journals. It's a lot of work in addition to spending a couple more hours getting all the materials ready for the next day, lesson plans, worksheets, schedule... these things take time to prepare... time we're not technically paid for. My math is pretty weak, but I think it illustrates that, in a 180 day work schedule, teachers work a full year's worth of work time for your average 9-5 job. That $47,000 you cited (which I WISH I made that much), pays for a full year's worth of work. Do teacher's "work" 240 days a year like most jobs? No, but they obviously put in the same amount of hours working as a full 240 day job.
That's just the minimum ammount of extra time required to make a classroom run effectively. The real teachers that are going above and beyond to make every day of class exciting, are putting in extra hours to design props, models, miniatures, decorations for the room, costumes... you name it. Those take countless more hours to prepare. Of course not EVERY teacher goes to those lengths, but some do and they get paid the exact same as a teacher who does less.
I'm not saying "boo hoo teachers work a lot" I don't want sympathy, but people just like you regurgitate this myth that teachers do less work for the same pay, when I'm trying to illustrate that it's probably even. I understand some jobs people feel compelled to work at home, extending their 240 day work schedule longer, or they put in more hours at the office... but teaching requires that every day. If you take nothing else from this post, I'm not trying to advocate teachers work harder than anyone else at their job, but that... they work just as hard. It just happens to be crammed into a shorter time frame. So please, stop regurgitating this common stereotype.
Fast forward to November... 5 billion years from now.
...or lose, I guess it depends how you look at it :P
The Sun has expanded into a Red Giant and engulfed the Earth. There are no longer any children clamoring for video game consoles. Humans have since gone extinct over 4 billions years ago and the only traces of our existence are electromagnetic signatures traveling the cosmos.
I win!
And Kansas to declare that Humans were created by a divine diety.
Waitaminute...
Is this soapbox hour? Do you have anything to back up your claims? I teach Elementary School neither myself nor my colleagues teach that way. There is always time in class to answer questions, we don't rely on homework to take the place of individual instruction. Grading during class, what in God's name are you talking about? The only time during school hours anything can be graded is during prep time when students are at specialites (nice how the arts are relegated to a "special" time of the semester... but that's a different rant). At no point in time are most teachers grading work while students are in class, it is done outside of class, on our time, when we are not getting paid for it.
Seriously, you must one single anecdotal instance you are extrapolating from or, most likely, you are just full of it. Who keeps modding your garbage up?
Oh please, this is hardly insightful. Assigning homework makes MORE work for teachers. Have you tried grading 25 student journals, 25 spelling tests, 25 DOL (Daily Oral Language) worksheets, 25 Math worksheets, 25 science labs... all while still planning curriculum for the current and upcoming weeks? The more you assign to gather assessment, the more workload you place on yourself to grade. Of course there are lazy teachers, but a handful of bad people in a profession do not "all" make.
This decision to remove homework is probably 2 fold, alleviate student's burden in the primary grades AND help reduce teacher burnout. I think it's in the neighborhood of 1 in 4 new teachers quit the profession in the first 5 years, sighting burnout as the primary reason.
Your response could have carried so much more prominence and weight, but you chose to start your reply with the 'M$' slur. It was an instant bomb that told me not to read any further (I did begrudgingly, only to find a quality post hidden below). Can we please stop using this ridiculous denotation for Microsoft. Yes they're a tremendously wealthy company who throw their weight around inappropriately... but we're adults. We should be able to discuss the (de)merits of Microsoft without resorting to the equivalent of "poopy head".
I think most condoms get their fair share of protein coatings as it is.
I disagree that Myst was widely loved by audiences... I think Myst is a prime example of "right place right time" When Myst was released, people were buying their first PCs and they were coming with these awesome "CD ROM" Drives. People were dying to see what this $2000 dollar caluclator could do, and Myst delivered that. The game is not much more than a glorified Powerpoint presentation. It was filled with breathtaking 3D images and a "story" to accompany them. Even more amazing... players were treated to FULL MOTION VIDEO postage stamps (this was 1994 and I was truthfully blown away). Yes I played Myst and solved all the mysteries (some how), but looking back and trying to play the game again... I don't find it to be particularly fun, and it's almost a chore to play it. Who knows, maybe this "right place right time" bit made it important and fun for that period, but for me, the game hasn't aged well and the only thing it has going for it is the power of nostalgia.
Understandable, it's a hard one.
Someone answer me, I'm not trolling here I want some sort of answer that makes sense to me... Why the fuck AREN'T these companies doing that?!? The Playstation 3 has been selling abysmally in the States and from the sound of other articles, not so well in Japan either. The 360 has positioned itself as a huge demographic outside Japan, and any company looking to make serious money on a product is going to have to release software for this platform. We know that Square has a raging hard on for the most sophisticated and gaudy visuals possible, and only the 360 and PS3 can offer that capability this generation. Is Square intentionally trying to sell very few games outside of Japan? What possible reasoning could the company have for being so foolish as to pass on releasing their product for the 360? Same goes for Metal Gear Solid 4... but that's more likely since, I believe, in the past all the MGS games came out for the XBOX... just later (I could be mistaken).
TECHNICALLY... she's a Rodham, not a Clinton :P
You left the strikethrough tag on when you wrote the S in 'MS'. I'm not sure how you got it to go vertical, but I'd definitely look into that.
George Broussard? Is that really you?
The National Energy Policy Development Group would spring to mind, the 2001 Energy Task Force headed by Dick Cheney which has refused to reveal the information of their policy and meetings despite being ordered to do so by courts. The Executive Branch has hid behind the "National Security" moniker to ensure that information is not released. A small ammount of information was released to the public, but nothing of any significance or importance.