<p>Big variety. You can get a 3 bedroom condo for somewhere between 300-400. Otherwise, most teachers would go 30 minutes north to find someothing affordable, but still in a good school district.</p>
<p>Sports - many people, not just teachers, have to have two incomes – or at least 1 FT 1 PT to make it work.</p>
<p><sarcasm>
Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.</sarcasm></p>
<p>That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time spent before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45-3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan= 6 1/2 hours).</p>
<p>Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day-maybe 30? So, that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00/day.</p>
<p>However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.That’s $585 X 180= $105,300/year.</p>
<p>What about those special ed teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00/
hr. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.</p>
<p>Wait a minute – there’s something wrong here! The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days= $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids! WHAT A DEAL!!!</p>
<p><sarcasm></sarcasm></p>
<p>Red Dino, </p>
<p>I have seen this all over the internet. At least you ended with sarcasm. </p>
<p>I think this type of post fuels people anger at teachers unions and the power they have.</p>
<p>Teacher pay and benefits over the comings years may become less lucrative than in recent years, but these jobs are in no danger of being out-sourced to China. ALL jobs are increasingly hard to come by, so teaching should do well on a relative basis; however, you may need to relocate or start your teaching career in rather undesirable neighborhoods to land that first job.</p>
<p>If you hope to get a job teaching ESL, however, you should probably also be fluent in Spanish.</p>
<p>Actually ELL teachers do NOT need to be fluent in a second language. Where I am, we have NO Spanish speaking students who are learning English but we do have a number of Middle Eastern, Russian, Polish and French families. </p>
<p>If this person wants to teach in a BILINGUAL program (Spanish/English) then yes, he/she would need to be fluent in Spanish (and English).</p>
<p>It is very strange to me when people feel that teachers are making a lucrative salary. Those that are making 90 to 100k have been teaching for many, many years. In some states, the salary guide might be +13 years experience but in NJ it’s around +18 and up. So by the time a teacher is making 90k, he/she will be 40 years old (if starting age is 22). </p>
<p>Anyway, back to the OP’s topic- I would strongly suggest you consider teaching overseas after 2-3 years of experience here. Are there any countries in particular you’d like to go to? The salaries are typically even less than those found in the US but the taxes and cost of living are much lower. Some countries will even provide expat teachers with living compensation and money for plane tickets.</p>
<p>Red, it is a combination of adding in the pensions (in typical northeastern states), the days off, and then hearing drivel like you posted, albeit as “sarcasm”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course they don’t HAVE to be. But in a tight job market, which one do you think will get hired first?</p>
<p>I’m in my 34th year of teaching, MA+. Not earning 100K, I get paid every 2 weeks.
I pay $305.37 towards my pension each check, as well as 144.22 towards medical each check, in addition to deductible, and must pay for meds up front, then get partial reimbursment. Of course, I also pay fed, state, and Medicare.</p>
<p>I would like to know a list of states where public schools do not have teachers contribute to their pension plan.</p>
<p>In some states, like New York, teachers are required to have their master’s degrees in order to be permanently certified…no extra compensation at all.</p>
<p>The ‘bloated pension/benefits public sector employee’ has become the new ‘welfare queen’. I’m sure there are some that abuse the system, and these make great stories for the media, but for the most part the teachers I know live relatively middle class lifestyles. </p>
<p>Here’s what happens when you don’t have any union. I’m not a K-12 teacher, but I do teach at the university level and we are not allowed to unionize in my state.</p>
<p>I don’t teach at a state flagship, but still at a well-respected state institution. We have a small graduate (MA) program and I teach mostly undergraduates.</p>
<p>I’ve got a Ph.D from a top 10 graduate program in my field and a BA from an Ivy League school. I was lucky to get a tenure track position right out of graduate school. I’ve published in the top journals in my field. I’ve won teaching awards based on student vote, and also based on my colleagues vote. I serve on and sometime chair committees at the department, college, and university level. I take on additional independent study classes so students can explore more specialized areas in my discipline. When the university introduces new educational initiatives and need faculty to implement them, I have consistently made myself available to develop and teach in these initiatives. I am the editor of a journal in my field, and I also act as an outside reviewer for other journals. I have made myself available to K-12 schools as a guest speaker. I remember one semester when I taught 2 introductory courses in my discipline and had to read 300 student papers that term. And those 2 introductory courses weren’t my entire teaching load for that semester. </p>
<p>I could go on, but I think you get the picture. </p>
<p>I’ve been teaching at the same university for close to 20 years. We get raises based on merit only. There have been many years when we don’t even get merit raises. </p>
<p>I earn under 60K. And that’s with the additional compensation I get for teaching courses in the summer. My summers aren’t exactly free, though I’m just teaching and researching and not doing any additional duties.</p>
<p>I’m a single parent with two kids.</p>
<p>Now, I do love what I do. I actually left medical school to do this. I haven’t regretted it at all (well, sometimes when the credt card bill comes due).</p>
<p>Where I live in NJ new teachers start at 44K with to die for benefits and they only work 180 days a year and NO MORE than 35 hours a week. With 20 years plus, teachers here make over a 100k with the same almost part-time work schedule. And they can’t be fired. No wonder there are 100’s of applicants for every job. So Cry Me A River. The Bank of the People is broke.</p>
<p>toblin, I’ll bet you could become a teacher in NJ. Go for it. Sounds like the job is terrific.</p>
