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Can of Worms: Should servicepeople get preferential treatment?
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Post by
324987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
Well considering some of what you post.....
Post by
ElhonnaDS
So I added a you mistakenly into the sentence and that makes me a dumbass? Yeah ok... I scored a 29 on the ACT which puts me in the 94th percentile. I scored two 4's and one 5 on college level Ap exams where the passing score for college credit is a 3. I am number 78/611 people in my class. My weighted GPA is over 4.0. But yep, I'm apparently a dumbass.
Wow...you went to school and learned all that, and it's going to help you get into a better college, get a better job, and make (if you finish a four year degree) about 26-28k more a year than the average teacher. You're right- they're totally not doing enough to warrant that salary.
I will say that a failing in many places in the educational system, is that they teach children to learn by memorization, with little emphasis on critical thinking. You have students who come out able to recite long lists of facts, put together a decently written paragraph, or do fairly complex math problems. But if confronted with a real world situation, many of them aren't able to decide which math equations to use for a situational problem. They're able to tell you all different pieces of information, without really understanding the cause and effect or connections between them, which means that the information is static and can't be used to evaluate new data. They don't learn how to evaluate all aspects of an issue, or adapt opinions as new information becomes available- they just memorize and repeat.
Post by
134377
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Post by
224056
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Post by
xaratherus
Maybe I'm missing it here, but where exactly is anyone getting that teachers get half the year off work?
Even if we assume that most teachers take off the entirety of the 2-month summer break, that still leaves 4 months that people are proposing the teachers have off.
Spring break is typically 1 week, fall break the same, and generally 2 weeks off for Christmas and New Years, plus about another week-and-a-half's worth of extra days off for various other multi-day holidays throughout the year (Thanksgiving, etc.). Then there are single-day holidays, which (based on
this
information from the United States government) at best would mean another 14 days off (subtracting out Christmas, Thanksgiving, and holidays covered by the above; many of these holidays are observed outside of school as well). Finally, let's assume that there is a day off each 6-week grading period for various administrative reasons (a total of 3).
That brings us to a total of 3 months and 3 weeks off - a bit short of half the year off.
For anyone interested,
here
are some actual statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics - a bit more accurate than pulling numbers out of our "circumstances".
According to the various statistics herein, most teachers work slightly less than a 40-hour week during actual school hours, but frequently work an hour or two during the evening, and often work several hours on the weekends; also, 80% of teachers continued to work throughout the month of June (slightly less than 50% in July, back up to roughly 70% in August), which means that the majority of teachers are really only getting 1 month's worth of time off during the summer.
Post by
Squishalot
Indeed. Teachers getting 'half the year off' implies that office workers get 'a third of the year off', seeing as
weekends
are included in the total.
About half the courses you listed aren't even high school classes
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/53FADF0D-D784-435E-8675-90E20624DAE1/0/2011GenEd.pdf
Let's see: English, History (x2!), Economics, Government (i.e. politics), sciences, art, second language (oh look, more subjective written responses!), PE and electives. I'm assuming that your philosophy and legal studies subjects would fall under electives (not that every student would need to do it).
The point is, there are very few subjects that only require half an hour to mark a few dozen papers.
but anyways I didn't write a single paper in physics last year
Comprehension: short answer question = question requiring a 3-10 line response. For example, physics questions such as:
Describe what the following terms mean, providing examples:
Kinetic energy
Potential energy
It may not be an essay, but it still takes a long while to read 30 responses for what is only one out of many questions in a test.
And I'm not going to even touch the way that you butchered your final sentence in that post.
Post by
Pwntiff
the passing score for college credit is a 3
That is explicitly determined by the school you're trying to get credit for. Georgia Tech, for example, requires a 4 for most AP exams.
Also, it seems we're still at the impasse.
Teaching in public education is, for the most part, a thankless job. Doctors might be doctors for the money. High-tech engineers might be in their fields for the money. Some engineers and doctors might do it because its their passion, but a majority of teachers teach because they want to.
Post by
324987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Pwntiff
Then what is your issue anymore? That teachers still aren't somehow underpaid?
Also, GaTech is a public state university.
http://www.admission.gatech.edu/ap/
Music Theory is the only course they take a 3 in.
Post by
324987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Pwntiff
Fine, you win. Teachers are overpaid. Can this thread move on now?
Post by
324987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
xaratherus
@xaratherus The teachers that are working during the summer are getting paid on top of their normal salary to teach summer school. I've already somewhat broken down the vacation time they get off earlier in the thread.
If they're overpaid based on their salary, then why exactly are they working summer school? Seems like a silly thing to do for a person in a job that overpays them, according to you.
Never mind, I'm done.
Post by
Magician22773
A couple things here:
In our district (Midwest USA), our school has a summer break of about 10 weeks. Our teachers usually stay for 1 week after students leave, an arrive back about 1 week before the students do. We also have a 3 week summer school session in there were most teachers are present. They also arrrive a couple days early to prepare for that, as well as stay a couple days after. All told, their summer break is about 6 weeks or less, actual "time off".
Our school day starts at 8am and ends at 3:30pm. Teachers are usually at the school by 7am, and leave around 5pm, making for an average 10 hour day. this doesn't include any work done at home, or on the weekends, thats 50 hours a week.
We have 1 week off for spring break, and 10 days off for Christmas. Other than that, you have all the basic holidays. Again, during spring and winter break, teachers are usually there at least 1 day before and after the students leave. Winter break is also our semester change, so teachers often work several days after students leave finalizing the semester.
Also, here, our teachers usually teach 5 or 6 different classes a day. So when you say "grading a couple dozen papers".....multiply that by 5 or 6.
Add in dealing with parents while you are at it. I stay in very close contact with my son's teachers, often e-mailing them daily. We had a rough time with some Algebra at the end of last school year, and his math teacher literaly "taught" me how to do the work via e-mail, so I could help him at home. I would venture to guess some of his "lessons" to me took at least an hour to write.
if you look back a few posts you will see i have a major issue with the majority of our districts teachers, so I am in no way defending them, but one issue I dont have is with their pay, or their time spent earning it.
Post by
OverZealous
I think servicepeople
could
get preferantial treatment to some degree. A free coffee, a beer on the house, something like that. Getting out of speeding-tickets and violations? I'm not really sure. Minor violations like a broken rear end light - as in Ashelia's example - possibly. But anything more serious, I'd say no. There are laws for a reason. And you shouldn't be allowed to get away from breaking them because you have a certain job, no matter how heroic that job is.
Anyway, if people want to give them prefential treatment to honor the work they do in their everyday lives, then sure. It should never come to servicepeople
expecting
to be treated better than everyone else, however. Nor should they be allowed to abuse their position to give themselves things for free (think Elhonna's police-McDonalds example).
I know you prefer your polls boiled down to Yes and No's, Squishalot, but personally, I think this one needs a "to some degree"-option.
Post by
91604
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Post by
164232
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MrSCH
Everyone should be treated equally well.
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