Teachers work "really hard'.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Can we just all agree that general comments about an industry as a whole and the shortcomings of some of its workers are not direct personal attacks on anyone's family members?

Not specific to the post above because I've seen it at least 3 times already in this thread, both ways.

It is possible that fundmarks dad was a good worker and that cliff is right about some of the issues with firefighters being overpaid and their pensions crippling municipalities.

Most people are generalizing and I think we'd all be better off if there was an understanding that the comments, critical or positive, are not meant to label every person in that profession.

[fundmark19]

It is like any industry. You have a specialist on site if things go wrong. You pay that guy a ton of money to sit there. Something doesn't always go wrong but when it does aren't you glad you have someone who is trained and specialized at mitigating damages?

[WinnipegFan]

As a teacher I have faced many of the discussions that are coming up in this thread. I agree with many of the criticisms we face and I agree that the ATA is acting in a political fashion right now. I have never seen such a bombardment of ATA commercials on TV in my life. I also started a thread on this forum stating that I, for one, and many of my colleagues do not want more money. In fact I will come forward and say we are very well compensated for the work we do. Is it challenging, yes, is it more challenging than any other job, no. I do fall in the camp of teachers who have had a number of professions throughout my life and to that end I can put it into perspective. I have worked in factories, managed restaurants, been a bartender, worked construction, written standard manuals with engineers, worked in chemical labs, made sandwiches, and even at one point I pumped gas as a teen. When I started teaching it was the first time in my life I ever had one job and the transition was interesting.
I found myself surrounded by people who, as many of you have stated, never left the education system. At times this is frustrating as many of them live in a bit of an ideological cloud that lacks reality. The current trend in education is to try and reflect this reality in our practice and it is, in my opinion, a positive trend. However, when this comes at the cost of academic soundness it is a challenge.
I don't want to derail this into a discussion in regards to education pedagogy so I will stick to the do teachers "work hard" thread title. Yes we work hard, but not as hard as when I hauled cement on a work site. Is it tiring to manage children, yep, but not as tiring as when I had to run a restaurant. Are class sizes too large, absolutely, and this should be the ATAs only goal in this negotiation.
If you want to drill down into any profession you will find they all are facing challenges. I am married to a stock trader/banker and I could not last one day in her job. As far as I can tell the trading desk is a foreign battle field where I would literally be fodder. However, could she do my job, probably not she'd have a line up of kids crying in the office in mere minutes. To compare the two in any way is a waste of time. Is she better compensated than I am, absolutely, but she earns every penny. Does she also think my job is hard, sure, because she could never have the patience to teach little Jimmy over and over how 2+2 = 4 until he gets it.
The key, I think, is we both LOVE what we do. I knew what I was getting into and she knew what she was getting into. So comparing how hard each of us works versus the other is redundant. We do need to focus on how the education dollars we currently have are being spent. We need to evaluate those who make the big decisions in education and hold them accountable. Targeting the front line teachers is pointless, we have little power or say over what is happening. It is the same as yelling at your meter reader about your high utility bill while he really is just doing the best he can to run to the increased number of houses he has to get to in order to meet his quota.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by peter12

I think the number one reason why teaching is so hard is dealing with parents who are a lot like the posters in this thread.

Gotta agree with this. Dealing with crappy kids seems a lot easier than dealing with their crappy parents.

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by peter12

I think the number one reason why teaching is so hard is dealing with parents who are a lot like the posters in this thread.

Every job has its BS to deal with. Usually that BS IS dealing with annoying people. Boo hoo.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Sample00

I probably shouldnt wade into this discussion but something is definately pulling me in...ugh...

just a couple of comments...

A) if you arent a teacher or you arent married/live with a teacher, you really have no idea of the work they do and the time they put in. Before I met my wife, I had the impression of most of the discussion, "what a great gig, easy hours, lots of vacation time, indoors...easy stuff". After I met my wife...holy crap, lots of hours, lots of planning, holidays - yes but some time are spent planning, marking, professional development, de-stressing". (And a side bar - when my wife was teaching, she taught Junior high/middle school. She's now in management and the hours and work load are incredibly insane)

B) there are definately good teachers and there are definately bad teacher. I am all for it..the bad teachers need to be held accountable and turfed if they dont improve. They are playing with our kids education and that responsibility should NEVER be taken lightly.

C) most teachers would agree that salaries are ok but lessen the class sizes. Its incredibly hard to teach to over 30+ kids and be effective and get all of them.

D) my wife had me come in and teach a class on banking/finance a number of years ago. After about an hour, I was ready to (figuratively speaking) kill the little #######s. How she did that for 25 years, I'll never know. Respect!

E) The one thing I would ask is that the pay grade system is equal across the province for teachers. Each school board has their own contract system with the government. That needs to change. One province, one contract for all teachers.

F) want to save some money??? get rid of all the different school boards. Have an advisory council made up of the public and private sector and that board gets to negotiate with the ATA and government. 50+ school boards with trustees that are elected and get paid a fair sum....that needs to be eliminated. That would save the education system a large amount of money.

Thats all I have..

I get what you are saying, but this entire thread is premised on a survey of teachers and what they themselves say they work in an average week.

So it's kind of hard to hide behind the whole "but they work so many hours that no one knows about" argument when it is they themselves who are telling us what the real numbers are.

