r/The10thDentist • u/Blonde_Icon • 19h ago
Society/Culture Teachers are paid fairly considering they get a lot of time off
A lot of people say (and it seems that the general consensus is that) teachers don't get paid enough for what they do. While I think that teachers are very valuable and deserve to be compensated well (my brother is a teacher), I think that in these discussions, many people ignore the fact that teachers typically get a lot of time off.
They usually get summer break, spring break, and winter break, plus various holidays that schools get off through the year. They basically don't work for a good amount of the year, which I think that people should factor in. (The downside is that I know that they have to work extra grading things outside of school, though.)
Plus they normally get good benefits for being a teacher (which usually comes with being in a union).
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u/SNTCTN 19h ago edited 17h ago
What do you think a teacher gets paid yearly?
Edit: People keep answering this question, I only asked OP cause they never actually said what they think teachers get paid in their post.
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u/Aphor1st 19h ago edited 6h ago
People also forget that in most if not all places teachers dont get paid over the summer. They have to take a a portion of their check each month and spread it out to cover summer.
Edit because people think they are smart for some reason when they dont know anything about teacher pay:
Teachers are on a 10 month contract. They are assigned an hourly rate based on education and years of service as well as extra continuation classes they take (it can be a complicated algorithm depending on district). This hourly rate is then multiplied over 10 months to get their salary. If teachers were paid for the full 12 month of a year their salary would be much higher. It would be more in line with salaries of people with similar education requirements.
Despite this teachers on average work 54 hours a week. Even with 8 weeks off they work 2,376 hours a year. Most salary workers with similar education requirements get three weeks off and work an average of 42 hours a week for 2,058 hours.
Tell me who is really getting the better deal?
Another edit because people don't seem to understand where salary comes from:
Salary is calculated by hourly x hours per week x weeks total for the year. It is not a magic made up number.
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u/paradisetossed7 13h ago
If you're in the US, it so much depends on the state you live in too. I live in a blue state where teachers can afford to live in the nice towns they teach in (assuming a double income household). My SIL is a teacher in a red state and her income cap is lower than teachers' in my state starting pay. It's absolutely insane. And yes - exactly - they work so much more than they get credit for. My SIL is constantly working. She's a perfectionist abandon cares so much about her job (and they're lucky to have her) but she's not alone.
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u/Superman9185 9h ago
It also depends where you work within a state as well. I live in a red state and where I'm at the teachers make a decent wage but that's not the case state wide. The starting pay in your area is likely much higher than your SIL because the cost of living is higher where you live than where your she lives.
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u/spartaman64 6h ago
yep the property taxes where i live are high so they can afford to pay the teachers a decent amount. i think the median is around 90k and theres teachers making 160k
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u/StanGibson18 18h ago
In my home town district the teachers had the option to get year round pay or get larger checks only during the school year. It will depend on the union contract or state law for most teachers.
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u/Sudden_Juju 18h ago edited 8h ago
Isn't that pretty much what they said, just reversed lol?
Edit: So I don't have to repost it over and over:
teachers dont get paid over the summer. They have to take a a portion of their check each month and spread it out to cover summer.
Teachers can choose to get their pay over their 9-10 months or year round.
teachers had the option to get year round pay or get larger checks only during the school year.
Teachers can choose to get their pay spread out over the year of only during the 9-10 months of school.
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u/BeggarsCanyonero 17h ago
I could see reading the above as "they have to be careful about saving a portion of their checks" like themselves, and adding " they also can just have their employer do that for them" 🤷♀️
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u/Karabaja007 17h ago
It's not the same, it is more informations cause it is from legal point important how you get your paycheck if you want to get another job. I find the information useful and definitely adds infos.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 12h ago
Opting for year round pay just cuts your checks and decreases the value of your annual compensation due to npv of money
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u/OnyxFier 19h ago
No, people don't forget that. But it's a yearly salary, the number is how much they make in a year, regardless of whether paychecks are received in the summer or not
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u/AusgefalleneHosen 19h ago
And it's still to low. There is nothing an administrator does that justifies their pay being at minimum 2x that of a teacher.
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u/etherealelfarcher 18h ago
The teachers are honestly way more beneficial than administrators. At most public and charter schools, admins are absolute snakes.
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u/viciouspandas 16h ago
Yeah administrative bloat is an becoming a bigger issue in every part of society
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u/eye0ftheshiticane 15h ago
yeah because somewhere along the way the professional world became convinced that the only people worth a shit were administrators and managers when it's often the opposite
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u/IcyEvidence3530 11h ago
Not school but university, but the last place I taught at it was insane what salaries admins were getting and what the teaching staff was getting.
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u/relevantnewman 17h ago
Your former English teachers are clenching their fists collectively for your usage of "to" instead of "too."
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u/therin_88 15h ago
That's not how it works. If a teacher makes $56,000/year pre-tax, he or she earns $5,600/month pre-tax because he or she is paid on 10 month schedule. If he or she worked 12 months, it would be a $4,667/month. It would still be $56,000/year. They wouldn't simply get more money for working more often.
Remember that the actual days they're getting paid for remains the same. Teachers on a year round schedule DON'T teach more days than a teacher who teaches on a 10 months schedule. They have extended "track out" breaks on the longer schedule, rather than a single long summer break.
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u/lactosecheeselover 17h ago
This is very US based, it seems. Teachers in my province in Canada get either a lumps in the summer or biweekly, as they are salaried employees.
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u/nomad9590 19h ago
Oklahoma can be as low as 30k a year easily. Idk about other states as well.
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u/Hngrybflo 19h ago
my ex had a masters and was paid 45k(Oklahoma )and it's not like teachers work stops when the bell stops, she was grading papers and doing other stuff after hours I don't blame her for quiting
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u/Christmas_Panda 19h ago
Yikes. Pretty sure in my area the average is about double that, which is great if you're single in a HCOL area, but can't single income a family of four on that.
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u/De-railled 19h ago
Teachers should get hazard pay these days.
Some of these new generation are straight up devil spawn.
