reddit-teacher

*Smaller class sizes. My colleagues and I are facing classes of 40+. I teach Language Arts, and I cannot give constructive, solid feedback with that many students in a class. I can spot the errors in their papers, I know what they're doing wrong, but I need to have time to sit down and have a one-on-one to teach them how to fix it. The correcting workload is astronomical... an average of 40 kids times 5 classes equals 200 research papers. To really give good feedback, I would need to spend about 45 minutes with each paper. That's 150 hours. Where do I find the time to do that? We can't serve kids well when we're overloaded.

*Less red tape. Teachers don't get to choose the resources we receive for our classrooms. A chunk of money is earmarked for, say, science textbooks for every student, so the district purchases them. If you asked the science teachers, though, they might say they need to spend the money on just one classroom set of books, new lab equipment, and a portable Chromebook lab. Allocate a certain amount of money to a department and let the teachers decide how to spend it. We are the ones in the trenches; we know what we need to help our kids succeed.

*Less emphasis on standardized tests. Every child comes in to my classroom at a different level, and we are encouraged to "meet them where they're at." This includes differentiating and making accommodations so that our instruction and our assignments are more individually tailored to each student (which is also tough with large populations, by the way). We make some great progress during the year. I had a student jump from an elementary-grade reading level to a middle-grade reading level in one year. We were so proud! But when that student took the state assessment at the end of the year, she was not "at grade level" and, thus, was considered a failure. Then the school is lambasted in the press for its low scores. Not all students do well on tests, either; I have students that can write a brilliant paper and eloquently express their higher-level understanding of the material, but will break down on a test. We are constantly told that students and learning styles are different, and we teach to accommodate them; then we shove a standardized test in their face.

If this was a question about supplies: depends on the school, classroom, grade level, and teacher. My school is out of chairs for students to sit in. I wouldn't mind a few of those.

Short answer: yes.

Here's a breakdown.

My salary is approximately $33,000/year.

• 1440 hours: Actively teaching at school. This is what's in my contract.
• 615 hours: Work outside of school. This includes lesson planning, correcting papers, planning and researching units, reading or re-reading texts and textbooks, etc.
• 150 hours: Summer work. This includes planning for the new year and staying abreast of recent educational research.
• 150 hours: Extracurricular activity work. I only have one and, because it is not a sport or a major activity, I do not get paid.

Amount spent out of my own pocket on my teaching duties: approximately $1000. This includes supplies for my classroom, educational materials, and materials for my extracurricular. I also end up providing snacks for kids who come to my class hungry because they have no food at home.

33,000 - 1,000 = 32,000 after taking out my own out-of-pocket expenses.

1,440 + 615 + 150 + 150 = 2,355 hours in a year.

32,000 divided by 2,355 = $13.59/hour. That's what I make. Before health insurance, union dues, taxes, etc.

My job is to give kids the tools that they need to succeed in life.

For perspective, I made about the same while working a middle-management retail job before becoming a teacher.

And how much do people in the corporate sector make? I'm guessing you work in the corporate sector. (And I KNOW that even salaried individuals in the corporate sector receive overtime pay. I don't. Ever.)

So, be transparent with me... what's your take-home pay? My take-home pay is about $23,000. When trying to pay off student loan and medical debt so I can someday buy a house and start a family (my insurance doesn't cover adoption costs, and I'm infertile), losing $1,000 every year because my school doesn't supply enough pencils, Kleenex, books, art supplies, notebooks, etc., hurts my finances greatly. I'd LOVE to have a salary where $1,000 was "nothing" to me. And before you say "why don't the kids just supply those things?" you need to know that my school is high-poverty. These kids' families can't buy food, let alone school supplies. My classroom does not function unless I pull money out of my own pocket to make it function. If you walked in to your corporate office without buying your own "shit," it would still function.

When I say "extracurricular," I'm talking about running an extracurricular activity. You know, things like the speech team, school play, etc. I don't get paid for that. Do you run a completely different program at your corporate job after "official hours" for which you don't receive compensation?

You know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of people who aren't in education turning their backs on the very people who busted their asses to help them get where they are today.

I teach at a public high school with a high poverty level.

My biggest challenge-- which is becoming a theme in this thread, I know-- is the size of my classes. I touched on it earlier, but I feel that I cannot adequately help my students when I have 200 of them. I can't hope to provide one-on-one help, give constructive and in-depth feedback, and build relationships when I have that many kids.

Cultural differences are also a challenge. We have quite a bit of diversity in our schools, and not enough training for teachers to understand and work with that diversity.

Here's an example of the disconnect between teacher and student.

I come from a white working-class family, and went to school in a small, predominantly white farming community. I have no experience with African American Vernacular English.

So I walk into my classroom during my first year of teaching, and an African-American student (let's call him James) writes something like this for a Romeo and Juliet assignment:

"Tybalt don't never listen to nothing his uncle says. He be trippin'."

My first instinct is to circle "don't," "never," and "nothing," telling James not to use multiple negatives; to correct "he be" to "he is;" and to tell him that "trippin'" isn't a real word.

The thing is, though... what James just said is completely valid. He understands Tybalt. He's just speaking a different language with its own rules.

See, when West Africans were kidnapped and brought to the Americas during the slave trade, they were told that they were not allowed to speak their native language on pain of death or other physical punishment. But neither were they allowed to learn to read or write the language of their captors. So what did they do? They took their speech patterns and plugged in new words. Since language and speech patterns are acquired so early on in childhood, these hybrid languages have been passed down through generations. And they are legitimate languages with their own rules. Check it out:

1. West African languages don't have "to be" verbs: is, am, etc. So here's the construct. Translated into Standard American English:

   "He trippin'" = Tybalt is trippin' at this moment in time. It's a singular occurrence. "He be trippin'" = Tybalt is always trippin'. It's constant. (Which is accurate.)

2. In Standard American English, two negatives cancel each other out. In West African languages, extra negatives act as intensifiers. The more negative words, the stronger the feeling.

   "Tybalt don't listen to what his uncle says" = Tybalt doesn't always listen to what his uncle says.

   "Tybalt don't listen to nothing his uncle says" = Tybalt rarely ever listens to his uncle.

   "Tybalt don't never listen to nothing his uncle says" = Tybalt never pays any mind to anything that comes out of his uncle's mouth.

3. Without going too far into the technicalities of linguistics, West African languages don't have sounds like "ng," which is why it's "trippin'" instead of "tripping."

Until I learned this, I would have told James "No, this is wrong," and made him redo it-- even though he understood the concept. Now, I understand that I need to affirm his home language, and instead of creating a divide by saying "that's wrong, you're speaking incorrectly," I need to say "You've got the right analysis; now, let's translate this into academic language, which is the language of school."

This is one of the most valuable things I have learned as a teacher.

(Sorry if that was tl;dr. I get really excited about linguistics. Teachers ARE nerds.)

edit: formatting

I am represented by a union. I'm incredibly glad that I am. There have been several instances where the union has gone to bat for myself and other colleagues. It's thanks to them that I have the fair working conditions and the health benefits that I do.