Teaching- Oh, It's Women's Work

After evaluating the salary increases over the past 20 years to the Washington State Salary Schedule for teacher's, I noted that the average increase in wages at the state level was 3%. In the financial world 3% is considered to be normal inflation and therefore, if you don't get at least a 3% increase in wages each year you are falling behind in the purchasing power of your dollar. So I guess what you can say about the State of Washington's "paramount duty" to fund education in the state of Washington is that they have been able to keep the teacher's salary up with basic inflation. There are a couple of problems with letting the State of Washington off the hook with this passing grade. One is that we do not experience general or average inflation and we are certainly not experiencing it now. Inflation this year is between 5 and 7 percent depending on which index you use and very few indexes include the cost of housing, or gas, or the price of higher education. This year the number is up because it reflects the actual rise in prices of food; like milk and eggs and cereal. While inflation indexes can be manipulated in a lot of ways by the economic pundits of our society, they can't hide inflation when it hits food prices. So you can bet your bottom dollar that in reality a teacher has lost serious ground in his status among the middle class, the 3% inflation adjustment by the state of Washington falling far short of what it means to keep our salaries current with inflation.
So over the past year as I have become more and more active in the union and I talk to other union people and I ask the question, "Why is this such a poorly paid profession?" The answer that rings the harshest to my ears and is a constant refrain is that, "Teaching, Oh, It's Women's Work." When I hear that, I think to myself where am I in the 19th century. If it was women's work it is certainly not now. I am certainly not a woman and moreover, hold your horses, haven't we already gone through already two generations where women have been seen as equals with men and may not be discriminated against in the workplace. So if that is the case and women can't be discriminated against in the workplace and there are many non-women in the field, Who is getting away with the attitude that you can pay the professional teachers much less then say you have to pay the "manly" professions of Doctors and Lawyers, Accountants and Brokers.
It is high time that this profession is recognized for its difficulty but even more so for the importance of the service it provides to our society and paid commensurate with the benefits we bring our society. A lawyer handles the courts, a doctor handles the human body, and Accountant handles the books. What do we handle. We handle the education of our future generations. Exactly what kind of value is that. I believe it is inestimable and yet the Teaching profession is the most poorly paid profession of any of the professions. As you see from the picture of my family and the blurb about me, you can see that one of my daughters is at Boston University, getting a degree in English and secondary teaching. Today's costs to send my daughter to school are approximately $50,000 a year. For those of you with young kids just wait to see what is coming your way. As I figure it, if she had to borrow all the money and pay it back with interest, she would need to work for a decade and save most of her money during that time to repay the loans. And she wants to be a Teacher? SW

There seem to be problmes with this blog so I am looking for a new place to domain this blog. I will be talking with the WEA about it. SHMUEL

Topic of Conversation Parent Complaints

I recently had a conversation with a teacher who was terminated from her teaching positon and reduced to a parapro with a resultant salary decrease of $41,000.00. The union was unable to help her. I asked her how it came about and she said that a new VP had it in for her but it had been provoked by "parent complaints". I am not here to say whether parents have a right or not to complain but I do have a concern that "parent complaints" are often the source of friction between a teacher and the administration and when things get bad enough they can end up like this teacher whom I met. For the purpose of conversation. I know we have a senate at Nathan Hale but has the Senate created a policy for how "parent complaints" should be handled. Here is my suggestion.

In most highschool situations "parent complaints" are derivative of "student complaints". Not attempting to disparage students and their intentions but from my standpoint student's have two primary objectives when it comes to their classes 1.) getting a good grade 2.) not getting in trouble with their parents. Not getting a good grade or having attendance problems leads them to getting into trouble with their parents. This dynamic often leads to a complaint against the teacher for numerous and asundry reasons. If the student is vociferous enough in their complaint to their parent, and persistent enough and the student can claim "every student" feels that way a parent will often take it upon themselves to complain to the administration.

I am very concerned about this uncontrolled and unregulated complaint system against teachers. I think we need a policy about how parent complaints should be handled. I believe we should have a form that includes; "the student complaint" plus "affirmation of the student complaint by the parent" and this form should be submitted to the administration at which point the administration should forward the complaint to the teacher and give the teacher a few days to provide their response. After this process the administrator should attempt to resolve the problem for the benefit of all those involved.

What do you, think?

WELCOME to OPEN DIALOGUE on SEA/WEA issues

Dear Friends,

Contract Negotiations are coming up. The new Superitendant has not worked with unions before. The MacKenzie report was commissioned against the wishes of the SEA. The MacKenzie report is the best indication of the goals and objectives of the district and there are inferences in the report that show administrators are not doing enough to monitor and improve their teaching staff. The statistics show that in the year 2006/07 out of 2,212 teachers on the Professional Growth Cycle only 3 were switched to the Performance Cycle and out of 3,220 only 8 teacher's were put on probation and of those 8 seven teacher's were dismissed. What these statistics show is that there is a lot of work to be done for administrators to start seeing results or if there are not results in the classroom, teacher's will have to be let go to make room for those that can get the results. As Bob Dylan wrote, "The Times They are a Changing".

Organization is key. Open Dialogue is crucial. This is our post. Let's use it. We need to be Organized and ready to respond as a unified group to these changes that right now seem to be pointing the finger at the Teacher in the classroom.