<p>Here’s what I love about CC.</p>
<p>If you’re a public employee, teacher, 20 years of experience, 100K living in an expensive area of the country (NJ), then you’re wealthy and over compensated.</p>
<p>But take that same salary, same experience and same area of the country and apply it to financial aid and suddenly you become very, very middle class asking for the handout from the expensive elite private school that you want to send your kid to.</p>
<p>I am willing to bet $ that the 35 hours is time spent in school. They are not pair for the time they are working before and after school, grading homework, exams, lesson plans, writing recommendations, tutoring, etc.</p>
<p>In NYC the base salary for a teacher coming straight out of college (no grad school) is $45,530. Teachers who top $100k mark have worked at least 22 years , have a masters plus an additional 30 credits above the masters (all which are paid for by the teacher, not the DOE). You have 5 years to get a masters if you want to keep your job (for GC’s, you cannot come in without a masters).</p>
<p>You accrue 1 day a month (10 days a year) sick time. Once you use all of the days from your car, you can borrow up to 20 days . This means for the next 2 years you have no sick days so if you are out you do not get paid. So yes, people plan summer babies, where they can go on leave at the end of the school year and come back in September (remember you are only paid for 10 months of work it is just stretched out over 24 pay periods so you do not collect unemployment over the summer).</p>
<p>You pay into the pension for 10 years. New teachers coming in on tier 5 will not have a pension unless they pay into it.</p>
<p><a href=“http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/72DE1FF1-EDFC-40D7-9D61-831014B39D1E/0/TeacherSalarySchedule20083.pdf[/url]”>http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/72DE1FF1-EDFC-40D7-9D61-831014B39D1E/0/TeacherSalarySchedule20083.pdf</a></p>
<p>Now when I worked corporate life, I had unlimited sick days, got a raise each year, had 6 weeks vacation, 12 holidays, an automatic 5% paid into my pension each year, ESOP, bonuses, $10,000 in lifecycle benefits that I could use for child care, elder care , insurance premiums to insure a domestic partner, $2,000 toward the purchase of a home, $400 a year in flexible benefit spending, full tuition aid from day 1 (company paid over 100K for 2 masters), expense accounts, dinner and car service if I worked after 8:30pm, holiday parties with open bars, company picnics, kick off meetings, recognition meetings at fancy hotels (and more car service) and all kinds of corporate swag. You know what, no one railed about the great 6 figure job I had in corporate life (some people told me that I was being underpaid!). As a matter of fact they thought I was a fool to give it all up to take a pay cut to work for the DOE (but hey I took the buyout and over a year in severance pay).</p>
<p>skrlvr,</p>
<p>I do not think you are being fair. Many.many people here are in two income families. I understand that you are not, but frankly I think that both parents should help support kids. Two teachers making 100K will put thme above finaid at most schools. </p>
<p>Many people here work full time, and do not get summers off. The teachers where I live do. </p>
<p>I get it that you are in a non-Union state. I do.</p>
<p>Sybbie, </p>
<p>I dont know what corporate world you worked in (maybe you were a partner at Goldman Sachs?), but I can assure you it is not typical.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And they are not getting paid to have the summer off. they are not being given any extra money. They are paid for the school year, it is just stretched out over the calendar year.</p>
<p>so some one making 45k is not getting paid from September to June, then getting extra money over the summer. In stead of getting paid 4500 a month for the school year and go on unemployment for the summer they are being paid 3750 a month to cover the summer (although in some places, teachers are not paid over the summer and collect unemployment) .</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nope, no IB for me. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Why resent me getting the education that was an employee benefit that was (and still is) available to any and all employees of the company?
I did my part, I got in to good graduate programs and got good grades once I got there.</p>
<p>Please, when I first went to work for them they gave full reimbursement for any passing grades (yes, you could get a D, and get all of your tuition money back). But then they changed their policy that they would not reimburse anything under a C.</p>
<p>I did not get anything that no one else at the company could not get ( I was always a person who wanted to have options and be in a position to choose and refuse). I put in 25 good years and gave the company a great return on their investment in my graduate education. I could have stayed an got a PhD and the company would have paid for it because it was a benefit that was available to all. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done an E-MBA, where the company would have also paid books and fees.</p>
<p>I just did not rail about “only receiving a 5% raise”, when they were paying out over a $1,000/credit for me to attend grad school (sorry, the 3rd masters in school counseling was all on me because they did not pay for education degrees).</p>
<p>To the OP, this thread has been somewhat diverted from your original question, but it addresses it to an extent. Do your research and if you truly feel drawn to a life in education, then go for it. Just be aware that many people will think you work 35 hours a week for nine months a year and are overpaid. In addition,there is a growing movement to take away teachers’ salaries and benefits. Even knowing what I know now, I would still go into teaching, but I probably would’ve married a rich man. ;)</p>
<p>Kayf,</p>
<p>I don’t think I’m that far off the mark. Many times you see parents post here, whose families make around 150K, and they don’t qualify for gobs of aid, we hear how they are only ‘middle class’, or that they live in an expensive areas of the country, etc. and it’s difficult, and how it isn’t fair that they are full pay. When it is pointed out to them that they are among the top percentile of wage earners in the country, it falls flat.</p>
<p>So I’m fine if you think that 100K is a lot of money. But then don’t complain when you don’t get gobs of aid. After all, 100K is a lot of money.</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with me being a single parent. I do OK with my salary. Of course I’d love to earn more.</p>