When you think of the future, what exactly comes to mind? I think of our country's children. As great as this country is, the only way for it to remain is to teach our American values to our students. That's where education comes into play. I believe one of the most important parts of society development is education. The smarter the younger generations become, the better off our country will be.
If education is so important, why exactly do our teachers make such low incomes? According to payscale.com's salary center the average high school teacher makes 35,938 to 53,938 dollars a year. Do we really want our state government to pay the people responsible for teaching the children who will be running our country that much money? If it was my choice teachers would make about 200,000 a year.
Let’s try to imagine the changes on the country if teachers did make 200k annually. This is how I see it. First of all, they wouldn't be labeled as teachers anymore, they would be mentors. Not only would they teach the students as a whole, but they would individually inspire the student on a personal level. They would do everything they can to make sure each student strives their hardest. They would tutor the kids on their weaknesses and assist the kids to explore beyond the fields they enjoy and/or are more skilled at. With an increased income it means more school would be necessary to attain the degrees for the career.
Another thing to keep in mind is the drop-out rates will decrease if the teachers are working harder to make sure our students do their best. According to the National Center for Education Statistics the drop-out rate for 2007 was 8.7 percent. If we decreased this percentage to below 5% we would be keeping so many people sticking with education.
Let's talk again about our present teachers and their incomes. From personal experience, teachers would complain about making too less money all the time. Do you really want the person teaching our nation's children to hate their jobs? I understand people who do office work for corporations and such, but not the people who aid in the development of our kids. The only people that should be teaching our children are people who want to teach. I remember in my high school there were at least 2 teachers per year that taught horribly. All the students knew they taught horribly because they learned more from the textbook then the teacher's lectures. Did they care about the students individually? Some of them, yes, they did, but most just did their lesson plans and left. Teachers only get paid to teach the curriculum from the textbooks that the state government buys the schools. What I am trying to say is increasing the income of the teaching career and making the necessary schooling for teachers longer and harder will eventually weed out the unskilled, lazy teachers.
We need to appreciate our teachers more or at least the ones who want to make a difference. Teachers have such an impact our society, isn't it only fair that they should get paid more? Basically, by raising the annual income of this career it would create a domino affect that would eventually increase the amount of kids that remain in school, the intelligence levels of students, and the quality of our teachers.
Teachers SHOULD have an increase in income!
By jswihura - Posted on November 2nd, 2009
Although I can agree with you on how teachers should get better pay, I could hardly agree to an amount like $200,000. For one thing, such a pay would attract people who don't necessarily care about teaching, but see a great paycheck in it for themselves. Also, I see no correlation between teachers getting more money and being renamed "mentors" to their students. What exactly makes them mentors? How could you say these teachers teach better because they suddenly get more pay? Is it just incentive to earn a hefty paycheck?
If anything, teachers around the world could use more funding for things like books in the classroom, new technologies to improve learning in the classroom, and other essential school supplies. However, those are things paid for by the school.
Great teachers aren't paid off. They are just great teachers because that's who they are. Look at Erin Gruwell, the English teacher who inspired the movie Freedom Writers because of her teaching style. She taught unteachable kids because she cared, not because she had the funding. (The funding would have helped, but the fact still remains).
Look at Erin Gruwell, the English teacher who inspired the movie Freedom Writers because of her teaching style.
That example reminds me of Lean on Me and Stand and Deliver, both based on the same principle of "teaching the unteachable" and both based on true events.
The truly great teachers (even if they don't get the recognition of the above) stand out and influence their students because that's just who they are. Their passion for their students shows in the quality of their work (even when given little to nothing to work with) and the impression they leave.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I wish everyone were like these teachers, but we all know that the majority of teachers aren't like this. Ask yourself, how can we make teachers love their jobs? How can we make all our teachers as good as them?
Actually, I'd say that many, if not most, teachers actually are like these ones. However, stupid restrictions and rules passed down from the Admins or even the federal government, give them no room to truly do what they love. Instead, they're forced to teach those that don't want to be taught (thanks to truancy laws and laws requiring everyone under the age of 18 to attend schooling of some sort), or teach below what the students are capable of learning (Stand and Deliver is a spectacular example of this particular issue), and in the case of younger children, have to teach them things that the kids should know before they ever get to school (such as going potty or putting their jacket on), and are forced to teach to arbitrary tests that determine whether or not the school gets funding (NCLB).
