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| Today's Feature Article |
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Fred's Corner February 4, 2010 By Fred Cicco
I know you will say that I’m prejudiced, but I would like to dispel some
myths about teachers. First of all it is not an easy job. I wouldn’t do
it for all the tea in China. They earn every penny they make. Actually
they should be paid a lot more money. Just the thought of spending eight
hours a day with all those kids would me crazy. Not only are they with
them, but they have to try to teach them something.
The desire to learn has to be instilled in the home and in the
school. The teacher can’t be expected to make the child learn without
the help of the parents. It is hard to understand the expectations of
some parents. They can’t understand why the teacher can’t get through to
the child. Of course, they sometimes forget that they have a
responsibility at home to help out the teacher.
The first thing you always hear is those teachers have it so
easy. They get three months off in the summer and two weeks off at
Christmas. Boy, all that time off and they get paid for it. Most
elementary teachers have the same schedule that my wife has. At school
by eight or earlier. The kids leave at three fifteen, not the teachers.
Most are there till five or after. Then they go home and do the same
things that other working people do. Cook, clean, do errands.
But then the difference becomes two to four hours of homework
every night. On the weekends, there is lesson planning to do, more
papers to grade, and work to do at the school building.
I know, your saying that plenty of people have hard jobs during
the day and they bring work home with them, so what’s the big deal. The
teacher is responsible for the development of America’s future. What
that teacher does in that classroom molds that child’s thinking and
plays a large role in the molding of his or her life.
My wife has been teaching for quite sometime. Some of her early
students are young adults now. It is a very wonderful feeling watching
some of them come back and tell her how much influence she has had on
them. Because of you, I am a writer. Because of you , I became a
teacher. Because of you, I am what I am. Her colleagues can repeat these
conversations over and over. It happens every day.
Take a ride by any school on a weekend and there will be a
teacher or teachers in there working to teach your child something about
life. Be it history, math, science, everything is a life lesson. How
many parents can say that they spend as much time teaching their
children as much as the teacher does. Now given all the time spent on
their jobs, the vacation time is needed just to try to avoid some
burnout. If you had to spend all that time with that many children and
also try to get them to learn something, you would need a little time
off also.
The sad part about life is that nothing is fair. Teachers work
for less money than most professional people. Part of their legacy is a
retirement fund that is so woefully underfunded by the state, that it is
on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s funny because the state is boasting
about the huge surpluses in the budget, yet no one is even talking about
trying to cut the multi-billion retirement fund deficit.
The elementary schools are having a hard time attracting men to
the profession because it’s hard to make enough money to support a
family. Males are needed because children need those strong figures in
their life. They usually give up teaching to go into administration to
get better salaries. Now many systems are trying to take more things
away from their teachers instead of trying to reward them for a job well
done.
If you were producing a product, (such as smart, well educated
children), I would think that my goal would be to have the very best
employees, (teachers), producing these products. Many school districts
are having money problems because of the funding formulas of the state
legislature. But instead of keeping administrative salaries in line,
trying to hold down costs in common sense ways, not commissioning too
many expensive studies, they decide to punish the teachers. By taking
something away from teachers, they can continue to spend money in
irresponsible ways. Many school districts have the wrong idea about
where to cut and all they end up doing is short changing our kids.
So think about this, if you want to work a lot of hours every week, get
paid less than many jobs (that don’t have the same kind of
responsibility), have an employer working against you instead of with
you, become a teacher. You have to love it.
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