As a follow up to my last argument, take a look at this comment that was posted in response to my blog on vacation pay:
Teacher work on average 154 days per year. This is part time work, and part time is part time. Doesn't matter if you are delivering pizza, cutting hair or working at Sears in the cosmetic section. These are all peer jobs to the common teacher. Part time is part time. Now for the salary and benefits. Teachers in South Dakota make $34,040 per year, and have 15 weeks holiday. Same job as our Canadian teachers, so why the huge difference in pay? Teachers are not professionals, the use of this term is insulting to us Professionals. You will not find one single Professional in Canada that only works 154 days per year, and shutting down at 3:30. Please refrain from using this term, we have worked very hard to attain our designations and teachers are demeaning it. We are educated with real degrees, not a bird BA (Burger All) and some bird courses written by the union to get a teaching certificate. And, that is all that it is, a certificate. Not like a true Professional Designation like a CA, or LLP, etc.
These are precisely the people that we will never convince and should not spend a single amount of time on (beyond this blog).
She has ignored every single blog post, the real facts, and made erroneous conclusions that are not based on reality.
Despite teachers being officially called "professionals" by government agencies, universities, and other councils, she has decided that based on generic and untrue comparisons that she is entitled to determine that we are not.
Despite proving that teachers work from 9 to 5 before calculating extracurriculars she claims the job ends at 3:30.
She believes that teachers in South Dakota, and their living expenses, are similar to Toronto based on the fact that she believes this to be true.
She believes that a 5 year University degree, plus at least 2 additional university level courses qualifies as a certificate.
I thank her for proving our argument.
You forgot one. At an "average of 154 days per year", we must be taking 42 sick days annually, since the school calendar totals up to 194 - no it does not count weekends or holidays! Too funny, really!
ReplyDelete194 instructional days + 6 P.A or P.D. days where we are in meetings, conducting parent teacher conferences (interviews) working on report cards (a small portion of time given for the large amount of time they actually take to write), or heaven forbid actually getting some professional development!
DeleteFunny how this "professional" forgets she got her designation by learning from.....dadatada...... TEACHERS! With the errors this one has made her designation should be pulled and retraining required.
ReplyDeleteHmm, so she got her professional designation from unqualified and non-professional teachers. Sounds like this one has been committing fraud in accepting a professionals pay. Indeed any professional making this many errors should have whatever designation she has, chief government boot licker perhaps, pulled and required to retrain under qualified and professional teachers.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the majority of these myths have been debunked on this site, for people just joining and seeing this post, I would like to point out a few things. Just for the record, I am not a teacher.
ReplyDelete1. "Teacher work on average 154 days per year." Teachers work 194 days a year. They may unofficially work more days than this (eg. summer preparation, overnight school trips etc.)
2. "This is part time work, and part time is part time. Doesn't matter if you are delivering pizza, cutting hair or working at Sears in the cosmetic section. These are all peer jobs to the common teacher. Part time is part time. "
If by "peer jobs" you mean to say "jobs with similar requirements", then you are mistaken. The requirements for delivering a pizza or working at Sears are very different than the credentials you require to become a teacher. The former two do not require a university education and special teaching certification in order to qualify for a position.
3. "Now for the salary and benefits. Teachers in South Dakota make $34,040 per year, and have 15 weeks holiday. Same job as our Canadian teachers, so why the huge difference in pay? "
I don't know where this statistic came from and if it is true. If it is, then I should mention teachers have only 11 non-working weeks. In general, I doubt that Canada's public services can even be directly compared to USA's public services, since they are completely different in terms of values and funding on the spectrum of capitalism vs. socialism.
Interestingly enough, Canada also outperforms the USA in reading, math and science. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), found that globally:
Canadian students ranked 4th in math; the USA ranked 21st.
Canadian students ranked 4th in science; the USA ranked 13th.
Canadian students ranked 3rd in reading proficiency; the USA ranked 8th.
While correlation does not mean causation, I find it interesting that Canada's higher paid teachers correlate to a higher student test ranking, vs the USA's lower paid teachers and lower student rankings.
4. “Teachers are not professionals, the use of this term is insulting to us Professionals.”
The definition of a professional has changed within the last 100 years. Now, it is accepted to mean a regulated subset of people with a specific skills, requiring specialized certification and training. Teachers meet all these criteria. They have specific skills – not only do they have knowledge to impart on students, they have a special understand of “how to TEACH that knowledge”. Teachers have their own body of research, development and educational strategies including knowledge of childhood development, differentiated instruction, guided-inquiry etc.
For an extremely interesting essay on the history of the professional, and how teachers fit into that history please see this: http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/professional/teaprof.htm
5. “We are educated with real degrees, not a bird BA (Burger All) and some bird courses written by the union to get a teaching certificate. And, that is all that it is, a certificate. Not like a true Professional Designation like a CA, or LLP, etc.”
I am starting to think you are insane. To use one of your examples. To become a CA you need: a university degree (so do teachers), completion of graduate-level courses through the provincial institute (Shocking, so do teacher’s…their institute is called teacher’s college), you must gain work experience under training of CAs (shocking, again, student teachers must gain classroom experience under the supervision of practicing teachers). Finally, to become a CA, you must write the UFE. While teachers do not have an official exam to write, it is because teaching is a difficult skill to evaluate on paper. They are evaluated on their assignments and performance throughout teacher’s college is a regulated, criteria-based manner.
Ooops, I forgot to include my OECD citation: http://www.oecd.org/statistics/
ReplyDeleteI don't think any group of people should be written off even if we feel they may never be convinced. While it's true that some people will not be convinced, the effort spent is part of the struggle against misinformation by telling the unpopular truth.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any group of people should be written off, even if we might not be able to convince them. They may never be convinced, but the effort spent to convince them is part of the struggle against misinformation by telling the unpopular truth.
ReplyDelete