If you actually take a couple minutes and really think about the teachers you had growing up, I bet you could name at least half a dozen that had the kind of passion seen in the teachers that have had movies made about them. I, personally, know one teacher who valued his students so much that even after he retired, he returned to the school he retired from to teach Physics because the district couldn't get a qualified teacher and he wasn't about to let his students go without. I know another that was so passionate about giving kids a quality education that he helped found, and is now the principal (and still teaches) of a local charter school. I had another teacher who worked to get new computers, then fought the district from taking them away.
Even the teachers that you don't think are doing anything special are making extraordinary sacrifices for their students. Most of them spend hours in the evenings, after work, grading papers and creating lesson plans.
You want to be able to make teachers love their jobs and have the mediocre ones rise to the level of the great ones? Give them more freedom.
Abolish No Child Left Behind. Abolish standardized testing. Abolish the strict "guidelines" that force teachers to only teach one way and allow them to choose the books they teach from (when at all possible, which is easier for English teachers) and the best way to teach their kids. Allow the kids to have longer lunches and recesses, bring back daily gym class. Find ways to provide funding that allows books and computers to be as updated as possible (textbooks and computers should not be older than the students using them), and allow the teachers to select the new textbooks when ordering them. Don't force "busywork" homework on any grade.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
No Child Left Behind and standardized testing are the bane to quality education in general.
True, Erin Grunwell was an amazing teacher, however, how many people are there out there like Erin Grunwell? Not many... I am not saying that the money will make the teachers work harder and become better teachers, I am saying by increasing income, the schooling needed for teachers will increase as well, and the validity and prestige will increase for the career. Thus, making teachers teach better, and weeding out the bad teachers. With a salary like that schooling would be as much as doctors go through, and lawyers. A couple generations back, lawyers got paid about 2,000 more a year than teachers made. This made sense.
I don't mind paying the best teachers more. They should be paid what it takes to retain good teachers and attract more of them. I doubt that would be even close to $200,000 in most markets across the country.
But many of our schools are terrible and one of the biggest reasons they are terrible is that they are filled with terrible teachers. I have no interest in paying these terrible teachers any more than they are already (NOT) earning. In fact I would like to pay them significantly less like as in $0.00.
What I am trying to say is increasing the income of the teaching career and making the necessary schooling for teachers longer and harder will eventually weed out the unskilled, lazy teachers.
I don't agree with this point. In many states, teachers get tenure, which is virtually guaranteed lifetime employment in as little as two years. Their pay scale in this guaranteed job is based not on their classroom performance but rather on the amount of continuing education classes they take. Higher pay is not going to weed these people out and it is not going to encourage them to be better teachers. It will just make them more determined to hang onto their guaranteed but now higher paid jobs.
Throwing money at a problem is often not the best way to solve it. It certainly is not the cheapest. Often creative thinking will yield better outcomes at less cost to taxpayers. Here are a couple quick ideas off the top of my head that would be cheaper and more effective then just throwing more money at teachers and hoping it motivates them to teach.:
- Define alternative paths other than an education major as entres into the teaching profession. For example, a person who has worked for 20 years as a professional engineer is probably more qualified to teach just about any math or science class than almost anybody who graduates from college with an education major. Likewise, just about any Professional CPA is better qualified to teach any business or math class than almost anybody who graduates with an education major. Just about anybody with a law degree could do a fine job of teaching English. There are a lot of highly qualified people who might like to spend the twilight of their careers as teachers and a lot of them would be very good at it.
- Bring discipline back into the schools. A lot of schools are more like war zones then places of education. Most of the problems are caused by a few kids that don't want to learn and they cost all the rest of the kids a chance at a decent education. They also make it very difficult for schools to attract teachers that are willing to be abused by their students for 30 years. Stop putting up with it. Segregate the problem kids into schools especially designed for problem students. Pay the teachers in these schools combat pay. Give the problem kids an opportunity to earn their way back onto the preferred track but otherwise quit worrying about them and, focus on teaching them how to run a shovel,. a pickaxe. a spatula, a mop and a sponge because that is all they are good for. Give the good kids a good learning environment that is also an attractive place for a teacher to teach.
- Bust the unions and end tenure! Insist on a pay scheme that recognizes actual performance and compensates those that deliver and shoves those that don't out the door.
If I really thought about this, I bet I could come up with a lot of ideas that would be more effective then just higher pay.
