Teacher pension, health care benefits and evaluations are pushing teachers away. When I began teaching the profession wasn't offering much in the way of salaries, so teachers were attracted to the benefits. The pensions weren't big, but they were enough to keep you interested. The benefits meant that you could take care of the health of your children. The evaluations were about as fair as anything can be when human beings are involved. We teach because we love education, sharing knowledge, watching children in the age of discovery, and most of all we love students. They are awesome whether they are small, large, young, or adult. That's what keeps us there. We love the children and the creative license we were given to make learning fun.
Somewhere along the way, the profession of teaching lost it's charm and instead of being able to draw the cream of the crop, we started getting relatives of administrators who weren't very talented teachers, people who were burnt out on the business field and who thought teaching was a piece of cake, people who had struggled in school as students in special education classes, and just a wide variety of people who were wonderful human beings, but who weren't cut out to be teachers. The complaining would start at about the second month. Some would leave before the year was out, some would at least wait until the end of the school year, but then would run far away. There were also some exceptional people who came into the profession. They were so good that we would wonder why they didn't just come on in when they began their professional journey instead of taking a detour to do something else. The answer would always be that there wasn't enough money to take care of their family in the teaching profession. Some people came into the profession thinking it was a cake walk. They believed the hype about a perfect classroom where the students stood up when the teacher walked into the room and would greet you with a chorus of "Good morning Mr. or Mrs. Teacher". It was so funny to see their faces when reality hit them head on. The kids don't stop talking or texting when you walk in unless you have developed your own technique of getting their attention.
Now we stand together, teachers from all walks of life with the determination to accomplish all the things on the state test. Where did the fun go? How can you create a joy for learning when everything is so regimented with little time for questions and discovery. We feel as though we're in a race to complete our test schedule and we're practically standing on our heads to keep the children interested, focused, participating and moving forward. Up until few years ago we had a 20 minute lunch. During that time you have to actually get to the cafeteria, warm or unwrap your food, and decide whether you're going to eat your lunch or go to the restroom. On top of those everyday things we have to add the concern over our pension, healthcare, and evaluations. Our governor all but told the voters that we don't pay for those things. HMMMM...I'd better check my pay stub again because I believe I do see a deduction for those things. Soooo, the portion that we pay has now increased making our pay check smaller. I know that people think we're so silly for continuously mentioning that, but I don't know one male teacher who has more than one job. You can usually tell a teacher parking lot because of the cars that are parked there. Depending on the age number of working years of the teaching staff, you will see small to mid-sized economic cars. I'm not complaining, I'm just stating facts. Teaching was what I was meant to do, I just wish our governor would pay the state's share of the pension. The quality of our benefits wasn't supposed to be lowered, but things don't always work out the way they should. More of my pay going towards other things is the way of the world. So now, I have joined so many of my friends in getting not one part-time job, but two.
The teacher evaluations that are currently being used are supposed to be based in part on the test scores of the children. The other part is so complicated that many of us had to take several seminars in order to understand what was being asked of us. After two years, (just in the nick of time) most of us have finally figured out the paperwork, terminology and requirements. We have heard stories of administrators who put all the lower scoring students in the classes of teachers with whom they had a personality conflict. In this way, after two years, they could begin to remove the teacher. The teacher's ability didn't matter, it was the personality, or the look of the person that would spur the principal to move children who struggled with behavior and/or academics into that teacher's classroom in unmanageable numbers. To us it seemed to be very easy for an administrator to set a teacher up, so the union had to really get organized and step up the pace and we did.
So many people began to retire or change profession. Our leaders should think about what they're doing because teachers have to live, too, and students need good teachers. They are, after all, our future.
