In an effort to adapt to the blog culture, perhaps it is best to alternate between the themes of public schools and politics in the Middle East. Here then is a public school-related posting. Most of the opinions one hears expressed on public schools come from folks who’ve not set foot in a school for a decade or more. This story comes from a friend who is a very well-educated teacher of high school math/science and gifted/talented classes. I asked her why, given that so much taxpayer dough ($11,000+ per student per year in Cambridge, MA) was allocated to public schools, people still weren’t happy with the results.
Her words:
Maybe the perception is there that money gets poured into the public schools, but I certainly never see it. I take home $1500 a month after taxes and have an increasingly expensive healthcare plan. I’ve been waiting for five months for the state to consider whether to pay me at the Masters degree level, which would add $3500 more over the year. With my student loans and other unconvered expenses like vision and part of dental, I save no money. But obviously we don’t do this for the money.
How about the job satisfaction? I came back to my OKAY job to have it turn into a HORRIBLE job in one week. All my stuff got moved w/out my knowledge, some personal things were thrown away, and I lost my space for consultations, meetings with parents, and computer access… This was all done to accommodate an administrator they moved into the area (a teacher work area, how humiliating for her). I am no longer allowed a key to the area so I can’t get to my desk much of the time. So now I keep half my crap on a cart, which I roll from room to room, getting stuck on any small bump, losing papers all over the floor. I keep my purse and lunch out in the lockbox of my truck so I can get to it. Of course, ALL the teachers lost their one last work area, and since even if they have their own room, it is used by a floater teacher during their planning, they either have to try and work at their desk with a class going on around them or wander rather aimlessly in the halls…. The room I use for one of my classes, which is out in one of the portables (so the above-mentioned cart gets rolled outside, where gusts of wind tend to blow things everywhere), now THAT teacher stays in there while I’m trying to teach, and on Friday even kept his radio on and had a loud conversation with one of this students. Thank God my students (gifted and sharp) are very patient and understanding, because I feel that my environment is truly making me incompetent as a teacher. I had to move my parent conference the other day from one room to another halfway through because my room was booked for a class, and another room had just opened up. And none of this was held near my files, nor could I get to them, so if I needed to look something up, too bad. Combine all of this with my good ol’ boy/former coach principal YELLING at me for (a) crying when I discovered personal things had been thrown away, (b) for sending an email to the gifted supervisor saying I was concerned because one of the vice-principals was trying to make my gifted class a dumping ground for other students, and one of the gifted student’s parents is already ready to sue us, and (c) for having the AUDACITY to ask that same vice-principal if the students he dumped in my class came with teacher recommendations, because their academic background was weak, and he told me he spoke with them and thought they should try it (later the same kids showed up, said, ‘What’s this class?’, and immediately dropped the classes because of difficulty).
When I was being yelled at, the principal was saying things like, ‘You’re gonna sit there and listen, little lady, and I don’t want no attitude out of you… I’m the boss here, I say what happens… I’m in control, and if you don’t like it [they] can pull gifted out of this school…’
Like I said, none of this is particularly unusual. The principal is stressed and yells at lots of people. I know 7 people (plus myself) who are leaving next year because of working conditions.
End of her words.
She starts her new job in a private school this fall.
Channel 4 in the UK ran a program last year where they took a kid from South London who’d been expelled from local schools and sent him to a
My brother, wanted to be a teacher all his life. He has 2 masters (english,psych) and now is very happy teaching high school. Happy as in he does want he has allways wanted. As far as pay and benefits go it is borederline slavery. He makes 34k a year has a family of four, and pays more than 450 a month for healthcare. I am allmost ashamed making 5 times what he does, hate my job, and my family of five pays 110 a month. There is so much wrong with this its not even funny.
The most amazing thing is that adults seem to think that this is unusual, or doesn’t happen in their schools with their children. My highschool was supposadly one of the best in the area, it was a joke with much of what this teacher was talking about occuring year round. Its great hearing the input from the teachers, but for a real view why not ask the students? We might have something interesting to say.
There are too many issues in the public school system to cover in one comment, but my pet question is this:
How can we show teachers that they are of value when we do not even show the students that they are of value? We don’t give them books, we don’t give them arts, we’re taking away everything, and now the teachers are reacting to that and we won’t even have talented people to lead the devoid-of-everything classrooms.
What are the states doing spending money doing ridiculous things like trying to pass mini-DMCA laws, when kids have to share five-dollar copies of Hamlet because the budget for books ran out after 25 kids when there are 33 in the class?
