<p>Cobrat, I can’t speak to your friends’ experiences, but the teachers I know are not spending close to their entire summers on mandatory training. New teachers may have to come in a few weeks before school starts, but veterans generally come in a few days before the students do. Supervisors may have significant summer responsibilities; in my experience, teachers do not. Not that this is a knock on teachers; we don’t generally pay people based solely on the number of hours they put in, and in any case, many teachers have enough work during the year that I don’t think they are getting off easy. </p>
<p>As other people have indicated, Cobrat, you seem to know a lot of people. I don’t doubt that they are real - but I do question whether or not you know all of the people and situations you cite intimately enough to provide an accurate picture of what is going on. In this case, maybe the friend happened to be doing a week of curricular work on the week you tried to make plans, or maybe he or she teaches in a charter that has a somewhat different set of expectations than most other schools. Maybe he is even picking up extra money taking on an admin job in the district over the summer. But I don’t believe this is representative of most teachers - and even if you are 100 % correct in this friend’s case, I don’t believe you have accurate information about all the various things you claim second or third hand knowledge of, any more than I believe that ALL of the members of the toughest crowd in your high school wound up doing hard time on Riker’s.</p>
<p>And my sister in law is director of a summer camp after the school year ends; my neighbor is a personal trainer for an extreme weight loss/boot camp type program, and his spouse (also a school teacher) is a professional organizer who takes on out of town projects during the summer (during the year she’s confined to the local area for obvious reasons.)</p>
<p>My company does not allow me to moonlight and the only outside sanctioned activities are volunteer in nature.</p>
<p>I did acknowledge that teachers did get more vacation time even after the mandated summer work obligations. I mentioned the summer work obligations because IME, far too many parents and the greater public believe they get the ENTIRE 3-4 months off carefree when the reality is that it’s greater than average…but not to that extent and it’s far from carefree. </p>
<p>IMO, it also doesn’t compensate for the stresses many teachers go through in the course of the schoolyear…especially if they’re teaching in districts with high poverty/crime issues. </p>
<p>If that wasn’t a factor, why is it there’s such a high burnout rate among public school teachers within the first five years?</p>
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<p>If you read more carefully, those bullies were from my middle school years…not Stuyvesant.</p>
<p>Thank goodness as one main reason for going to Stuy was to avoid heading to a zoned high school with far greater crime issues than my middle school. </p>
<p>Especially when an older neighborhood kid was knifed at that very zoned high school within the first few months of his freshman year while I was in 5-6th grade and he pleaded with younger kids like myself and our parents to do what we had to do to avoid going there.</p>
<p>FYI: Bullying is a phenomenon which could be so traumatizing that even adults in their 50s and older are severely affected. </p>
<p>Especially when it occurred in a context when the very teachers/admins responsible for student safety effectively ignored it and tied the hands of teachers and cops who did want to do something about it.</p>
<p>This thread isn’t about what happened to people you may or may not have know 20 or more years ago. It is not about bullying, either. It is about the educational path preferred for and by teachers. You can definitely start a new thread about bullying or anything else you want. In fact, that would be very smart of you becaues then your anecdotes would be relevant and sought out by readers.</p>
<p>My relayed experiences are meant to provide a glimpse of what good conscientious teachers have to deal with in crime-ridden school districts/systems, a factor in why so many burn out/quit within 5 years, and why the long vacation time/pay isn’t enough compensation for all they have to go through.</p>
<p>Barring the post-2008 economy, this has been consistently demonstrated by many new teachers voting with their feet and leaving for more lucrative and/or less stressful career paths within the first five years.</p>
<p>I enjoy the “teacher debate” with my DD’s pitching coach, who is a tenured middle school Language Arts instructor in a very comfortably set school district in the Great Garden State, where our governor has been taking on head-to-head the state teachers union and actually won some concessions from a group mthat hadn’t lost a fight in a gereration.</p>
<p>She & I agree that tenure can be a kiss-of-death for the unmotivated; she’s seen first hand where long tern employees perform the bare minimum to earn paychecks - how fair is that to their students? Given her druthers, she would prefer these employees either retire or ben terminated so motived emloyees could be hired but NO; union rules preclude this.</p>
<p>The DD actually attends private high school. The school faculty mainly hold masters degrees in their areas of study with teaching certificates issued by The State. Instructors are similar to TA’s Grad Ass’ts in college; very knowledgeable in their subject matter and the youger faculty are learning howe to instruct teenagers. Outside of 1 example, this system of teaching has worked well for DD for 2+ years; we’re working on correcting the anomoly thru outside help now.</p>
