Hazardous Pay For Teachers

  • Saturday, July 22, 2017
 I used the title of my message for attention to the plight of the classroom teacher. I meant not that teachers deserve more pay but using the word hazardous duty pay applies to what does not happen in the classrooms across the country.
 
At the beginning of the school year and a new class sometimes the teacher already knows a few of the students. Sometimes not but in a month or so she/he will know her students well and by well I mean how quickly they understand new material.
She will understand and know particularly well the students that are struggling and with that learning dynamic in every classroom she could, if not controlled by central office, develop a classroom environment that allows students to help each other... more teacher helpers but realistically she cannot... It would be so beneficial to the teacher to know, really know, how and what type of learner she would have at the beginning of the school year..  She does not have this.
 
 Teachers are a varied group of individuals. I knew of none that entered teaching for the money. That topic is mainly treated as a joke. The hours outside the classroom we never talk about but knowing as I do, they are considerable. Preparation for the week includes lesson plans Monday-Friday. They are used as a guide or they should be but often they are used as a map of progress for that teacher and questions can be raised why that teacher is not at the "correct speed..."
 
  Everyone has heard that teachers can and do make a child's world pretty wonderful. Teachers often are the child's other parent; the one that cares about the report card; about breakfast; about the bite marks or black and blue marks.. Yes, teachers are a pretty remarkable group of wonderful people doing what some parents do not know how to do and helping those parents that do.
 
 We kinda fill in the missing pieces if only we would be allowed to do our real mission. Any HCDE school board members reading this; or taxpayers?  We have five failing schools.  They didn't just fail this year. They have been ignored .. really ignored and school leaders not really knowing what to do instead "throw money" at the problem and by throwing I mean central office decision-makers stay in their nice cozy offices. They do not know the plight of the learners in these schools nor the parent at home... Oh woe.
 
Robert Brooks

 

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