My mother is an elementary school teacher. She tought once in the late seventies and early eighties, and started up again in the early nineties. Her stories are similar. She does not recommend teaching (at least in the public sector) for anybody. As an elementary teacher, she deals a lot with parents who treat the school as a daycare, expecting that teachers will accept kids early (particularly in Kindergarten) or hold on to them late. They also expect more and more from teachers (taking new classes, such as Spanish/ESL) to be done on their own time and dime. “Do more for less.” So, we can pay to rebuild other countries but we can’t rebuild our own? We can pay to bribe other countries to join our coalition of the willing, to drop taxes, and still somehow expect the schools to be miraculously fixed while any potential funds are being diverted elsewhere? It’s rediculous – especially given that I have yet to meet a public school teacher that would recommend that as a career option without dishing out their own “hard reality” stories.
As a college student, I guess I forget how difficult teachers have it. The great ones really do change lives, and then theres my accounting teacher…
healthcare healthcare…. that really must be stressing..
socialism rules 🙂
Poor little thing. She even cried?
Must be rough. Retreat to the private school. Fall back, men.
Note to self: gotta close on the house in the gated community.
Hurry, men. There’s people here who *yell*!
I have an M.A. in Education, and taught for three years in the public schools. I quit teaching because I couldn’t afford to live in my hometown and continue to teach.
I was lucky to have had another skill to exploit as a career. Where I live, the pay at public schools is better than private schools. The quality of living at private schools is probably better, but you’re also required to work at night as a dorm head and do other duties that make it hard to have an independent life.
Education, real good pedagogy has little however to do with how much money teachers make. Check out Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Or, take a look at the success of the Cuban educational system. Successful educational systems DO depend on happy teachers, it’s just that it takes a whole lot more to make teachers happy in the U.S. than it does in a place like Cuba. Relative deprivation in the U.S. is sometimes not having the nicest SUV on the block.
Treatment of teachers is a whole other thing. I think that sadly, your friend’s experience is more typical than people realize. In many other countries, teaching is the most respected and honored profession. Ben.
My wife is a public school teacher and she makes $30k after three years of teaching with only a bachelor’s (and some post-bac classes). She pays nothing for health care (it’s free for just the teacher) and wouldn’t be much more if we had a kid. She’s got basically all the textbooks and stuff that she needs. We supplement her supplies to the tune of about $500/year with extra books and stuff, but it’s nothing too bad. What’s more, she works in Arizona which is one of the lowest-paying states in the nation.
What rankles her more than anything else is the constant interference and second-guessing she encounters from parents. Everyone thinks they know what she should be teaching and everyone wants special favors for their child. One kid wasn’t turning his homework in (was doing it but was too lazy to turn it in) and so the parents wanted her to solicit the homework every day and report to the parent if the child didn’t bring it. It frosts my wife because she couldn’t possibly remember 30 kids’ special requests and doesn’t have time to report back to the parents with any regularity.
When it’s not the parents, it’s her principal or the supplemental staff loading her down with more and more responsibility—as if teaching a curriculum to thirty children wasn’t enough and left her with time to take care of stupid, mundane details.
It’s gotten so bad that she’s planning on taking some side classes to explore nursing with the intent of leaving the teaching profession she’s always considered her calling.
My wife is a public school teacher and she makes $30k after three years of teaching with only a bachelor’s (and some post-bac classes). She pays nothing for health care (it’s free for just the teacher) and wouldn’t be much more if we had a kid. She’s got basically all the textbooks and stuff that she needs. We supplement her supplies to the tune of about $500/year with extra books and stuff, but it’s nothing too bad. What’s more, she works in Arizona which is one of the lowest-paying states in the nation.
What rankles her more than anything else is the constant interference and second-guessing she encounters from parents. Everyone thinks they know what she should be teaching and everyone wants special favors for their child. One kid wasn’t turning his homework in (was doing it but was too lazy to turn it in) and so the parents wanted her to solicit the homework every day and report to the parent if the child didn’t bring it. It frosts my wife because she couldn’t possibly remember 30 kids’ special requests and doesn’t have time to report back to the parents with any regularity.
When it’s not the parents, it’s her principal or the supplemental staff loading her down with more and more responsibility—as if teaching a curriculum to thirty children wasn’t enough and left her with time to take care of stupid, mundane details.
It’s gotten so bad that she’s planning on taking some side classes to explore nursing with the intent of leaving the teaching profession she’s always considered her calling.
The room I use for one of my classes, which is out in one of the portables (so the above-mentioned cart gets rolled outside, where gusts of wind tend to blow things everywhere)…
The principal does not sound like a winner, but, really, maybe the public school system would benefit from teachers creative enough to solve minor annouyances like these, rather than whine about them.
Gusts of wind? Oh, my.
This piece really begs for satire, or that it should in fact be satire. But the wording leaves little hope that it’s satire. Maybe I’m just not seeing through the depravity of its dry delivery? If so, excellent.