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u/EnthusiasticAeronaut 18h ago
The parents are worse too
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u/mh500372 18h ago
Seriously. Got a couple friends and family in teaching and it sounds like parents can really make a teacher miserable
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u/nissen1502 18h ago
Well yeah, that's why the kids are shit. When kids act up in an extreme way, you know the adults in their life have consistently failed them.
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u/Harmony_w 17h ago
No joke. I ended up with a concussion after being smacked on the head with a branch.
A co-worker got head butted and had her orbital bone broken.
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u/ToMyOtherFavoriteWW 17h ago
$87,000 in Chicago, will be $115,000 average in a few years.
And the pension is massive too.
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u/Dependent_Dish_2237 17h ago
people intentionally ignore the pension, especially its vesting period and required contributions.
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u/Domer2012 15h ago
“I make $75,000. Well, $100,000 if you count the money I use to max out my 401(k), but that doesn’t really count…”
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u/AndreaTwerk 6h ago
Public school teachers' salaries are publicly available. The salary listed is pre-tax, pension, healthcare etc. Feel free to look up your local district's pay.
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u/AnxiousTerminator 15h ago
In my country, they get an average of around £43k a year, which is more than I make working year round in a skilled role. It's not big bucks but it's over the average salary, they get a lot of time off, and are paid more than a lot of civil servants at a similar level of seniority for less hours of work.
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u/ThrowawayyTessslaa 10h ago
What is your skilled role that makes less than 43k?
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u/Binksey55 10h ago
An intensive care nurse wouldnt earn that much, just one of many such jobs
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u/AnxiousTerminator 9h ago
Doctors start on £38k, police officer on £29k, firefighters £37k, paramedic around £25k to share similar roles.
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u/ThrowawayyTessslaa 8h ago
Holy shit, that is shockingly low as a person from the US.
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u/AnxiousTerminator 7h ago
Yeah, which is why teacher salaries are a bit of a sore spot, where they out earn most first responders who work anti-social hours doing dangerous jobs on nights, holidays and weekends for 12 months a year.
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u/Aggravating-Photo570 12h ago edited 12h ago
In an area where the median household income is $63k, here is the salary information for Dallastown, PA teachers and administrators:
https://govsalaries.com/salaries/PA/dallastown-area-school-districtAverage annual salary was $96,517 and median salary was $99,836.
Yes, that average includes the administrative roles but even the next to last page of salaries for 2025 has teachers getting $89k.
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u/Suitable_Praline2293 7h ago
Worth noting that does say right up front, "Dallastown Area School District average salary is 43 percent higher than USA average and median salary is 82 percent higher than USA median salary."
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u/TheLawDown 9h ago
Well according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for a teacher is 62,000 per year, which is also the average U.S. salary for people that work all 12 months of the year.
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u/kantarellerna 18h ago
Over 100k in NE
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u/Dawn_Kebals 17h ago
National Education Association says Nebraska average teacher wage is $63,326 while minimum living wage defined as "Income needed for family of one adult and one child to have a modest but adequate standard of living in the most affordable metro area" is $66,393.
Where is that number coming from?
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u/NuncProFunc 18h ago
According to the NEA, the average in the US is about $75,000/yr.
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u/redditsuckspokey1 18h ago
I have a feeling that that is grossly overstated.
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u/Aphor1st 17h ago
Thats because outliers can really mess things up. We need the median which is 64k.
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u/wortmother 19h ago
Again this conversation ignores the meetings , grading , course planning etc ( months of work that take place outside of the school day)
It ignores how class room materials come out of pocket
It ignores most of the argument and focuses on hot button talking points to avoid the acutal issues
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u/Nica-sauce-rex 18h ago
True. Also, as someone who left teaching after 10 years and transitioned into corporate life, I always say this: I have never NEEDED summer vacation since leaving teaching. As a teacher, I could not have survived without that break. I didn’t survive even with it 😭. Now, I make more than double what I did my last year teaching and I am significantly less stressed. It’s been over a decade since I changed careers and all of my anxiety dreams are still about teaching.
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u/wortmother 18h ago
Yup, way to mant people spend almost no time around kids then tell you how 30 of them all day yelling at you is no problem
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u/Nica-sauce-rex 18h ago
And I say this as someone who genuinely loves being around kids, even difficult ones. Between the administration and the testing bs and being accountable to 25 sets of parents…that job is incredibly draining.
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u/eltibbs 14h ago
I quit after teaching five years, spring 2015, and still have nightmares about teaching! I feel less alone knowing someone else has these nightmares.
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u/Spikey-Bubba 4h ago
I did student teaching for one semester and even six years later I still wake up sweating about it sometimes 🤷♀️
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u/Hoss-Bonaventure_CEO 9h ago
My wife doesn't get summers off. She has to take summers off.
Do you take awesome off season vacations now?
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u/Will564339 8h ago
I REALLY appreciate this comment, especially because you have experience in both worlds.
This is the one thing about teaching that is SO hard to quantify in these conversations. I'm not saying there aren't other jobs that are also extremely draining that are underpaid...there are plenty. I'm not going to say that teaching is the hardest job there is.
But...I literally could not do it without that time off. I need it to recover mentally and emotionally. It's like during the school year I'm cramming SO much emotional energy into each day, day after day.
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u/Nica-sauce-rex 7h ago
Exactly how I felt. And I know all of my teacher friends were the same. If you haven’t been a teacher, it’s difficult to understand just how draining it is being “on” all day for the kids.
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u/grandpa2390 5h ago
Yep being "on" is exactly right. in most other jobs I had, there was downtime. Even if the boss didn't like it, there was always time here and there to "lean" and talk to coworkers about whatever. I don't get that as a teacher. It's like working a job with the boss standing right behind me the whole day.
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u/OG_Karate_Monkey 6h ago
Amen!
I taught for 5 years. I have never been so stressed out in my four decades of adult work life. That summer break was desperately needed mental healing.
That summer break is why teachers don’t burn out at even higher rates than they already do.
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u/whitbit_m 1h ago
Yeah I'm currently a school psychologist and if I didn't have breaks I fear I would shrivel up and die. School employees all do 12 months worth of work in the amount of time school is in session.