<p>Teachers are NOT moonlighting during the summer. They do NOT get paid for the time between June whatever when school ends, and August whatever when school starts. They are not working, and are not paid. Moonlighting to me means you are working your day job and then working another additional job in hours off. Teachers who take another job during the summer are not doing this.</p>
<p>Cobrat, have you ever noticed that everyone else pretty much posts about their own experiences, but your experiences are ALWAYS about what a friend / acquaintance / cousin said / did? It’s ok if you don’t have personal experience with a thread. I’m not a teacher nor are any of my RL friends teachers, so I don’t really think I have a lot of standing to post about what teachers do and don’t do in the summertime. But there isn’t a topic in which you supposedly don’t have a dozen friends / cousins who did exactly that and talked to you in depth about it. Do you not realize that no one believes you at this point?</p>
<p>Cobrat, do you seriously believe that in normal conversation, you “see other people’s essays”? Do you know how many other people’s essays I saw in college? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Why do you persist in making up these things out of whole cloth, that you were intimately involved with knowing all these things about friends / cousins / classmates / acquaintances?</p>
<p>Our local public elementary school has a teacher who went to an Ivy League school for her UG and Masters. She is very creative and diligent. She didn’t learn those skills in college - I know because I knew her before she went to college. The principal leaves her alone and the parents rave about her. I suspect she would be just as good a teacher had she gone to college somewhere else, but I can’t prove that. she didn’t go to college so she could become a teacher. She went to college because she wanted to go to college. She is a teacher because she likes being a teacher (most of the time).</p>
<p>Thumper, many teachers here do teach summer school. My D did it 3 summers in a row. It is a separate budget, separate pay and often involves regents exam prep for upper grade teachers.</p>
<p>Yes, zoos, they DO teach summer school. But that is a separate contract from the school year.</p>
<p>My point…it is NOT considered “moonlighting” for teachers to take another paying job in the summer (which could include teaching summer school, or being a camp director, or working at Neiman Marcus) because their regular job does NOT continue during the summer.</p>
<p>The funny part is one of my teacher friends started out teaching at a charter school before getting hired to teach in a NYC high school. She found she had more carefree summers at the charter school than she does now as a public school teacher with greater mandatory summer obligations. </p>
<p>Granted, it might be because she is more advanced and expected to take greater part in curricular development or higher-level administration…though this started when she had only taught in both charter/public schools for 3-4 years. </p>
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<p>My friend recommended his then GF to have me look at her essays because of the grades she kept receiving on them and the fact I successfully helped him when he struggled with writing-intensive courses during his undergrad years. </p>
<p>It’s something I’d think you would have some experience with considering what my older cousins said about her experiences with fellow sorority sisters with strong academic skills in their respective fields tutoring fellow sisters who had struggles in those fields.</p>
<p>I went to college a long time ago, and my parents paid for undergrad (thank you, mom and dad!) and I subsequently got several degrees, which I paid for. I’m a teacher now, making under $40k a year, married to a teacher who has a slightly better gig and makes a little more. Teaching is the hardest job I’ve ever done, and I’ve had some challenging jobs.</p>
<p>I do think, though, that the schedule is fair (personally, I think we should have longer school days, and longer school years) but Cobrat is more right than wrong. I get off 11 weeks of the year, plus random Monday holidays. Four of those weeks are paid vacation, and the rest is unpaid. Last year, I had mandatory workshops for three of those unpaid weeks (I got mileage and a $25 per diem) and I worked on prepping for the year for another several. I spent all of my paid vacation grading. I am not alone.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, teaching has rewards that are fabulous, and I knew what I was getting into. I teach because I believe that every child is entitled to the best education available. I had it - I want to inspire kids to strive for it, too. </p>
<p>We need more highly educated teachers, and too many new teachers leave the profession too soon. Educate your kids as well a you can reasonably afford to, but know that some incredibly smart, dedicated teachers come out
of state teaching college - my mom was one.</p>
<p>Cobrat…we’re you in the GF’s sorority:) your comment above makes no sense.</p>
<p>Give us YOUR current first hand experience…if you happen to have any. Old news about extended family and friends from when YOU were an undergrad is OLD NEWS. And second hand news about friends and relatives is like an old game of telephone.</p>