Im sorry...48 hours a week is not a lot nor would i consider it a huge deviation from a whole lot of other professions.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

What I think a lot of people are also ignoring is the fact that teachers is a profession made up of primarily women, and while I don't have the percentages in front of me, I would estimate that they are 75%+ of all teachers are women. I think most everyone would agree that in our society the traditional household responsibilities of cleaning, childcare, and cooking still fall in large part to the female heads of household. So the teacher not only has a large amount of labours associated with their job but also unpaid labour that isn't accounted for using these surveys.

Teachers have a very stressful job, one which is more political than most professions, and has a great deal of responsibilities. There are benefits, they are paid well, they do have good vacation times, and pension plans as noted in this thread. I think that people do need to realize that education isn't cheap, and for a well educated population (beneficial to the economy) there is an investment required.

To say that one job is difficult doesn't necessarily need to disparage another.

[V]

I just love all the CP regulars who post like mad all day long and then have the audacity to claim that someone else's job isn't that hard. You don't see a lot of teachers posting on CP, and the ones that do have a very small post history.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by V

I just love all the CP regulars who post like mad all day long and then have the audacity to claim that someone else's job isn't that hard. You don't see a lot of teachers posting on CP, and the ones that do have a very small post history.

Shocking! People who don't work at a computer don't post on CP during the day. You can say the same thing about the majority of posters on here in Construction, Cleaning, and other non-desk jobs.

Should I claim teachers job's aren't that hard because the ones I know post like mad on facebook all evening?

You posting habits, whether here or in some other place, say far more about how engaged you are with offline people and things (work or otherwise) than it does about how hard a job is. Is a person who walks to the water cooler when need a few moments of diffuse mode thinking to wrap his or her head around something working less hard than one who posts a comment on CP instead?

Edit: To clarify, I'm not claiming most teacher's don't work hard. I know that for most teachers in the first few years they do an immense amount of work in lesson planning, but as things settle in, the workload becomes more manageable. I also know that it can be very stressful. However, beyond lesson planning, it seems the majority of what makes teaching hard right now is due to large class sizes.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by V

I just love all the CP regulars who post like mad all day long and then have the audacity to claim that someone else's job isn't that hard. You don't see a lot of teachers posting on CP, and the ones that do have a very small post history.

For the record, I've been posting like mad lately because I haven't worked since February

[Erick Estrada]

My wife is a teacher. All I know is that she puts in considerably more work in 10 months than I do in 12.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

My wife is a teacher. All I know is that she puts in considerably more work in 10 months than I do in 12.

Its not our fault you're lazy.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its not our fault you're lazy.

Lame.

She puts in hours virtually every night. While I won't claim I'm the hardest working person in Calgary I always get my work done and work after hours and weekends if necessary. Lazy isn't something I've ever been called at the workplace as in over 20 years of my career I have never been fired or laid off (I probably just jinxed myself). That said she's always doing something at night to get prepared for next day's classes or setting up for a music choir.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Lame.

She puts in hours virtually every night. While I won't claim I'm the hardest working person in Calgary I always get my work done and work after hours and weekends if necessary. That said she's always doing something at night to get prepared for next day's classes or setting up for a music choir.

Dude. It was a joke. You tee'd that one up, you had to see that coming.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by Locke

Dude. It was a joke. You tee'd that one up, you had to see that coming.

Yeah, no kidding - I was going to make the exact same post, and I love EE.

[Russic]

In my eyes going off the number of hours in the survey is a bit misguided. The problem I see with the profession is how those hours are spent. Many get into teaching to help kids, but what they end up focusing on is administration, shifting curriculum, annoying parents etc. For many, they can go with the flow, find a system, and handle it. Others struggle mightily with the fact that they can't make the difference they want to. That's a feeling that's far worse than working a lot of hours.

The teachers I know roll their eyes when they hear their rep preach about how they need to fight for higher wages. I don't know a single one that feels a raise will solve anything.

[btimbit]

It's not just hours, it's what you do with them. How many of you feel exhausted after half an afternoon with your kid if he/she's been acting up. Imagine that being your job with dozens of the little buggers

I disliked at least half of the teachers I ever had, and to this day am pretty critical of teachers in general. That said, there's no way in hell I could do that job.

[blueski]

The thing that gets me irked about teaching is that crappy teachers can often coast. There are a lot of excellent ones working their buts off and going the extra mile, but the ones that suck the life out of their class -- they seem to be very hard to get rid of.

[sun]

Originally Posted by getbak

You didn't get to watch the video where Donald Duck learns about the Pythagorean Theorem?



I remember watching that one in Math 31.

Man, I watched this constantly when I was very young. One of my earliest memories actually. It had a huge influence on me. Thanks for that rush of nostalgia!

[The Coppernian One]

Originally Posted by Rathji

260 working days? You can't compare apples to oranges. Those operational days are accounting for all time off already.

52 weeks a year, 5 days a week is 260.

10-12 stat days, 10-15 days vacation, often some number of personal (not sick) days puts that number at 230-240 for the average office worker.

Not only that, but my understanding is that a teacher's actual day isn't 8:45-3:30. They have to be there early and stay later than that. I could be wrong, but that is my understanding from friends.I also know that teachers aren't arriving at school as the homeroom (or whatever) bell rings.

Having volunteered as a high school coach I know that it can also difficult to find individuals to put in the extra time for those activities, which can take a lot and vary greatly from teacher to teacher (coaching multiple sports vs not coaching, etc.).