If not, how sad.
My father-in-law is a teacher. Bill Brown’s wife’s view is very similar to his. The parents are the big problem — not the kids and not the principals, and not even the ridiculously poor funding. Sure, there are ups and downs, pettiness, bureaucrats, and politics, but who works in an industry where that sort of thing never comes into play? The teachers I know and respect are professionals in the art and science of pedagogy and childhood development, but they are not martyrs or saints who should be babied. They do important work, but so do nurses, house painters, and politicians.
There is a reason that Priests don’t have any money — they take their payment elsewhere. If teachers want to be seen as professionals and not monks, they should stop crying and concentrate on solutions to the real challenges before them — teaching kids in a country with a high percentage of parents who aren’t there or don’t give a damn or didn’t learn enough themselves.
Patrick Logan : I don’t understand. I can see you feel upset enough to be sarcastic about this piece, but you aren’t successfully communicating why you’re upset. What’s the problem?
Do you think that there are people worse off than this writer and nobody should be allowed to complain if there are people worse off than them?
Do you think that these are actually quite good conditions for someone
to work under. So, once again, no right to complain?
Do you hate the public school system so much that you rejoice in it’s falling apart? And try to denigrate anyone who complains about it’s state?
Possibly some other reason I wasn’t able to imagine?
DAF : Are you saing that education is broken ‘cos the parents are broken?
And that it’s the teachers’ responsibility to fix the parents?
One another thing I’d like to note: my wife used to work in an inner-city school and there the problems were exactly the reverse.
The parents never expected special favors and were generally supportive of whatever she thought was best for the child. The principal, though, had a lot of issues and drove her batty.
What’s the problem?
This story is unmotivating.
There are a lot of problems with public schools. The best people,
including teachers, are trying to fix them, and are having success
here and there.
My wife works in the public schools, and will be receiving her masters
degree in education in a couple of weeks. She’s worked in ESL (English
as a Second Language) and still chooses to work in Title I schools
(generally not well off, a lot of parents have many problems of their
own).
Does she get frustrated? She doesn’t show it much. The stories she
tells are about the kids and the conditions under which they struggle
to learn: the worst are dirty, undernourished, unaccepted by their
peers, unsupported by their parents.
Most of the stories she tells are about how well *every* *single*
*one* of them responds to the creative ways she and others reach out
to them. Poetry lessons that get kids who can hardly write creating
the most amazing pieces of work. (I’ve read many… you wouldn’t
believe them.) Science lessons with worms that spark their
imaginations. School nurses who creative games with soap, deoderants,
etc. to get kids to clean themselves up without embarrassing them or
lecturing them or their parents. Teachers who supply parties for the
birthdays of kids whose parents can’t afford it… but they don’t let
on to anyone that the parents did not do so themselves. Teachers who
also show up at the doors of these kids to bring them birthday
presents (because they really know they could use a new shirt!)
I know I don’t have the skills to do what my wife does, and other
people like her. She should be making three times my salary.
You get the idea. Public schools don’t need people like Philip’s
friend, and middle class students certainly don’t need to “learn how
to obey” so called privileged “leaders” like Philip Greenspun.
Do you think that there are people worse off than this writer and
nobody should be allowed to complain if there are people worse off
than them?
I hardly see anything unsurmountable in Philip’s post. She has the
right to complain, but there are far worse problems that better
teachers are overcoming every day. Let’s write about those people and
learn from them.
Do you think that these are actually quite good conditions for
someone to work under. So, once again, no right to complain?
Like I wrote above, I’ve heard far worse that were made better. It
does no good to complain to Philip Greenspun. I call that whining. I’d
rather hear how she made a difference, but I see no evidence she has
the skills for that. Maybe she can teach math to bright kids. Who
couldn’t?
Do you hate the public school system so much that you rejoice in
it’s falling apart? And try to denigrate anyone who complains about
it’s state?
No. Instead I celebrate those who overcome obstacles and make *big*
differences in the individual lives of less fortunate kids.
I am in awe of the people who can and do accomplish meaningful things
in the public schools. I couldn’t. But I can’t indulge whining like
what we’ve seen here.
Phil asks — “Are you saing that education is broken ‘cos the parents are broken? And that it’s the teachers’ responsibility to fix the parents?”
Naw, I don’t even know if education is “broken.” I’m saying that the most frustrating problem facing teachers — according to my wife’s pop who has been teaching in a rural high school for 30 years — is that parents do not create an environment where the educational process can work as well as it should. Some of the specifics:
+ Far too many parents don’t care enough to show up at parent-teacher conferences or even reply to phone calls or notes sent home.
