Those Highly Paid Teachers...

This is posted in a few classrooms where I substitute:

An editorial from a newspaper:

"I, for one, am sick and tired of those highly paid teachers. Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes and they only work nine months a year. It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do-babysitting! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's right, I would give them $3 an hour and only the hours they worked, not any of that ridiculous "planning time." That would be $21 a day (8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with 30 minutes off for lunch). Each parent should pay $21 a day for these teachers to babysit their children.

Now, how many do they teach in a day...maybe 30? so that's 21 x 30 = $630 a day. But remember, they only work 180 days a year. I'm not going to pay them for any vacations. Let's see, that's 630 x 180 = $113,400.

Hold on! My calculator must need batteries. Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!" (Mark Konetski).

I had a conversation recently with a teacher who is taking graduate courses. In one of her classes she read about a study that showed that teachers only spend 10-20% of their time focused on actual valuable educational activities, planning for and actually teaching students. The rest of the time is made up of paperwork, grades, meetings, paperwork, dealing with parents, catching up students who were absent, and more paperwork. It's a frustrating system, but someone has to do it...