Mo' Money Less Problems

I spend a lot of time thinking about how things would work around here if only I were made Ruthless Despot for a Day. As I procrastinate from doing my own homework, I reflect that one thing I would certainly change is to have better communication between teachers about the standards we set for our students and the Performances of Understanding we expect them to complete. Then I remember that we already have a weekly meeting set up for that, and have had it set up for a month. We have actually met once, and it was for about 15 minutes. Much of that time was spent complaining about the administration's unreasonable expectations.

We have this crazy bell schedule on Wednesdays. It's not really a big deal, but it creates complications. Basically the class periods on Wednesdays are 10 minutes shorter than usual, and this creates an extra hour at the end of the day so that teachers can have meetings. Now, that time slot is usually filled by procedural meetings that kind of have to be taken care of but don't really benefit anyone, so the math department meetings (the ones where we really hammer stuff out and decide how we're going to... y'know... teach) get pushed to the 9:00-9:15 am time slot right before class starts. Why don't we meet earlier in the morning or even after school one day? Because legally the administration can't ask us to be at work before 9 am or after 4:30 without paying us extra.

Obviously I think the first solution here ought to be to pay us extra. Now let's move on to realism.

I think back to my time at ExxonMobil, and I reflect on how many times management announced "We're having a meeting at 6 a.m. Be there." There were also the phone calls on Saturday morning: "The pipe burst. Meeting in 20 minutes." There may have been some grumbling, but by golly people showed up to that meeting. I can't help but notice a difference here. I won't call it a lack of commitment because many of these teachers pour their hearts into this, I just think it's a different set of expectations when you pay somebody $100k than when you pay them $37k. At XOM the general attitude was that it sucks to sell your soul to the corporation, but they pay you too well not to go that extra mile. I've actually heard teachers complaining about voluntary, PAID training sessions on Saturdays.

In general, I get the sense that many public school teachers feel like they're doing the world a favor just to take the job in the first place and so any request for extra time is taking advantage of them.

So I've come full circle and have to conclude that the best solution here really is to pay teachers more money. You need to create an environment where the teachers feel grateful to the school system for the chance to participate. Currently the teachers think the system should feel lucky if the teacher shows up more than 20 minutes before school to get set up. This is backwards, but justified. They really don't pay us enough for the work that it takes to be a good teacher. They pay us enough to show up from 9-4:30, which is why after a few years potentially good teachers get sour on the whole enterprise.

They need to pay us more, but in return they need to be ready to ask us to earn it.