languages (Teachers)

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <af-list_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Fri Mar 10 13:23:18 2000

I agree. My neighbor is a HS teacher, History/Political Science and JV
Basketball. He has a PhD, works 10 hours a day, and doesn't take summers
off. Many of the days when kids have the day off, he's in school. If that
weren't enough, he's involved in a home-schooling program for families in
poor areas who want a better education for their children than the
under-funded public schools provide, visiting 4 families once a week each.

In my experience, he's not much of an exception, but rather just above
average. With a few exceptions, the teachers I had from kindergarten
through two years in community college were dedicated, caring, intelligent
professionals. Heroes for many children who's lives they've changed.

I've held my tongue thus far about these blanket statements which have
been thrown out haphazardly with no specific factual references to qualify
them, but this is ridiculous. I don't know what the economic situation is
in your part of the country, but "most teachers" that I know can't afford
ski-trips, country club memberships, or hot tubs. Certainly not at the
rate that similarly-educated persons in other professions seem to be able
to.

Please think before you make inflammatory statements like this, or at
least bring some kind of solid evidence to the table with you.

Aaron

On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, sjm wrote:

>
> On Fri, Mar 10, 2000 at 08:58:43AM -0700, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> > Another thing to keep in mind about these jobs is that not only is the
> > summer vacation long, but there are plenty of days without kids in the
> > building, when most teachers go skiing or golfing, or hot-tubbing, and the
> > workday for most of them is less than 6 hours.
> >
> > Dick
>
> I think it's extremely unfair to label all teachers like this.
> You make them sound lazy. I know only one highschool teacher today,
> but I do know he works his ass off. He does NOT take the summer off,
> he takes summer teaching contracts to make ends meet. After teaching
> his classes he has, further courses of his own to attend, papers to
> grade, lesson plans to work out, staff meetings, conference meetings,
> parent-teacher meetings, and inbetween tons of shit none of us
> would want to deal with dumped on him. Sometimes he doesn't get
> home until 11:00 -- and neither do I, but at least I get paid for it.
>
> I attended public school between 1979 and 1992, in both California
> and Connecticut. We moved around frequently, and I was in 8
> different schools during that time. That's a lot of different school
> systems, and a lot of different teachers. Yes, I had some that were
> merely doing their job, not going the extra mile. And I think I
> can probably put my finger on exactly one who I would honestly call
> lazy (everybody has a teacher horror story to tell). But those who
> stand out in my mind were the genuine heros. They were IN to what
> they did. They LOVED the kids. They latched on to us and energized
> us and really taught us. They made us solve problems, they made us
> work together, they made us look forward to their classes every day.
> They had a passion for what they did, and God bless them for it.
>
> I can't think of a more honorable profession.
>
> -Seth
>
Received on Fri Mar 10 2000 - 13:23:18 GMT