What teachers really want to tell parents.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by BetteDavisEyes

Something I've encountered this school year is parents furious because their little precious snowflake lost recess and/or classroom privileges due to not doing any work in the classroom. My kids know that failure to complete assignements in a timely manner results in them losing their Fun Friday activities. Some parents were demanding that I let their kids have their Fun Friday and they will do the work at home. Ummm...no. I told them in no uncertain terms that since it was CLASSWORK, it had to be completed in the classroom and I was NOT going to change my expectations for anyone.

Needless to say, I have some parents who dislike me intensely but frankly, I don't give a shit.

I sincerely hope you are working for someone who appreciates what you are doing. I think your taking the harder but better path with your students is admirable, and I hope your principal does too.

ETA: teaching well is a pretty hard job, and frequently it seems to me that we'd be better off making sure that compensation and work conditions for good teachers are at least comparable to those in the fields that these good teachers could pursue if they left teaching.

But the tricky part is that you may not really have to teach well to stay employed as a teacher. I think most teacher can think of several colleagues who consistently do a weak job and yet don't really face any professional consequences. There is also another set of teachers who work really hard, but there's nothing that we presently measure that will quantify that they've make any difference at all.

So then you wonder, if some teachers can hold this job doing that little, that poorly, or with that little apparent effect, why should the taxpayers pony up more in compensation across the board as if everyone in the field is teaching like a rock star? It's not that retaining the top set of rock stars has no value; it's just that it's hard to figure out exactly what that value is.

And on some level the bottom line is that the present pay system is what the market supports. I can't imagine anything other than a gigantic teacher shortage having much effect to drive salaries or working conditions up, and with the rest of the economy in such a bad way, I don't see it happening.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't enjoy a big, fat raise.