THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF TEACHING

Few things annoy your executive director like the prattling of people who laud public school teachers for taking on such a tough job for so little pay. Other than the fact that this silly sentiment has no relationship to the facts, why should I be bothered by it?* An article in last week’s Grand Rapids Press provides the answer.

Thirty-five Kenowa Hills Middle School teachers refused to meet with parents at an open house to discuss academic plans for the students. The teachers stiffed parents because they were aggrieved at having to attend an activity not mandated by their contract while their health benefits remained under negotiation. Art teacher Steve Leedy groaned to Press reporter Nardy Bickel that playing hookie was “the single-most difficult decision I had to make.” Considering that a suburban public school teaching slot is just about as undemanding a sinecure as the taxpayers provide, I believe Steve.

AWOL computer specialist Marcia Milanowski blamed the parents for not realizing how deeply the negotiations over health benefits have affected the teachers. Yes, of course. It is not enough that parents have to put in twice the number of hours at work every year required of the typical public school teacher to earn the money to pay for those health benefits. These parents need to also sympathize with the educators as their delicate sensibilities are being rattled by the routine process of contract negotiations.

This shows how much students, parents, and taxpayers are at the mercy of the public school teachers’ unions when the organized self-absorbed arrogance of teachers like Leedy and Milanowski is nothing like an immediate threat to their jobs. So long as parents have no choice but to pay the salaries and benefits of these people, the parents and their children are entitled to the loyalty of these public servants. If Leedy and Milanowski don’t think the parents lavish them with sufficient remuneration to merit their loyalty, they can always look for a better deal elsewhere.

(* Yes, of course, there are teachers who do a remarkable job. Indeed, I know one teacher in the Rockford School District who has taken on the thankless task of working with the district’s most difficult students and has earned every penny of what we pay him. It is the fact that so few of our public educators are willing to do this kind of work and so many are ready revolt at the smallest demand we make of them that it is evident that a perverse sense of entitlement, buttressed by the country’s most powerful union, is turning the teaching profession into a racket.)

Comments

[Douglas Keachie]

You know, it's a shame so many college educated Republicans have turned down these lavish high paying easy jobs so that they could enlist and fight the good fight for Mr. Bush in Iraq.

I mean, really, that is where all the self interested well educated Republicans have gone, is it not ? They could take any state's standards and teach from their point of view so easily.....too bad they can't be indoctrinating our kids....

Retired teacher, service in Hunter's Point, San Francisco, and similar areas.

[The Executive Director]

Mr. Keachie:

Thank you for your comments. They give me an opportunity to clarify my criticism of the Kenowa Hills teachers highlighted in my article.

You and I both know there are many dedicated people in the public school systems of this country who take the tough jobs. There are many more who give their students the best they can in exchange for a decent salary and benefit package from the public.

I'm sure you also know, as I do, there are some teachers who acquire an entitlement mentality, which unfortunately unions like the Michigan Education Association reinforce. These teachers forget that they work for the public, not vice versa. They put material self-interest ahead of pride in public service. They expect others, such as custodians and cooks and working class taxpayers, to take the hit before them when times are tight.

That is what I criticize, especially when such teachers are being frivolous in their demands. I hope this clarifies our position. It is our mandate to look out for those who can least afford the claims public officials, employees, and institutions make upon them. To this end we hold anyone and everyone to account in our little corner of the world, even the sacred cows.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director

[Douglas Keachie]

Do you really consider decent health care frivolous ? If you haven't got health, you're dead !

Everyone takes their chances as they come into the planet with their bags of molecules. Some of us wind up with PPP (P*ss Poor Protoplasm). The rest of us, either through failure to think things through (stupidity) or "wrong place, right time, with no way to know" (e.g. collateral victim of high speed chase)wind up accidently in the emergency room. Insurance for such things is a basic human need, and should logically come attached to primary employment, and not subject to garnishment by anyone (including IRS, etc.).

Leaving such coverage to the "free market" is risky to the general well-being of society, as well as the individual. If we have to care about Terri Schaivo, then why not about the rest of us. Until the day ALL THE BOOKS of every public entity are up for scrutiny on line in Excel format, there is no reason to believe adminstrators who claim there's no place else in the budget to cut.

SFUSD's superintendent is now getting over $300,000/year. She shares the top floor of her building with....lawyers. The head of personnel is a...lawyer. They carefully set up "hire, assign, and fire" situations and cooked the books so as to deprive retiring teachers of an incentive guaranteed by the state.

Your administrators are making the decisions about who gets cut, not the teachers. With no Unions, the District's would still be telling single males not to drink and single females not to marry.....

Posting $76,000 or so as the beginning salary is very misleading, as the average Joe does not understand the concept of all the costs involved hiring an employee, and is often unaware of his own employer's various "extra" contributions.

Besides, did average Joe working stiff complete 4 years of college and a year and a half beyond ? Can the average Joe begin to cope with the complexity of making the new typical multi-culti, multi-ability, classroom go ?

We have now had upward of 6 generations of bottom of the socioeconomic barrel kids go through the system. Some of them are actually quite smart. They learn all of the tricks from each previous generation for screwing up and derailing the educational system, especially the legal ones. Can you imagine Chris Rock in your classroom ? I find it hard when you attempt to pit the teachers against the staff, instead of saying to society, "You've got a problem here, one that private school solve in part with smaller class sizes. Deal with it." Blaming teachers for an underfunded situation is not the answer.

Personally, I see teaching as we know it going under in the next 50 years. There will still be schools, but a great deal of the activity will be on-line tutorials, heavy with AI (artificial intelligence)and edutainment that kicks in when interest lags, and then cleverly gets the kid back on track. I'd like to see an awful lot more employers coming in as guest speakers.

