Comments on: The Destruction of a Profession

By: donna marie

donna marie — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:03:01 +0000

I SAT NEXT TO A WOMAN ON A PLANE WHOSE MOTHER WAS A PRINCIPAL. She told me that most of the teachers wind up with depression and on anti-depressants. A pharmacist told me about 10 years ago, before we started to see commercials for depression, that more teachers are on anti-depressants than any other profession. I live in Arizona. It is Dec. 2011 right now. The average starting salary for teachers here right now–which is public information, as you can look up a district and find their salary schedule on the district’s website—the average starting salary is about $33,000 and you will get almost a $1000 raise every year. That’s 20 years to $53,000. That is why you go to college–to earn that income and help children become professionals hopefully–with professional incomes—not that of a teacher. Teaching is more like being a nun in the Peace Corp. Call it as you ‘feel’ it. If everyone would try teaching 5th grade for a year or two–perhaps they would have a new perspective on how difficult the job is in this day and age.

By: Dave Saba

Dave Saba — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:00:06 +0000

Using a little thing called ‘math’ which appears to be rarely used in education, ABCTE likes to see what the stats mean in real people. So based on 3.4 million teachers:

“That means there are 1.3 million disgruntled people teaching in the United States which means that 22 million students are adversely affected by a teacher who is not happy in their job.” http://www.abcte.org/blog

By: Greg Forster

Greg Forster — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:03:02 +0000

Yeah, I thought you’d get a kick out of it, given that you’ve been banging this drum for a while now.

By: matthewladner

matthewladner — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:39:09 +0000

Great post!