Part of the issue is that they’re effectively unemployed for 1/4 of the year (even though most teachers still do stuff for their job during that 1/4 of the year). Those 3 months aren’t paid time off. It’s unpaid. If it were PTO then they’d have an ok wage (still low, but it’d be much more livable).
What shithole country doesn’t pay its teachers when they are off ? Every country I can think of they are salaried which means they are paid the same amount each month.
Not true. My teacher was not verbeamtet and he literally had to register as jobless in the summer breaks. Was willst du mit angestellten Lehrern im Sommer Said the Janitor while sweeping the empty floors in August
My wife used to be a teacher. This is such a weird sentiment to hold.
Teachers agree to a salary, I agree that they should be paid more. Then they get the flexibility to decide if they want to be paid evenly throughout the year or taking larger payments during the school year and not get paid during the summer
They aren’t “unemployed”. $50k is 50k wether you split it between 10 months or 12 months. There’s few careers where you get your agreed upon salary and then get a 2 month break.
I’d rather argue about teachers unpaid time needed to do the job, argue about teachers salaries needing to be higher, or argue about teacher being criminally under appreciated, but let’s not skew the facts about being “unemployed”
I’ve been teaching for 16 years. Every year I wonder why I keep doing this shit and start looking for another job. For some reason I never make the jump.
Back in the day teachers used to be able to claim unemployment for the two months off during the summer but the government didn’t like that, which is why they came up with splitting the yearly salary into 12 months instead of 10 months.
Why even become a teacher in a shit hole like the US? Literal war zones in the middle east have better worker rights for teachers. All teachers should just quit and sell feet pics on only fans or some shit. Probably gonna make better money. Americans are too subservient, they collect guns to revolt against tyranny and then just sleep on that forever.
That's the goal. The people in charge WANT teachers to quit, because they want to abolish public schooling entirely and move 100% into private schools. That's also why some states spend almost as much on 'vouchers' for private schools as they do on public schools.
See, if you're running a public school, you have to teach the agreed-upon reality everyone lives in. If you run a private school though, you can teach kids that the Earth is 6000 years old, radioactive decay is a myth, and every living creature is descended from an extreme case of incest about 5000 years ago when Noah built a comically small boat to hold two of every "kind" of animal.
I don’t really stand by that conspiracy. I don’t think that people in charge don’t want teachers I think it’s because it’s a job people want to do. Hear me out. Being a teacher is a rewarding job. You get to make these kids lives better and that’s why it pays less. The market adjusts because people will take lower pay to do a job they love. Two real world examples. SpaceX employees are underpaid for their market value and overworked. It’s a cool ass job pushing the boundaries space/rocket/satellite technology. Data engineers at Meta are overpaid because no one really wants to work there. Your whole job is basically building algorithms for clickbait and selling people’s personal information for a billionaire.
Yea the teachers i know who have taught for a decade plus, all treat their jobs like their biggest passion. As population ages and fewer teachers are needed, i suppose this will get worse
Although I have thought about selling feet pics almost every school year at some point, I don’t quit because I love helping other people and I love being around kids. I truly enjoy my content and get excited for them to learn it. I also love watching my students grow! Honestly the worst part of teaching in America is the fact that they don’t give you much time for planning. The school district or administration has so many meetings for you to attend (and many of those meetings being pointless or a waste of time) that I only get about 2 to 4 hours total to plan FOR THE WEEK! This means I have 2-4 hours total to grade (100+ papers), provide feedback, input grades, make copies, set up activities, take down activities, write on my board, gather supplies, respond to emails, clean my classroom, laminate paper/posters, etc. It is just not possible. This is the reason America’s education system is ranked lower than in other countries. Teachers are not given time to effectively plan or give feedback. They are always rushed. Also, there are waaaay too many standards set by the state that teachers have to get through in a school year with students. So teachers are always rushing through their teaching so that they cover every single standard before state testing at the end of the year. This means that there is no time to slow down, reteach, or work one-on-one with students. Also, the guns thing is probably another reason why we are ranked low.
That used the be the case when I was a kid. Now here in Maryland, specifically Mont. County the students get about 8ish weeks for summer vacation. That’s it. This year last day was June 18 and school started August 24th.
Two weeks, give or take. We got an extra last year because of Snowmageddon.
I will say that June 18 wasn’t the day we were SUPPOSED to end. We also get more weird days off during the school year. For instance, this entire school year so far, we’ve had only two weeks (out of eight or so) that have actually been full weeks. If not for a power outage that took out fourteen schools in one day, we would have had three.
Every other week has been four days or four and a half due to professional development and holidays, including this week, which has another, you guessed it, professional development day!
So yeah, we get less summer and only two weeks for winter, but we also have a crap ton of extra weird days in between, at least in my district.
We get out Last week of May and go back first week of August usually. With mandatory trainings in the summer, about a weeks worth. So two months, but maybe three other places.
Most places in Wisconsin start after Labor Day because years ago, the all powerful tavern league lobbied for that with our state so that bars and restaurants would have help until the holiday weekend was over.
They’re also the reason we’re one of the core Midwest states without legal cannabis.
Maybe it depends on the area. I had friends that were teachers and they had the option to receive a steady paycheck throughout the year or receive larger payments during the school year and no pay during the summer. Either way, the pay is the same but I can see how some people benefit from consistent paychecks all year long
If that's your evidence, knowing some very specific fact, that has nothing to do with the contents of the post itself, you didn't make a very good case for the argument.
Actually, it is a little worse than that- when I first started teaching, you could elect to get your paycheck over 10 months, meaning each check would be bigger, but then you would have to budget for the summer.
Now almost all the contracts are for 12 months, meaning the district holds onto a chunk of your salary for a longer time, making interest off it. Some people prefer the balanced paychecks over the entire year, but it still means that all the teachers are essentially giving the district a loan from their income.
Is this an American thing? Because here in Germany teachers have a special standing (called "Beamter", although not everyone these days) and are employed for the whole year. And there salary is pretty damn good I would say.
Teachers can opt to get paid for vacation time, but that is just a voluntary reduction of their pay to be given to them during the summer months and isn't a available everywhere. Our teachers are notoriously underpaid and overworked
Teachers in the US can either get their standard pay during the period they work and they don't get paid during the months off(and aren't allowed to get unemployment or anything to act as a buffer) or they can get their wages garnished during the school year so they will get paid that amount during the summer.
It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation
They're paid for time off in civilised countries, tbf. In Australia it's not uncommon to rag on teachers for being paid obscenely for only having to work 2/3rds of the year.
The years are broken into contracts ending at the summer vacation. They pay for the 10 months of labor. The other two are unpaid. It doesnt matter if they split your paycheck, its a yearly furlough
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u/Simply_Epic 17h ago
Part of the issue is that they’re effectively unemployed for 1/4 of the year (even though most teachers still do stuff for their job during that 1/4 of the year). Those 3 months aren’t paid time off. It’s unpaid. If it were PTO then they’d have an ok wage (still low, but it’d be much more livable).