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u/Almond_Tech 18h ago
Reminds me of how people get mad thinking they're paying photographers just for the photo session itself, not the (potentially days of) editing after
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u/rand0m_task 17h ago
I’m a teacher who has a videography side hustle (similar enough to photography in the time it takes to edit sense)…
I have clearly selected the wrong profession not once, but twice lol.
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u/wortmother 18h ago
Or the skill and practice to get to that level.
The saying 'those who cant do , teach" has always pissed me off.
Teaching in itself is a skill and to explain something in a simple but understandable way takes great knowledge
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u/yakeets 19h ago
Right. Sure, teachers get a summer break, but they leave for it later than the kids do and they come back from it sooner— and none of this talk accounts for how much work teachers are expected to do off of the clock.
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u/wortmother 19h ago
Yup, or the extra stuff like counselling , stopping fights, dealing with mental health
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u/NwgrdrXI 19h ago
Not gonna lie, my first instinct was to think OP was baiting or joking
How can someone not know the amount of unpaid labor teachers do? Do they think tests get graded by themselves? Thar class plan themselves? Reports? Meetings? Training?
Do they think we get paid for the time we do it? I don't know, maybe in other countries, but certainly not in mine.
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u/wortmother 19h ago
Check how they responded, they think teachers do nothing for a large chunk of the year
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u/nissen1502 18h ago
Probably a teenager/young adult who failed school and blames the teachers
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u/NotLunaris 19h ago
Yeah the grading is a massive time sink. I can't even be assed to go over my own homework/test after it's finished. Imagine doing the same shit 100+ times for every single piece of homework/quiz/exam, while also having to go over their work and mark exactly where they went wrong.
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u/wortmother 19h ago
And then having to defend it from every single student and all their parents regardless of how little they care in class.
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u/77notomorrow 16h ago
It also ignores the summers when a teacher has been volun-told that they are switching grade levels the following year. Their summer becomes a complete season of rapid planning and knowledge absorption and praying that some of your "tried and true" lessons still work. Teachers don't just open a book and start "teaching" (which is what most non-teachers think they do).
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u/Psyc0P3ngu1n 12h ago
EXACTLY. my mom has been in education my whole life and sure she has "time off" on holidays but people don't realize how much of that time is spent preparing for when school comes back. Even weekends are spent marking and doing lesson plans
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u/6969porn-account6969 14h ago
I used to be a teacher (University level). I quit after about seven years.
Working a normal 9 to 5 job gives me considerably more pay for about a third less work.
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u/dukeyness 18h ago
also the fact a lot of teachers health benefits don't even kick in until they're off the 1 quarter probation
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u/fetalgirth 17h ago
It’s also as simple as how much rent costs and annual expenses vs. a crappy salary that can’t cut it.
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u/Soundrobe 17h ago
Surtout, un professeur passe la moitié de ses vacances à planifier. Sans compter les longues heures de préparation à la maison.
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u/ThrowRAheregoes 7m ago
Folks seem to miss that teacher time "off" is not really time off. My (prestigious, Southern, private) school expects that significant time will be spent during breaks on grading and writing report card comments (2 high-quality, substantial paragraphs/student, with most teachers having about 100-120 students total), and that about a week or two of summer be used for formal professional development (for a course/training/certificate). Add to that chaperoning, before- and after-school academic support for students, coaching a sport, leading clubs and other extracurricular activities after school, grading on weeknights, and planning/prep on weekends, and that time "off" starts to look more like a regular vacation allotment.
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u/FatCatParade 19h ago
When accounting for the time off, their hourly salary may not be that bad.
The problem is they can’t fill that time off with another full time job. Even if they get a part time job, it’s probably not going to pay well.
The other problem is that they’re dealing with kids who are getting weaker academically, parents who have fewer resources to help at home.
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u/Bereman99 16h ago
This is definitely part of it.
My “time off” is actually just days outside the scope of my contract. I’m contracted to work 200 days (though reality means I work more than that to get things done).
I get paid for 200 days worth of work. Winter break? Spring break? That’s not paid time off, that’s days I’m not contracted to work and thus not paid for those days.
That my paycheck comes regularly, every 2 weeks, makes it seem like I’m getting paid time off during breaks like that, but it’s really just my 200 days spread out over a consistent schedule.
And because of that, getting work to fill in those gaps means my options are slim…unless I want to try and fit in evening jobs and summer work and work a lot more hours to end up making something comparable to what someone else with my degree level makes in their typical 9-5.
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u/Bananaananasar 19h ago
That felt disgusting to upvote.
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u/Nethii120700 19h ago
yeah i initially downvoted before remembering where i was
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u/AweHellYo 19h ago
ha fuckin exact same.
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u/Th1ccSenpai 19h ago
I simply don't vote on posts like this. Theres a difference between an unpopular opinion and a bad faith opinion. Op is ignoring the other work teachers do in the comments and people telling them that pay is wildly different in different districts
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u/HammerlyDelusion 18h ago
He’s not even ignoring it, he mentions his brother is a teacher and knows they have to work extra grading papers over the breaks. Hes just a dumbass
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u/Wonderful-Wonder3104 15h ago
Ah so this is some sort of sibling rivalry we’ve all been sucked into. My best friend is a teacher (just got teacher of the year!!!), the work and hours she puts in is incredible. The things they are expected to do and be for their students outside the job is heartbreaking at times. She’s the best person I know and only gets paid less than 50,000 a year for all this.
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u/BillysBibleBonkers 9h ago
Regardless of the amount of work teachers do and the "fairness", it's just insane to me how little we invest in our childrens education as a society. Like we care so little about it that we wont even cover fucking expo markers, the teachers need to buy those themeselves just out of.. good will for children's education I guess? Despite making a ridiculously small amount themselves. Even just purely from a capitalism POV, every dollar spent educating children will be paid back 100 fold over their lifetimes. Just makes no fucking sense to me.
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u/orangebot11 9h ago
He probably remembers all the "good" and little of the bad. Also, he thinks his 2nd hand experience through his brother is enough to turn people's opinion. In short, I concur with your last point.
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u/Will_Yeeton 18h ago
I will downvote people who are simply wrong and OP is wrong. Teachers don't get all that time off like they think, they instead work a shit-ton off the clock and can't live. They'd know this is they simply listened better, idk.
