Discussion Thread II: Bots? What bots?

[Reynard-Miri]

Brad Pitt actually seems like a pretty cool guy.

[Trifkin]

[Kimiko]

Etymology is fun. And Starfe sounds like a pretty cool teacher.

[Trifkin]

He really does. A good teacher who actually cares can make such a huge difference.

Y'know what I don't understand? People who become teachers who don't seem to care about education. They're certainly not in it for the money, at least according to the teachers I went through. So why are they doing it? @_@ I've known teachers who do nothing but read from the textbook during class and answer any questions by pointing the students to their textbook, and they weren't a temp or a sub!

[Yggdrago]

[Trifkin]

Because it's important and because so much of it is still flawed. We've come a hell of a long way though, so I have hope we'll eventually go even further

[Reynard-Miri]

[Yggdrago]

Power corrupts weak-minded people. We've seen it a load of times in history and TV and books and movies and whatnot, but we're still stupid enough to give power to the wrong people.

[Starfe]

Yeah I wouldnt say its a power thing. I definitely don't feel like I have any power. I wrote up a super long post about labor and compensation in the United States, but then I was busy drinking whiskey and closed it. Whoops!

What it boils down to is that its relatively easy to get a teaching job in the US because of the extremely high teacher attrition rate, making it desirable for recent grads with little direction in life as something to do for 3 or 4 years while they figure out what they actually want to do. In addition, the salary appears to be about on par with what you could expect in most grunt office jobs right after college. Teacher salaries confuse people because the work a little bit differently than most other jobs. If you base my salary on how much time I am contracted to work, then I make a pretty ludicrous hourly wage. But I spend much, much more time than that actually working, both in school and out.

As a teacher you don't get paid more for being better at your job, or working more, you get paid more based on how long you've been teaching, and how much post-graduate education you have. Its literally just a table, and the numbers are not negotiable. So the only way you can make your salary "higher" in the moment is to do less work. The closer the number of hours you actually work is to the number of hours you are contracted to work, the "higher" your salary is. When you work outside of your contracted hours, when you do things like plan, grade, prepare, etc, you are diluting your salary. This is how teaching can be lucrative for crappy teachers, especially if they've been doing it for a long time. They spend less of their non-contracted time working, which makes them less effective and involved, but makes their high hourly rate more meaningful. Come into school, teach your required material, and leave as soon and as often as possible. Don't work on weekends. Dont work on holidays. Once you're tenured they cant really do anything to you, so it becomes even easier.

So I would argue that for teachers who are either very very efficient or care very very little, teaching is actually fairly lucrative. Certainly you don't accrue a lot of money, but you also don't spend a whole lot of time at work, about 50 days less than the average American worker. This is why crappy teachers stay in the game for such a long time, and why good teachers tend to be ground into dust so quickly. When you work 15 or 16 hours a day, the amount you get paid starts to dilute pretty seriously, and you begin to wonder what the point is.

[Yggdrago]

The point is making a difference, trying to reach at least that one person who could change things. Educating children, paving the way for the future generation, and preparing them for what lies ahead. If a teacher cares about his/her job, his/her students will reflect that, not necessarily with good grades. The best teachers are those who manage to not only teach academics, but also life.

[Reynard-Miri]

I might be a little bit drunk.

[Yggdrago]

As long as it's just "a little bit" and not "OH MY GOD WHY DO MY HANDS LOOK SO SCARY?!", it should be alright.

[Archaic Sage]

What's the point in being drunk unless you're scared of your hands.

[Yggdrago]

What's the point in being drunk in general?

[zamisk]

What's the point of having hands?