It's hard to believe that July is over and I'll be back to work in a month with all of my rock-star colleagues. I lost June to work and travel, one of which was painful and drawn out and the other went to quickly, even though I was homesick toward the end. I'll let you guess which is which.
Yesterday I met with a colleague who will also be teaching Honors 10 this year to plan. With the schedule change, it's a little tougher to figure out the flow, but I'm looking forward to having more time with the kids. One of the things I'm focused on is front-loading community building so we all still like each other by the end of the year. We're planning our studies around the theme "Defining Identity."
Right now I'm listening to the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us while I'm in the car. While the end of the book focuses in on how to apply motivation theory to kids (I'm still wrapping up that section and didn't have to drive anywhere today), what's got me wound up is how totally wrong-headed performance pay is. AArgh! Even monkeys don't like to do puzzles for raisins.
Showing posts with label teacher pay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teacher pay. Show all posts
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Monday, November 16, 2009
Since Teachers Get Paid Sooooooo Much
Mrs. Mimi brought this ridiculousness to my attention (original article).
Apparently, teacher's compensation is so out of control that districts are trying to claim a right to funds teachers earn by selling their lesson plans. Below, I respond to comments on the article, as well as comments on Mrs. Mimi's post.
Without specifically stating it in the contract, the districts don't have a leg to stand on.
The professor on the article upset me. I'm still physically ill at his reaction, actually.
While some college professors split intellectual property rights with their college, it's not as if any and all work they produce becomes automatically and permanently the possession of the university. In addition, those professors are frequently publishing the products of their work at the university, e.g. experiments and research, which is actually what they are there for--for some, teaching is something they have to do to support their research.
If lesson plans aren't the intellectual property of teachers, then let's seriously consider work to rule. Counting an hour of lesson planning a day (with my previous experience and curriculum I created at previous schools) along with my English teacher's paper load, I wind up with at least 10 hours of work that cannot be completed in 40 hours a week. I'm not interested in trying to remember if I wrote a quiz at 8am, 3.20pm, or 4pm. Let's just say it comes out in the wash.
What about the lesson plans I wrote to fill requirements in my Master's program and then used in my classroom? Do I get no cut, since the university should get half and the district should get half?
It's important to remember that teachers are being paid to teach--the product is kids who know what we were supposed to teach, not lesson plans. If I were being paid to produce lesson plans and not to teach, I would have far less stress in my life! Also, I could probably teach by regurgitating whatever Houghton Mifflin the district shelled out for, and kids probably could still learn. To me, this means that the work I decide to spend time on is mine.
Jimminy, I'm getting carried away.
Apparently, teacher's compensation is so out of control that districts are trying to claim a right to funds teachers earn by selling their lesson plans. Below, I respond to comments on the article, as well as comments on Mrs. Mimi's post.
Without specifically stating it in the contract, the districts don't have a leg to stand on.
The professor on the article upset me. I'm still physically ill at his reaction, actually.
While some college professors split intellectual property rights with their college, it's not as if any and all work they produce becomes automatically and permanently the possession of the university. In addition, those professors are frequently publishing the products of their work at the university, e.g. experiments and research, which is actually what they are there for--for some, teaching is something they have to do to support their research.
If lesson plans aren't the intellectual property of teachers, then let's seriously consider work to rule. Counting an hour of lesson planning a day (with my previous experience and curriculum I created at previous schools) along with my English teacher's paper load, I wind up with at least 10 hours of work that cannot be completed in 40 hours a week. I'm not interested in trying to remember if I wrote a quiz at 8am, 3.20pm, or 4pm. Let's just say it comes out in the wash.
What about the lesson plans I wrote to fill requirements in my Master's program and then used in my classroom? Do I get no cut, since the university should get half and the district should get half?
It's important to remember that teachers are being paid to teach--the product is kids who know what we were supposed to teach, not lesson plans. If I were being paid to produce lesson plans and not to teach, I would have far less stress in my life! Also, I could probably teach by regurgitating whatever Houghton Mifflin the district shelled out for, and kids probably could still learn. To me, this means that the work I decide to spend time on is mine.
Jimminy, I'm getting carried away.
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