+ Far too many parents allow their kids to shirk homework or skip class for dubious reasons.
+ Far too few kids have a safe, quiet place at home to study in the evenings.
+ A growing number parents who actually do communicate with the teachers, do so mainly to argue with the teachers: my kid shouldn’t get so much homework, my kid should have got an A instead of a C, I don’t want my kid to learn this or that (evolution, sex education, skeptical accounts of US history).
Parents are a problem. The teachers obviously can’t fix the parents. What to do? Whining doesn’t seem to help.
-DAF
Patrick: I agree with you. My wife was happiest when she was teaching at a Title I school and me and her family hosted ice cream sundae parties. Most of these kids had never been shown that kind of affection. She was making a difference in their lives and they adored her. It saddened her greatly to know that they weren’t getting anything like that at home—often the exact opposite, made worse because CPS would discount any calls she made with an “it’s not a crime to be poor.”
What is currently frustrating her—and I agree—is that the kids she is teaching now are materially better off and completely unappreciative. Their parents don’t care to get involved (she’s told me stories of parents sending their kids off with a 104 degree fever and expressing frustration with having to come pick up the kid) and the kids are so completely indulged that it makes her sick. One child told her mom that she didn’t like my wife anymore and so the mother asked for a transfer to another class. The mother had never observed my wife’s teaching style—her daughter said that it was too strict—nor did she ever observe the teaching style of the teacher to which the girl was transferred, which she is now complaining is too lax.
She does still accomplish meaningful things with her kids, but it’s less frequent and less awe-inspiring. In fact, it’s disheartening because she loves the profession so much. Call it whining if you want, but it’s a legitimate complaint. I hesitate to suggest that she go back to the Title I school because middle class kids deserve a good education too even though they don’t appreciate it (by and large).
After trying to break into teaching for two years in the mid-70’s in a time when High School districts simply were not hiring in California, I left the profession and never looked back.
Tried everything to get in — short and long-term substitute teaching, taking on caseloads of home students, etc. Other teachers actually requested me to take over when they were out because I was known for bringing in my own lesson plans and teaching students something unusual and creative. (“Teaching as a Subversive Activity” was my favorite book at the time.)
Why did I leave? Because the admistration wouldn’t support teachers when students threw a tantrum in class. Decided life was too short.
Sad. I loved teaching… once… long, long ago.
Diane
Interesting exchange going. I am a teacher who’s spent most of the last 30 years ‘trying to break into teaching’. Graduated in the first year the US had TOO MANY teachers. There I was – beginning teacher, white, female, and in Elementary Education. Can you say “dime a dozen”? Most of the cities I’ve lived in were home to universities and colleges with education departments. Therefore, it has always been difficult if not impossible to get a teaching job in the conventional sense. I’ve subbed, taught partial terms, and taught pre-school through community college. Closest I got to full time teaching in a public school was as teacher in a maximum security prison for women! Taught grades 3 to 5 there. Loved the job – never had such motivated students before – these ladies could have just done their time sitting on their duffs but chose to go to school. My school district was the whole of the state’s prison population, so there were perhaps 30,000 students. Job conditions were good and the work was inspiring and worthwhile. Gosh – I miss it!
Now I’ve moved back to my hometown area and can’t locate work. Best thing was finding a temp job as a test scorer. Yes, that is right – grading first grader tests from another state’s mandatory standardized tests. No benefits, no connection to my calling and to even get the job, I had to show transcripts and proof that I was or had been a teacher. This company employs 1,000 people during the peak contract seasons! Ah me, I pray I shall be able to teach before I am 60 or older…I will take the rotten pay and rotten conditions. All I ever wanted to do was teach.
hi. as someone who graduated from public high school within the past 10 years, i can totally relate to this post. my teachers were mostly unstable white women who started to cry when gusts of wind blew their papers around. or else, they were meathead wannabe coaches who liked snapping the cute jock boys with towels during gym class.
as someone mentioned above, the problem isn’t any of those people…the problem is the parents. and the problem with parents these days is they mistakenly believe that public high school is something other than a holding pen where people like philip’s friend and her boss are paid to babysit their kids.
if the state I grew up in didn’t have a post-secondary program that allowed kids with good GPAs to bypass junior and senior year, and take all courses at the university, I probably would have killed myself.
Why are you all bitching and moaning! Atleast you have jobs in public schools! I work in a private school for emotionally disturbed students getting paid half of what I would in a public school! My students are awful, displaying behaviors like throwing desks, laying on the floor and running out of class. My administration is week and unsupportive. They expect you to do everything a public school teacher does for half!The problem is that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to get one. You have to know somebody or you are stuck. I am miserabel at my job and would do anything for even the opportunity to interview at a public school.