I totally agree with your first idea. You're right, all those people who go through all that schooling might as well be a lawyer, CPA, Engineer, etc. Why would they teach? They will make more money doing the other careers. People who just want to go through their education major and then teach don't deserve all the money the others get.
"Give the problem kids an opportunity to earn their way back onto the preferred track but otherwise quit worrying about them and, focus on teaching them how to run a shovel,. a pickaxe. a spatula, a mop and a sponge because that is all they are good for. Give the good kids a good learning environment that is also an attractive place for a teacher to teach."
I can't say I agree with this part. It's not fair for the problem kids to have such a horrible learning environment. The teachers will obviously be the worst teachers in the field if they're going to a school of problem children. It's not fair for those problem children to not have the better teachers to teach them and mentor them. That leads back to my idea in the first place. Maybe, if they got rid of the education major altogether, and just made it where people who study 6 years in engineering can also teach engineering for GOOD money, or people who study law for 6 years can also teach english or law for GOOD money. I just believe the teachers pay should increase along with the schooling increase. I think we all agree on the fact that we do have very bad teachers. I think that is unacceptable. Bad teachers have SUCH an impact on our society.
The economy needs ditch diggers and dishwashers. You don't really need to know much to do these jobs.
Public school education is enormously expensive for taxpayers. It varies across the country but about $8000 per year per kid is about average. That means that a 13-year K-12 education costs over $100,000 per child. Every kid deserves a chance to take advantage of this huge investment. But if they choose to blow it off and be disruptive and often violent trouble makers, they should not be allowed to blow every other kid's chance at having a decent life along with their own.
What is fair is that the problem kids be segregated from the decent kids so they don't wreck the learning opportunity for everybody. It is totally unfair to deprive the decent kids of a decent learning environment. The taxpayers who pay heavily for the education of the next generation should not have to tolerate their schools being turned into war zones. What is fair is that kids who don't take advantage of the gift from taxpayers end up in jobs where they live at the bottom of the economy. That is social justice.
Why would they teach? They will make more money doing the other careers.
Professional careers are grueling meat grinders. I spent 6 years working in a CPA firm. I made very good money but I also earned it too. I was working as a systems consultant and we built huge software projects. When we were pushing towards deadlines it was not uncommon to put in 2 months of consecutive back to back 120 hour work weeks. I worked even harder when I started and grew my own ISP business.
After 20 or 30 years in a professional career, a lot of people are not ready to retire but they are ready to slow down. They often have saved plenty of money and that is not their motivating issue. They might choose to teach because they want to.
My brother did exactly that. After working as a professional engineer for 20 years and building his own firm, he sold out, and got a job teaching at the local junior college. He took a big pay cut but got a much easier lifestyle and he found teaching to be rewarding. It is interesting that he was qualified to teach at the college level but not the K-12 level. That is a joke.
It's not fair for the problem kids to have such a horrible learning environment.
And how is keeping the problem kids in the classroom fair to the good kids who actually want to learn, and the teachers? When they spend time getting the problems kids to behave, everyone loses.
The teachers will obviously be the worst teachers in the field if they're going to a school of problem children.
There aren't schools full of problem children, though (unless you consider the alternative schools where juvies go, but that's a different environment altogether). There's often a couple per classroom, but even one is enough to diminish the environment for everyone involved, including the other students.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Once again, going along with the teacher Erin Gruwell, there's now a Freedom Writer's Foundation that teachers teaches across the country to use her methods to improve the classroom. Of course, this really only applies to those teachers who already have that special ability to care.
How do you make people care? You can't, right? But I'm not sure that increasing schooling is going to do anything to improve the quality of teachers or weed out potential bad ones.
Maybe some alternative required classes that demonstrate new ways of teaching? That could work.
Teachers earn whatever market forces determine the value of their work is. And I would argue, seeing the state of (especially public) education today, some teachers don't even deserve the salary they earn now (last year, 17 major metropolitan areas had high school graduation rates under 50%).
If you want your child to get a good education, for cheap, YOU should be their number one mentor, and that doesn't necessarily mean you have to homeschool them. American parents, and most parents living in developed countries, have outsourced the teaching and rearing of their children to the government, which hires strangers to rear your children along with dozens of other children, all with their own unique needs. Why we think this is a good system is beyond me.
You are right that teachers should have an increase in income because they've worked so hard to teach their students to achieve greater in life. We should really appreciate the teachers we have because their duty is to educate the youth. I was really lucky to have an education and achieve greater in life because some people living a poor community could not even afford to go to school.