[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Eric Vail

I haven't read the whole thread, so perhaps this statistics has been thrown out before. 50% of first year teachers quit the profession within the first five years of their career. If it was such a cushy, easy job, why can't more make it work?

Yeah, we haven't seen that backed up anywhere with evidence...just annecdotal stories and assumptions. Not to mention if it's going to have any meaning it has to be compared against how many non-teachers stay at the job they were trained for within the first five years of their employment to see if it's better or worse for teachers.

Originally Posted by fundmark19

Are you aware that teachers get to school at 7 am start supervision or getting everything ready for their students. Work through their lunch break 2-3 times per week. Go home at 4 if they aren't helping out with extra curricular activities that you don't get paid extra for. They then get home and have to grade papers, create day plans, go out and purchase little "prizes" for your kids when they do stuff well to keep them interested. Write up report cards (at least this is now electronic now starting a couple years ago but lots of problems with buggy software or computer knowledge for the older teacher crowd). They do this for 9 months out of a year. Now since you own your own buisness I am sure you also work more then an 8 hour shift but most people don't realize teachers work 10-12 hours a day the majority of those 9 months of work.

For sure a lot do, and maybe that's even the norm. An eight-hour day is tough to find in other fields as well though, so I look at that as a wash.

Originally Posted by fundmark19

Let alone the stress of dealing with kids who have absolutly no respect for authority figures now a days and trying to deal with parents who can't get it through their heads that their child is not an angel and may have problems with the work/social/learning aspects of going to school.

Yes there are really hard parts of the job, like any job. I don't think they're getting paid to do nothing...they definitely have to work hard 3/4 of the year. I don't mean that as an insult or anything; they just do work 75% of the year.

Originally Posted by fundmark19

Sure their are perks like needing to take leaves of absenses but that comes with being in a union.

Another example of everything is not that rosey as a teacher say your kid is an exceptional athlete and made the national championships. And that happens to fall on a weekday teachers have to pay out of their own pocket to take that day off.

That's a little misleading, I think. My understanding is they still get paid for that day - they are on salary after all. They have to pay the sub out of the money they get paid for not being there. What they're out of pocket is really the net difference between what they earned even though they weren't there and what they paid to the sub, which seems really fair. I can't imagine it's much, but maybe somebody will be able to put a number there. It wouldn't be right at all if the school board had to pay for two teachers to be teaching when only one was present.

In the private sector an employee has to make sacrifices to leave during the work day, whether it is an unpaid day off (hourly/contract people) or through the use of a holiday day for many others.

Originally Posted by fundmark19

Teachers also agree to contracts that say they will be getting a certain percentage of raises yet teachers are always the first to have their contracts voided and no raises given and it is out of their control

This is all from my views of my mom who is now a retired teacher and what she went through everyday of my life as far as I can remember.

1 more note lots of people who work for oil companies get 6 weeks vacation plus flex days that works out to be almost 2 months off each year

I kind of address my opinion on this in my response to Shazam below.

Originally Posted by Shazam

The O&G jobs are available. If you're a job seeker, then they are a very viable source of employment.

So you want to remove them because they make your argument look bad?

No, Encana is an exception and it's misleading to compare the time off teachers get - three months being the norm for every single one of them - to the best example in the private sector, which is still less than teachers. It's way more fair to the argument to compare the time off teachers get to the average in the private sector, which is way less than the Encana example.

Originally Posted by Shazam

I have no idea why Sliver gets such a hate on for teachers.

I don't hate teachers at all. I hate when they complain about being undercomensated when they're not. They have a very good deal...it's bizarre they don't appreciate it.