ljptexas

I am sooo thankful for all the wonderful teachers that have responded!! Teachers are sooooo underpaid, underappreciated. It is truly a shame. I have never taught in public schools but I knew this would be on interest to sooo many.
Thank you all soo much..



:thumbup: :thumbup: ;) ;)

conniebrooks

Good for you and you are correct about everything you said. My daughter in law is a teacher and has been teaching for 14 or 15 yrs now and she loves it and really does care about those kids. I am so proud of her.

Jennifer22206

As a current teacher THANK YOU!!

pollym44

Love it!!!!!!

mommafank

I am so angry over how unappreciated teachers are and wonder how we started disrepecting them. I posted this to my FB status and hope others will also, so that perhaps by spreading the word we might play a little role in increasing the awareness of the true value of a teacher. No, I am not a teacher but without them I would not be able to read or write and certainly would not had a career as a RN.

zkosh

As a teacher what I know is that most teachers are not there for the money, that they are working for the intrinsic reward of helping students grow and making a difference in lives. What bothers me most personally is when the occasional comment is made such as in the story, judging people by what they "make". To be undervalued and unappreciated is the greatest insult, not the lower income. There are many other fields that I could have gone into. Teaching is what I love.

writerwomen

To be proud of what you do is great what many take objection to is the prideful additude being shoved at them. Teachers do make a huge difference but so do others who never are appreciated- when is the last time you as a teacher said thank you or even hello to the person who comes in long after you are gone and does back breaking cleaning. When is the last time you apprecaited the hours a parent puts in to help out when you fused about how short staffed you were. When is the last time you stopped to think that it is not you who is making a child but God and your gift to teach is from Him.

ScoutingSquirrel

Do teachers really treat the support staff so badly where you come from?
I have so many lovely conversations with the parents of my pupils and I do thank them for the efforts that they put in to support what I am teaching in class ... and thankfully they seem grateful for the efforts that I am making.
I frequently have long friendly chats with cleaners or, this morning, with a school cook (my sons' school rather than mine but it would apply wherever I am!)
How unpleasant life would be if we didn't have these brief friendly interchanges with the people that we 'rub shoulders with' every day ...

Of course there are other professions that are not remunerated as well as perhaps they ought to be, in Britain it is certainly the essential services such as the Police, Fire Brigade and Nursing that suffer alongside Teaching.

However I feel that there are few professions that get 'put down' as much as teaching ... references made to the long summer holidays and short working hours (by which they mean short CONTACT hours with the 'clients' failing to realise that most teachers put as much time in away from the children as they do with the children!) and the whole concept of 'playing with children' as being an easy option ... That, for me, is where the 'pride in the profession' part comes in, constantly having to assert that working with children IS actually WORKING.

Helen

MandyM

Hmmm.... just wondering as someone who doesn't teach, how do most teachers spend the summer and half terms? My understanding is that the teacher receives a salary? so effectively are they are being paid for that holiday period? if they are being paid for that period then whatever they do during that period is in fact paid for? I am asking these questions to try and understand why teachers feel so under valued?

Just to play devils advocate - I know I have worked with with colleagues that I could swear never finished school and gave poor performances in the workplace as a result of lack of education. In which case, if I was the person footing the wages bill for poor performance, I might wonder what the education system was producing.

ScoutingSquirrel

As a British Primary School teacher I would say that a proportion of each holiday is used in assessments, preparations and planning ... up to as much as one week either side of the summer vacation.

However it's true that the holiday times are longer than in other professions, I wouldn't deny that. And this is a particular contrast in the USA where the European standard of 25 days paid leave is unusual, I really don't know how you cope or manage to have any time away as a family at all!

I suppose it's partly in recognition that teachers cannot choose when they have holidays - though of course they do get the major cultural holidays off that others have to juggle holiday entitlements in order to have ...

In Britain, especially, the costs for package holidays and holiday travel are hugely inflated in school holiday time - this year we got to England on a ferry before the British schools broke up and it cost us £400, to get back on the same journey within school holiday time was £770.

The long summer holiday comes from the convenience of farmers, not teachers - which is why the timing of it varies between England and Scotland and between various different European countries according to the weather. There is a lot of debate now as to whether this is still necessary - it is rare for children to be fully employed on the farms during harvest time due to the Health and Safety regulations regarding children working and the fact that so many machines are now used.

However teachers do tend to struggle with stress and exhaustion issues and one of the arguements is that they need a number of weeks off, together, in order to recover strength and sanity for the next term ... because it is such an intensive line of work. (One can't always go to the toilet when one feels the need, unless there's another member of staff in the room and even so that would disturb the flow of the lesson, one can't 'stretch one's legs and visit the coffee machine' and the breaktimes, although regualar, are not always preserved as a break ... too often there is a supervision duty (I don't mean yard duty, as that can still be a break) or a meeting or some necessary preparation - though the better schools that I have worked in have made sure that the teachers have had 10 mins to use the toilet facilities and have a drink ... regardless of other demands)
I'm not sure about those arguments, though I have noticed that my body 'succumbs' to a cold or similar virus every single school holiday, as soon as I relax and have the opportunity to be 'off duty'. So I usually spend the first cuple of days of each holiday ill!

I also understand that some of the holiday is 'in lieu' of the the extra hours worked during the week ... but that is because teachers, along with doctors and some others, were found to be exempt from the '40 working hours a week' European Law and found to work an average of 50 to 60 hours a week in an ordinary term-time week .... At one school I was certainly in school from 8am and 8pm 4 days a week and 8am to 6.30pm on the Friday only because I was running a Scout meeting at 7pm! I wasn't unusual, though some teachers do their marking and preparation in school - as I prefer - still in the working environment and with large tables to lay display work out on! - and some do their marking at home in front of the TV, which I have never managed unless it's Right/Wrong Maths or Spelling tests!

Hope that helps ... I'm not defending teachers on these issues, or saying that we should have a right to these wonderful holidays just because we are somehow more deserving than everyone else (!) ... but these are the arguments that I am aware of to support teacher's holidays.

Helen