Well, folks.... it's collective bargaining season again, and that means just one thing - a grand heaping and steaming serving of teacher-bashing rhetoric served up by the fine puppet-masters of the political right, brought fresh to your table by their sensationalism-loving lackeys in the media who would rather provide us with click-bait than to actually research anything. (no, not all media matches this description...)
The two things that really get my goat (well, this week anyways) are the old tired lines of "doing it for the kids" and us "being paid too much already."
First, there is hardly a job in this world, except for those who submit themselves to a life of religious servitude, where the worker does it merely for the value it adds to their quality of life and for the satisfaction of bettering the lives of others. Does that mean that doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers are just doing it for the money then? Of course not. They do it because of the satisfaction it brings them, AND because they get paid for it. How many dentists, do you figure, would want to go fishing around in people's mouths if they were only paid $15/hr? Not bloody many.
I could have done pretty well anything I wanted. I had the marks to get into law school. If it was my ambition, I could have been a surgeon, or a suit in a corner office at a bank. In any case, I'd certainly be making more money - maybe even another $100k more a year than I'm pulling in now. THERE is the "do it for the kids" piece. THERE is the "do it because you love teaching" piece. By making the choice to teach, I'm probably earning half of what I could otherwise be making. Never mind the hours of time and money out of my own pocket I spend making the learning experiences of my kids better. I enjoy teaching. I don't resent or regret my choice for a minute. But I'll be honest - if all it was going to provide me and my family was $40k at the peak of my career, I'd have found something else to do.
I think the wage of a teacher is respectable. It's probably about what your electrician makes, or the entry-level junior account slugger at the accounting firm makes. It's probably more than, say, the manager of a shoe store in the mall makes, and less than a middle-tier accountant at a corporation makes. It's enough for me to maintain a traditional middle-class lifestyle in an age where the middle class is being redefined increasingly downwards - as long as my wife also works. It's enough that I didn't feel I needed to go into law or medicine or to get my MBA. It's not enough for me to be a sole wage-earner and still take my family on holidays. Heck, it's not enough for me to be a sole wage earner and pay the mortgage on a 1.5 storey three-bedroom house and still manage to feed everyone and keep the lights on. My kids are all either teenagers or soon to be as such. We go on road trips for holidays. None of them have ever been an on airplane. There is enough, but there's not much extra.
If you don't think that the person who you entrust your children to for as many hours out of the year as they spend with you; the person who spends 50 hours a week providing their education; the person who spent upwards to six years of university and probably three years of supply teaching; the person who probably could have chosen something more lucrative instead of serving kids deserves that, then I really don't know what to tell you. I will not apologize for what I make. It's reasonable, but it is not even close to what I could be making, had I made a choice other than to "do it for the kids."