Some things that are not taught should be.

Money comes from:

Working for someone else.

Working your own business as the only employee.

Acquiring more employees, training them, and deriving income from their labor. Your labor is setting up their labor.

These are listed in ascending order of income, in most cases. Each different situation has its own risky downsides. Place your bets !

Old people have more money and stuff because they've had more time in which to accumulate it, if they take advantage of the situation. If not, they're broke.

Young people are poor because they haven't been around long enough to accumulate excess.

If you don't learn to at least save, if not invest intelligently, you will always be poor. The best investment is a good and continuous education. If you don't know what's going on, how can you ever take advantage of it ?

I have never seen these basic, common sense, "facts of life" taught anywhere, except in my own classroom.

Frankly, they should be posted like the bell schedules are, in every classroom.

Doulas Keachie

[Douglas Keachie]

Myparticular PPP is failing vision. Missed the missing "g" in my own name !

[Jim Chapman]

I have read several comments about the dispute between the KHEA (teachers) and the KH board of education and parents of the KH students.

I know when the budget is tight things need to been done to trim costs. Everyone must make some concessions while remembering the students are still the number one most important issue. In the case of the teachers refusing to meet with parents regardign thier education plans, I take serious offense to the actions of these teachers. The students aren't the ones negotiating a contract with the teachers. They aren't the ones haggling over health insurance benefits. Why should they be the ones to suffer.

The parents also aren't negotiating with the teachers on a new contract. Why should the be forced to have thier childrens education affected by the contract dispute? I stand up for teachers in a lot of issues, but the actions of these teachers creates a rather large black mark on the repuatation of the teachers invovled, and the KHEA.

As far as I'm concerned the teachers need to make thier concerns known to the school board without impacting the education of the children who have nothing to do with the contract negotiations.

As one of my best education professors once said "Without the child, we have no-one to educate."

[The Executive Director]

Hello, Mr. Chapman.

Thank you for making clear the distinction I was attempting in my original article between those teachers who understand and take pride in their public service and those who unfortunately view teaching as just another job.

Regards,
Bill Tingley

[Mark Chase]

Wow, just discovered this site. A real "piece of work," if I may say so (sarcastically). I like your quote, "considering that a suburban public school teaching slot is just about as undemanding a sinecure as the taxpayers provide," for it completely shows just how clueless you are. Obviously, you haven't spent any time in a middle school classroom in May since you left yourself.

[The Executive Director]

Well, Mark, if you're saying the toughest thing a suburban public school teacher has to do is ride herd on a bunch a kids getting rambunctious the month before summer break, I think you've made my point for me.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director

[Mark Chase]

And again, thanks for proving MY point. The toughest? Not even close. You wouldn’t understand the toughest aspects, so I tried to break it down to what is actually the simplest task and one I seriously doubt you could handle. Inquiring minds want to know, just how many hours (or minutes) of your adult life has been spent in a middle school?

[Executive Director]

Mark,

As a normal adult I have spent NO time in a middle school recently. However, I do belong to the school of thought that the human condition is universal, and so no experience of one person is completely alien to another. Therefore, I believe that I can rely upon my experience to understand how difficult teaching in a suburban public school is.

In fact I have actual experience in teaching. For three years of my hitch in the Air Force I flew as combat crew on RC-135's with sixty live sorties under belt. Half of those missions I flew as an instructor training new crewmembers under "real-world" conditions.

I thoroughly enjoyed this public service and don't think I was extraordinary in being able to do it. However, I do suggest that the environment I had to teach in was a bit more stressful than that of a middle school. Moreover my public service was a 24/7 obligation paid at a fraction of public school teacher's compensation who puts in only about the half the hours a typical working stiff does every year.

So while teaching is an honorable and worthwhile public service, it is not the toughest gig in the world. Far from it. For public school teachers and their unions to insist that it is to justify their demands for higher pay and greater perks from the taxpayers is an insult to the intelligence and work experience of those taxpayers.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director

[Executive Director]

Mark,

Another reason why teaching in a middle school isn't a tough job: In most school districts the problemmatical students are discarded into a special class or even school. The teachers of those students do have a tough job. One example is Casey Teliczan of the Rockford Public School District who is such a teacher. He has my admiration. Of course, one reason he may be up to the challenge is that he had the same job I did in the Air Force. ;)

Regards,
Bill Tingley

[Batman]

If the posting times are correct, I hope I'm not paying for Mr. Chase's discussion.

[The Executive Director]

Hello, Batman.

The posting times are accurate. From your comment I gather that you concluded that Mr. Chase is a public school teacher. However, Mr. Chase has not represented himself as such.

Regards,
Bill Tingley

[Casey]

Bill,

Thanks for the nice words. But to set the record straight, I took a pay cut when I left the Air Force as an enlisted man to take my teaching job that requires a four year college degree. Even now after 14 years in the teaching profession, with a master's degree plus 30 additional graduate credits, my pay is less than it would have been if I had stayed in the Air Force. If you check on this, be sure to include basic pay, housing, basic allowance for subsistance and the tax advantages associated with military pay. I am not complaining, I love my job, my boss and the students, just setting the record straight.

I can see how old these coments are. I simply could not resist making this reply.

[The Executive Director]

Hey, Casey.

I'm glad you couldn't resist. My how time flies.

Thanks for the info. My gripe lies not so much with compensation but the sense of entitlement rather than mission too many bring to public service. But then I do wonder how a fella like Olivarez gets paid an extra $297K to quit his job as president of GRCC? So, the money does matter.

The bottom line, Casey, is that we need more people like you in our public schools and fewer like Olivarez.

Regards,
Bill