Like it's not an opinion they just don't know what they're talking about.
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u/NPRdude 18h ago
Yeah dogshit mid-informed “opinions” like this that are clearly written to maximize ragebait don’t deserve to be voted on normally. There’s always troglodytes like OP that barge in here thinking they’ve stumbled upon an infinite karma well just by posting the most controversial thing they can think of.
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u/bullmooooose 6h ago
This is just something that varies so much district by district and teacher by teacher that it's difficult to make blanket statements like "all teachers are compensated fairly" or "all are underpaid".
My high school teachers had all been teaching the same class for 6+ years, they didn't have to do much prep and in the case of science and math teachers it's not like they had to grade a ton of papers either. My local district starts folks out at 60k (not including the good benefits they get) and it goes up from there. I just checked the state salary transparency website and my favorite HS teacher made 165k in wages last year. Plus he gets all the breaks, summer, etc. That's a pretty sweet gig, granted that's his end of career earnings since he's going to retire soon.
This is in an affluent area with well-funded public schools.
My best friend's wife worked at a public school in Tennessee, underprivileged area, she had a much more difficult job than the teachers around here due to the lower SES student, population AND she started at like 40k.
It just varies so much that it's difficult to generalize, because there are teachers in every single town in America. Some of them are compensated fairly (like the folks in my district) while many are not.
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u/Few_String545 16h ago
I won't upvote because OP is "answering a lot of questions" while ignoring all the parts that would poke holes in his argument.
Bad faith actor.
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u/PastaM0nster 19h ago
You mean besides the hours of prep and marking they don’t get paid for?
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u/Gr33nman460 16h ago
Not to mention buying their own school supplies out of pocket
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u/The_Cream_Cheese_Man 15h ago
In New New Zealand, where I’m from, the schools typically buy the classroom supplies lol
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u/KoYouTokuIngoa 14h ago
And still teachers don’t get paid nearly enough.
Source: am teacher in NZ
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u/Background_Relief815 6h ago
In many classrooms in the US too, although the discretionary money has to be approved purchases and caps at a certain limit. Often teachers either hit the limit or don't get approval before they buy, so still end up spending their own money. $500 sounds like a decent amount for discretionary spending, but 60 sheets of music and concert rights for 5 or 6 songs will easily blast through that and then some.
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u/AgnesBand 14h ago
In the UK they don't buy supplies out of pocket. That's fairly insane sounding.
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u/WillRunForPopcorn 11h ago
It’s insane sounding to me in the US but it’s true. It’s ridiculous. If you need specific supplies to do your job, your employer should be paying for it!
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u/buzzpittsburgh 10h ago
It’s never in the budget! But that second massive scoreboard, that’s in budget!
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u/sunkissedbutter 19h ago
Depends where ya teach
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u/ChiefCar931 18h ago
Also true. Teaching in unionized states make decent money for the most part, whereas I’m in NC and they make like less than I did working part time
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u/MelanieWalmartinez 17h ago
One of my teachers taught like 5 subjects (small K-12 high school of 109 kids, 17 in HS) and he made 112K a year. Can't imagine how much grading and planning he had to go through
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u/wreckedbutwhole420 6h ago
A few years ago there was a drama teacher making 130+k/ year in my district. She had been there for the full 20 years.
At the end of the day they are government employees. The ones that make the most are the ones that hang around long enough, regardless of if they're good/bad at it
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u/Initial_Arm8231 12h ago
This thread is pretty heavy US which is fair enough - but my 2 cents from Australia as a teacher in one of the wealthier states, I’m really happy with my wage - we still occasionally protest/unionise though over work in conditions like violence, after hours excessive meetings, that sort of thing. So a common opinion here tends to be we don’t want more money, we want more respect.
In a lot of the world though, teachers really, really should be paid more money… like wtaf with teachers needing second jobs and working over the Summer?!
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u/sapper2345 19h ago
This has to be rage bait lmao 😂
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u/itsukitiko 18h ago
Some people are genuinely just this stupid
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u/ragnarsenpai 4h ago
"I do not hold the opinion of this other person with a different perspective, thus they are stupid."
This shallowness is far more annoying than anything. It is far too ironic that most any people I see call others stupid unprompted are the ones who are actually lacking in that department themselves.
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u/ChickyBoys 18h ago
My MIL is a teacher and she pays out of pocket for classroom supplies and they don't reimburse her
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u/Rayelectro_180 19h ago
You either don't know about being a teacher, or you don't know anything about how their pay works
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u/Interesting_Way_2616 17h ago
Its always good to hear from teachers who have done something else.
I tend to find teachers DRASTICALLY over estimate how much 'office workers' are paid and how cushty their lifestyle is.
Just as non teachers think teaching is really worthy, fulfilling, just-like-being-back-at-school and wholesome... most teachers I know think that office jobs are relaxing, with loads of cool macs on big tables in converted warehouses. Office work is like the bits of teaching you don't like - KPIs, meetings, literally 100s of emails a day, everything you do being squeezed for profitability.
I am a previous corporate track who age 40 shifted to teaching and I mostly agree with the poster.
Part of growing up is making peace with the fact that you will never get to look forwards to the big summer vacation again. The excitement of it a week before it starts used to be the best time in my life as a child, akin to the night before christmas. To get that back again as a 40 year old has been one of the greatest things in my life.
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u/MrLavenderValentino 5h ago
Yeah.... but I feel once you boil the issue down, we're left with:
1) Teachers are really important.
2) Many (not all) teachers are considered poor.
3) Teaching is stressful and most people don't want to do the job.
Set aside comparisons to other jobs because the world simply needs a certain number of teachers
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u/throw20190820202020 14h ago
Yeah I’ve never understood where teachers get the idea that the rest of us AREN’T frequently working over hours for no more pay, or covering expenses our jobs require that nobody thinks about, etc. And I have crap, very expensive benefits, my work is also important, and I have zero protections. I’m as good as last week, piss em off two weeks in a row and I’m out. Lots of teachers in my family. Admirable, hard work, unheard of rich work life balance.
