Don’t get pissed and click on the deadly red X. in the top right corner. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days and am now going to attempt to put it into words. First and foremost…Katy is a teacher. A teacher of deaf students. This is a total passion she has followed. She earned her bachelors at Kent State University; then, went on to earn her Masters..she is an advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing and has become involved in several societal organizations to enhance the life of deaf people. She received an unaffordable education all the while saying this is what she wanted to do and she was going to go for it. She makes a typical beginning teacher’s salary although she did get a bump after earning her graduate degree. Apparently and obviously, she is willing to be a teacher…a specialized teacher…. whether or not her pay is good. She is following her passion. She is enveloped in personal satisfaction and I hope to God she doesn’t burn out one of these days and raise holy hell because she is so lowly paid for the job she has done….but regardless, I say…IT IS NOT FAIR>
One of my very best friends was a teacher. He taught life skills and band to his students. He was an incredible teacher of his high school age students and his high school age student’s parents. He, like Katy, was following his passion and would have continued some form of teaching regardless of his pay. What took him were the politics of our sick society and lymphoma.
When I was growing up, my teachers, in general, were worthless. That’s the way I felt then and the way I feel now. Sure…there were a couple of teachers who had passion and wanted me to learn something..but for the most part, I learned to read and write and spell and at one point, knew my grammar. But I had a totally lame educational upbringing. I used to wonder how teachers thought they had it so bad. Goodness. They worked 9 months out of the year what did they have to complain about?
I’m torn by my belief that good teachers….really good teachers…are going to be really good teachers no matter what they are paid. Truly bad teachers are going to be paid exactly the same and be truly bad teachers. Merit pay…in theory in a perfect world..absolutely, but determined by student scores…No..I don’t think so…determined by the administrator…no…absolutely NOT…I believe most merit pay is based on the sucking up factor rather than the job done. It happens all of the time…
Teachers are the people hired to teach our children the fundamentals…Parents are still needed to raise the children. Do we pay teachers a liveable wage and glow when they exceed expectation and ignore when they are bad teachers? Isn’t that what we, as a society, do anyway. We have an expectation of those receiving high salaries to do high level work for their pay…so is this a money issue or a societal expectation and acceptance issue.
Until next time….
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