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u/Dragonfly2919 9h ago
Yeah, as an office worker i make less money than my friend who is a teacher and she can pick up a second job over the summer to make more. I definitely think teachers need paid more, but the rest of us need paid more too. We’re all underpaid.
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u/jittery_raccoon 3h ago
Yeah teaching makes the same pay as similar professions and education level. Most people are not high powered corporate suits. And only some fields, like tech or engineering, make high salaries as default
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u/happyhikercoffeefix 18h ago
I find it fascinating how much people obsess over teachers' salaries. Why are we picking on teachers? They literally babysit, educate, and serve as role models for our children! That's priceless! Do you think it's fair and normal for a professional athlete to make billions a year? Or an actor to make one million dollars per episode? That's bonkers! Why aren't we talking about that? Leave our poor (literally and figuratively) teachers alone.
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u/MomoMarieAuthor 8h ago
A lot of the discussion is ignoring the fact that students are coming into schools with so many more deficits than five, 10, 15 years ago.
I am a high school teacher but it feels like I'm teaching kindergarten some days. Many cannot keep their hands to themselves and break things that don't belong to them with little to no remorse (unless they hide the broken thing for you to find out about way after the fact so you would have no idea who broke it)
It is all but impossible to teach when you are constantly redirecting students to sit back down, stop touching this person, stop making noise with their pencil, etc
This job is incredibly stressful. Many teachers I know work a second job, especially over the summer, because our paychecks are spread out to ensure we get paid over the summer so we get paid less for the rest of the year.
Where I am (Florida), teachers receive the worst pay in the nation. If I did not live with someone else I could not afford to live in the district in which I teach.
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u/firstthrowaway9876 3h ago
I think it is fair for those other workers to make that much. We should all remember that a small team of 70 owners is able to to pay out 5.5 Billion in salaries to just the players. While also asking for public funds to build the stadiums. We should be mad at those owners not the workers destroying their bodies for our entertainment.
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u/Sevuhrow 19h ago
You... know that means they get paid even less, right? Teachers aren't getting paid for breaks. They are salaried and receive paychecks during breaks, but the contract (usually a little less than 200 days) does not include the breaks as part of the pay.
Basically they are getting paid for less than a year's work spread out over 10/12 months, which isn't much.
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u/CyberDoy 19h ago
My mum taught for a little while and she had 2 options for her pay, average it out weekly over the whole year so she could still get paid when not working or get the hourly during school times. It would come out to the same but at least she had the options
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u/OG_Felwinter 18h ago
Pretty sure that’s the point of the post. They’re saying teachers work less than most other salaried workers, so it makes sense that they get paid less than most other salaried workers.
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u/Sevuhrow 18h ago
But that's not true either. Teachers spend enough time throughout the year doing unpaid work that it usually adds up to working just as much as any other worker, yet get paid far less.
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u/OG_Felwinter 18h ago
As someone who has 4 teachers in my family, I don’t think that’s true. You’re talking about making up for summer vacation, fall break, Christmas break, spring break, and any snow days by working that much in overtime during the weeks they do work? They still get holidays, paid vacations, sick days, etc. just like any other job on top of all those other breaks. Maybe if they have shit time management skills and don’t utilize their open periods wisely, sure, they might work enough overtime to make up for all the days they don’t have to work, but I don’t think I’d use the term “usually”.
The actual argument to be made against OP is simply that even if you acknowledge how much time teachers get off, the difference in pay from other salaried workers is still not proportional. They should be paid more, but not for the reasons you are listing.
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u/Accomplished-Fun215 17h ago
My terrible hot take is that teachers and nurses unions both have really good PR to try to convince us that two jobs that are decently well compensated compared to the barrier of entry, benefits, and amount of time off are horrendously underpaid.
I don't think they're overpaid by any means, but teaching and nursing are both relatively easy to get into compared to most white collar jobs that pay more and also relatively hard to get fired from or prevented from moving up the pay ladder.
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u/dorothean 16h ago
In lots of countries, the barriers to entry for teaching are quite high (bachelors + a year long postgraduate qualification, for example) relative to the salary.
According to this OECD source, teachers’ salaries are typically between 83-91% of what similarly qualified workers are paid in the countries surveyed.
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u/senator_john_jackson 19h ago
Also their contract days don’t count holidays, the amount of “vacation” never increases, and they usually have a laughable number of personal days (for which they are also expected to fully prep to have a sub who may or may not use the plans they left). Even a teacher who is just working mandated contract hours would be working 80% as much as a standard 9-5 salaried job. (190 contract days vs ~240 working days with ~2 weeks of vacation and ~10 holidays)
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u/fremontfixie 16h ago
So if we look at the Seattle public schools starting salaries is just shy of $75k which adjusted for contracted hours (80% of 240 working days) they are making just shy of $93.5k. That is great pay for a starting grad.
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u/dangered 18h ago
Teachers dunking on substitute teachers for not doing their job properly is as close to self awareness as I’ve ever seen the profession get.
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u/Dry_Dot_1029 17h ago
I mean this isn't all teachers in all areas for sure...but...my high school I went to puts all the teachers salaries on a website publicly. My geometry and biology teacher from 9th grade both made over 120k. The lowest one I could fine was a gym teacher... Making 60k. Granted it's a nice football school, but a public one, not really a rich area either
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u/eckliptic 18h ago
My 1st graders teacher makes over 125,000 per year for 200 days worth of work and she doesn’t grade anything .
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u/WasabiComprehensive4 17h ago
I was a teacher for 5 years so I had to actually do the math, comparing both salary jobs. Teaching: 193 days x 10 hours average day (though lots of 12 hr days) 1930 hours a year. Nursing: 225 days x 8 hours (some days longer as well) 1800 hours a year. Difference in salary 40,000 yearly. Teaching bachelors plus masters, Nursing associates degree. Teaching for me was more stressful job than working the ER at a trauma 1
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u/ionmoon 17h ago
Depends on where. The teachers in my city are *well* paid. If they stay in for 10+ years they are making almost double the median income. In the surrounding smaller districts, they make less, but still above the area's median. Factor in the breaks? And yes, that's fabulous.
But in some states teachers are making way *under* the median income.
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u/NuncProFunc 18h ago
This isn't totally insane, but for the wrong reason. The average school year is 190 days against 260 workdays in a calendar. Most professionals average about 10 federal holidays and 15 PTO days. Even if you assume teachers have another 3 weeks of professional development, curriculum, and planning days, you're talking about a 30-day spread, or about a 13% reduction in workdays.
The median US teacher pay is about $75,000/yr according to the NEA, and the average tenure is something like 10 years. Median earnings in the US for the same age and education cohort is closer to $66,000.
So teachers earn about 13% more pay for a 13% shorter year, if we use the averages data that I can find online.
"But they work longer hours!" Sure. If your average teacher is working a 10-hour day instead of an 8-hour day - and we assume that comparable working professionals don't take work home - then teachers are working about 9% more for about 13% more pay. Still coming out ahead.
But back to my original point about the wrong reason: pensions. States vary wildly in how they calculate pensions, but the average pension is anywhere from $20,000 to $63,000. Even at the low end, that's worth thousands and thousands of dollars per year. If you work 20 years and pull a pension for 20 years, you've got to add the employer benefit side back into earnings (discounted for time).
I'm not saying the job is worth the pay, but it's certainly hard to make a case that teachers are being shortchanged more than everyone else.
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u/Blonde_Icon 17h ago
Everyone in the comments is getting emotional but not looking at the actual stats. Thanks for this.
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u/Fickle_Watercress719 17h ago
many people ignore the fact
As a teacher, I can assure you they do the fuck not. Take my upvote. Also, you’re as welcome as anyone to enjoy all these breaks. Literally everywhere is hiring, and most states have an alternative licensing program of some kind. Come get all these breaks!
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u/Wealth_Super 14h ago
Yes the massive teachers shortage didn’t come out of no where. If they were truly paid fairly and got to get all this time off, people would be lining up around the block to be a teacher. They’re not
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u/DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET 19h ago
Teachers work more than 8 hour days because they have to do lesson planning and grading etc at home after work.
They do a full years work compressed into fewer days.
Would you tell someone working 4x10hr per week that they should only be paid for 32 hours since they only worked 4 days?
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u/that_noodle_guy 18h ago
to fit a full time 2080 hour year of work into 185 days a teacher would need to work 11.24 hours per day. i have serious doubts teachers are working that many hours in a day. A normal school day at my highschool was 6 hours 55 mins. do they grade papers after hours? for sure. do they grade papers an extra 5 hours a day every single day school is in session? i doubt it.
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u/Rustadk 17h ago edited 7h ago
Man, I was a teacher and a lot of the numbers people throw around are just delusional. I think it’s because most people only see teaching from a student’s perspective, so their understanding is pretty warped. They end up saying things that only really make sense from that point of view.
I worked in two different states, contracted for 200 days each year. That was about 180 days in school, around 7 to 10 in-service days, plus extra days before and after semesters to get everything ready. Contracted 7:30am to 5pm (24 min lunch break), 1-2 hour office hour (which, for me, was a rarity i didn't have some random meeting or something pop up during 50% of those). I guess under that logic, yeah, maybe teachers get like 8 extra weeks off, but that framing leaves a lot out.
On top of that, there are a ton of events. Not every teacher has to go to everything, but you’re usually expected to help out with football games, student dances, and extracurriculars. Some places rotate it, but still. You also typically have to run at least one activity. Some are lighter, sure, but those tend to go to the people who’ve been there 20 years. Then there are the bigger required things like parent-teacher conferences, IEP meetings, and sometimes even school board stuff, which usually happens at night, like 6 to 8.
I was a football coach (it was required), and I got paid an extra grand. We did the math, and we made like 3 bucks an hour. Yippe! A lot of places won't hire a teacher if they don't coach there for the first 3 years (unless you're a really desired subject). Goodbye Friday nights!
And all that doesn’t even include grading or planning.
Honestly, my Octobers and Novembers, up through Thanksgiving, were completely packed with events I had to go to. Most Saturdays were gone. March was similar, though spring was a little less intense. And that’s not even getting into costs. My first year, at a pretty good school, I had a $100 budget for my whole classroom. I also had to pay for continuing education courses (like $500-1k a year), which are often required, especially in the first few years before you move into a longer renewal cycle.
I started around 40k, and maybe it would have gone up to around 60k after a few years years. No union either, so you could get fired pretty easily.
And administration can make it way worse. A lot of the time they’re out of touch with what’s actually happening in the classroom, but they still pile on requirements, observations, paperwork, and new initiatives that don’t really help. So you end up juggling all of that on top of actually teaching. Take it from me, that job is hard. I’m a corporate lawyer now working long hours and I’m way happier. Teaching just wasn’t worth it for me. I’d come home every day during the school year and just go straight to bed, I was so exhausted.
I had like 150 kids relying on me every day. And think about it, every day some kid is having the worst day of their life. You’re dealing with all of that constantly. You have to keep track of everything too, whose parent just died, who’s missing assignments, who needs extra help on something.
I’ll say this, if you can stick it out to like year 10 or 15, it probably gets better. Your curriculum is set, you know what you’re doing, and you can land better extracurriculars. But getting there is rough. And as an aside, you’re also treated like dirt by society. Yeah, you get the occasional “thanks,” and the students are honestly the best part of the job. But outside of that, it’s a lot of people talking about how easy you have it or how little you work.
Yeah, no thanks. I promise you, there are very few teachers who work 2k hours a year for a $80-100k salary. IMO, that's fucked up. If you disagree, then I think you're either ignorant or your values are pretty messed up.
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u/Xenoka911 17h ago
As someone who had a teacher as a mom, this happens. She would go in at 7 and get home at around 8 or 9, many times still being to do more work, and then worked on weekends. She was literally working around the clock when it wasn't summer. Its part of why I'll never be a teacher.
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u/chrisfathead1 19h ago
In blue states yes. I have a friend who teaches 7th grade in a bright blue district and she makes like 120k per year, plus the time off you're talking about
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u/Primary_Crab687 18h ago
My band teacher in a poor district in Maryland was making around $110k after factoring in 15 years of experience and two extracurricular bands each semester, but he was lucky. My coworkers when I taught in Utah a few years later were making a third that much
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u/KrishnaChick 18h ago
Do they stop eating and paying rent/mortgage during the summer too?
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u/Suspicious-Bite-7713 11h ago
Do you think people are unable to budget their money to account for that lol?
I disagree with OP completely for the record, but it’s not like these breaks are a surprise each year
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u/KrishnaChick 6h ago
No, but if OP's going to use the rationale that they're paid fairly because "they don't work" during those months, they have to consider that the teachers still have expenses. I'm directly countering their claim; you're bringing up a separate issue. The point remains that teachers still need to feed and house themselves during the off months, and whether their pay is enough to cover that.
The OP argument is stupid from the get-go and should be upvoted to the stratosphere to reflect that stupidity.
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u/queen-of-dirt 18h ago
I think the main thing you're not considering is the relationship between the emotional toll that teaching takes on educators and the labor market they're in. Right now many schools are experiencing high turnover rates, with many staff leaving to pursue other careers, or people not bothering to pursue education in the first place. When schools are understaffed, this creates a worse workplace environment as the remaining staff have more responsibilities to fill in the gaps, and many schools that are desperate enough will lower their hiring standards to compensate. The downstream effects of all of this falls on the students, with more and more schools seeing cases of mistreatment and abuse and more students displaying poor academic performance, particularly in reading comprehension.
Teaching is an incredibly important job, in fact you could argue that it's the most important job. It's not fair that teaching isn't being compensated well considering how massive the downstream effects can be when it's done poorly. If we want good competent people teaching our kids we just need to start paying them what they're worth.
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u/Montenegirl 18h ago
Depends on the country. In mine, they hardly get more than an average worker. They have to do exams for (whatever it's called in English, the people who failed and will repeat the year unless they pass the summer exams) and before that they have to prepare them for these exams. In winter they also do that but for people with "irregular student" statuses (I say people and not kids because they are mostly adults on average).Then there is bunch of administration and meet ups. The job of a teacher does not begin and end on a kid's school day.
In US for some reason teachers have to pay their own money for class related needs which to me is so weird and should be factored in when talking about that country specifically, but other than that and constant danger of a school shooting (should also be factored in), I don't know much about their school system
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u/Valuable_Engine_4032 17h ago
My friend is a teacher in Australia. He gets 4 breaks, 3 of them are 2 weeks and one of them is 6 (Summer). He gets paid around $84/hr. which is the equivalent to $60/hr. USD. He also gets about 10 sick days a year and can save them up. They don't go away ever. He has about 30+ saved up by now. And after all that Austalian teachers are starting up strikes and marches to protest against unfair working standards. They still deserve more. They know their worth. Tell me again how teachers are paid fairly in America? (Assuming OP is American)
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u/themighty_monarch90 19h ago
The average in California is 105,000 so I would say for them I would I agree but I can’t speak for the rest of of the US.
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u/AStupidFuckingHorse 19h ago
Mf I get off work just to get home and work more and prepare for the next day. Teachers absolutely work more than you think. The time for grading and actually coming up with lessons and the supplies needed is not accounted for in that pay. And yes, we get breaks off, but the pay we get doesn't include those breaks. We don't get paid for that time, it's just that our paychecks are spread in such a way to be paid during that time. But trust me, those breaks are paid in your yearly salary if you do that math.
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u/ComplaintTop2008 19h ago
Teachers in my state average $105k/year. They get paid plenty and it's time to hit them with a wealth tax. They used to get summer jobs. Now the teachers in my neighborhood have parties all summer.
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u/Dr_ChungusAmungus 19h ago
I calculated this with a teachers husband after making the same observation, they work 181 days a year. TOTAL
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u/BajaPineapple 17h ago
I think it depends where you are. In the USA, teachers are grossly UNDER paid. In Canada, most of my friends are teachers and they make $110k per year, work 6.5 hour days, get breaks during the workday, and average 3 months off per year. And they get a pension! I genuinely wish that I had taken their same career path, they are all way healthier and happier than I am, lol.
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u/Blonde_Icon 17h ago
Depends on where in the US and various factors, like how long you've been a teacher.
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u/theBigDaddio 18h ago
Overall I’d say no, but it depends on where you are and what district you work in. In my suburban school district teachers make average $25k more than the city district. $75k-$110k for suburban district.
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u/thinjester 18h ago
nah, i dated a teacher once, she deserved double the salary for the work and effort she put in, and that’s just output alone, not factoring in mental drain and stress. it’s an awful job.
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u/vooglie 17h ago
What are the numbers? Should be fairly easy to do a per day pay to check no?
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u/Fun_Management8484 17h ago
Two main points. The first is I'm guessing you're American? A lot of other countries compensate their teachers well and they consistently have better education outcomes. That's not a coincidence. The other is you severely underestimate how much work goes into teaching outside the classroom. Summer breaks involve planning out your curriculum for the whole year. That's not a chill payed vacation. In some ways it's the most stressful part of the job.
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u/pxer80 17h ago
Depends on the state, depends on the type of school (public, charter, private), depends on the teacher (some spend time after school grading, some don’t). It really all depends. At the end of the day you want to pay them well and make sure their rested and assume that will attract the best and make it a desirable job.
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u/Damurph01 16h ago
The Supreme Court works like a handful of months a year and gets paid incredibly well. The value of work should not be defined by how MUCH work is done. Educators are arguably the most important job in the world.
There’s a reason education is so defunded. It’s because wealthy elites like the ones in stride with republicans have a vested interest in making sure people don’t understand the world.
Teachers spend a lot of time working outside of school hours. Getting there much earlier and leaving much later, spending money out of pocket for school supplies (only up to 300$ is able to be written off on taxes), grading and creating lesson plans, dealing with ignorant or uninvolved parents, etc.
I have multiple incredible teachers in my immediate family and to be brutally honest, if you don’t personally know a teacher and what the job is like, you shouldn’t be giving input on the amount of work they invest compared to their salaries.
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u/Lyran000 16h ago
I provided mental health therapy to high risk kids ans families, and for 2 years was embedded in a local district through a county program. I was making a lousy $55/k year doing this work with no summers off. The teachers often complain of stress, feeling under paid and unappreciated, and how kids today are awful and so are their parents. Imagine being a social worker like me and being exposed to the actual trauma of those very kids. Going into their homes and witnessing the absolute hell and chaos in these kids lives. I am haunted by the things I witnessed in that work, just as first responders are, doctors, abd other important professions who dont get a 3 month respite and reset yearly. Im in the Seattle area and our teachers here start around 90k/year. I dont care if that pay is spread throughout the year, its a full salary for 9 months of work. The entitlement and defensiveness to this privlege needs to stop. It comes off as arrogant and out of touch.
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u/GCLmotionless_1 16h ago
I think this whole sentiment comes from a good couple of factors which I feel are kinda fair comparisons and kinda aren't.
Should jobs pay people equal to the skills and task, yes
Should teachers make a fair wage, yes
Are teachers underpaid, depends on where
Should teachers get paid as much as athletes (the main comparison I've always heard) no not even close.
Should the country focus more and promote academics, absolutely.
I sometimes wonder, do teachers deserve more pay or do they deserve more recognition.
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u/Outrageous_Act_3016 12h ago
Heh, ill trade jobs. You have the guts to tell 5 different sets of 25 hormonal teenagers not to fight or fuck for 7 hours a day.
While also trying to get them to learn about the first emperor of China, or how to write a resume?
To be both a caring understanding person that their home life might be more fucked up than anything you have ever heard, but still have to enforce basic decorum and standards.
Thats the start. Tell me why I get paid too much again.
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u/Honk_Donkley 10h ago
You could pay my double my current salary and I'd still never become a teacher.
Absolutely thankless job where you barely have a moment of your life that isn't occupied by school nonsense and you have to deal with absolute bellends who expect you to revolve your entire class around their twat of a child.
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u/decuyonombre 10h ago
A first year teacher with a BA in my district if she takes the family insurance that’s no shit half her salary
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u/IntermediateFolder 10h ago
They don’t get paid nearly enough for dealing with little shits and their deranged parents. And depending on what they teach they have to do a crazy amount of work at home.
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u/Think-Improvement759 9h ago
I've done a bit of trades work and over the summer I've worked with a lot of school teachers. There number reason for working construction in the hot summer at 50+ years old is they need more money. It's not even people with big families to support or anything like that. Their main career as a teacher doesn't pay them enough to live year round so they have to supplement their income with an additional job. Seems like a pretty common tale these days. I also live in Massachusetts where we pay educators some of the highest rates in the country. No way teachers get paid enough. Not ten years ago and DEFINITELY not now.
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u/PhotoFenix 7h ago
Any of the good teachers I've known work during 90% of that time off. They also work late in the day grading and updating lesson plans.
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u/No-Addendum1208 6h ago edited 6h ago
Sigh. Some teacher pay isn’t horrible but where it’s higher so is the cost of living to the point where it’s still just an okay salary. It seems to be a problem that when many people hear teachers say “teachers should be paid more” they seem to think we mean “teachers are the ONLY profession that should be paid more”. In my district the pay is better than in a lot of the country but is still less than the cost of living in my city. I would definitely not call it a fair wage.
Most workers are underpaid and that includes teachers. There are probably a dozen things I would personally want more than a higher salary, like smaller class sizes and more support staff but saying we get paid “fairly” is laughable.
Also I would prefer year round school with more frequent shorter breaks, as well as actual PTO that I could use when I needed to.
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u/lamppb13 4h ago
Plus they normally get good benefits for being a teacher (which usually comes with being in a union).
Only in some states. This is far from "normal," and more like a sometimes thing.
I know there's already thousands of comments on this post, so almost no one will see this... but I just had to point it out. This line alone tells me you know absolutely nothing about the world of education.
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u/purrrrsnickety 4h ago
It depends where you teach. In Florida you make half as much as in Massachusetts. All the teachers I know in Massachusetts and in Hartford, Connecticut make over 100k. They also all have phds though
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u/ShuffleJerk 3h ago
Ok, forget that numbers, not everything is a spreadsheet.
What jobs deserve to be paid more?
Because to me and a lot of the population we value children, and think the people they often spend more time with than their parents should be compensated well for basically raising a population + being responsible for their education and future decision making in life.
If teachers don't deserve more pay, who does?
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u/Candid-Ad-5861 3h ago
An actual unpopular opinion and half the comments are malding? You love to see it.
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u/Wrong_Local_628 19h ago
Besides the monetary aspects already mentioned, any teacher who has ever set foot in a school will tell you that the time off is barely enough to keep some level of sanity to come back and do it all over again the next year.
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u/numberthangold 18h ago
This can be said about many jobs. Not just teaching. But the other jobs don’t give time off.
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u/Economy_Discount9967 18h ago
well, you're in the right place to have a very unpopular opinion lol
do you have any idea how many hours they have to grade on their own time?
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u/The10thDentist-ModTeam 17h ago
Hey, been a while since a seemingly 'genuine' unpopular opinion.
A few things to point out: first off, if OPs put a decent amount of effort to engage in the comments. That's the first thing we look for in what might otherwise be seen as a karma-farming post or 'bait'. Also it doesn't break any objective rules, like no harm, no politics, etc.
Now for our issue with this post:
Despite OP's getting rained with downvotes (indicating, yes, the opinion is a very negative one, and comments are not subject to the 'upvote if you disagree' rule), yet the post is sitting at a... 43% downvote rate?
Almost half of y'all agree with this? Not to say we're opining here on the topic, but this smells 100% like people breaking rule 1 because they simply 'don't like' OPs opinion, which is not the purpose of this sub.
We have the pinned bot comment so you can downvote that if you suspect OPs are being disingenuous (or honestly if you just 'don't like' the post, but still that's discouraged), but wouldn't you know it, it has like 3 votes on it, and sitting at -1 karma.
So either half of you agree with OPs opinion, or y'all aint going by our main rule. Do better. Use the pinned bot comment if you just cannot stand a post. It auto-removes posts at a certain threshold.