As a veteran teacher currently working in an alternative school setting, I find it amusing to consider the ramifications of proposed Tennessee Senate Bill SB 0688 (Jim Summerville, R-Dickson County) that would eliminate the requirement for licensure among teachers, principals, and school supervisors.
Some in the general public gripe about teachers because they: 1) have the summer off; 2) leave work at three o’clock in the afternoon; 3) make good wages and draw wonderful benefits at the public expense; and, 4) enjoy strong unions that protect the lazy and incompetent.
In reality, many teachers have to take second jobs over the summer just to make ends meet. As a high school student, I worked alongside my biology and chemistry teachers mowing and weed eating the city cemetery, digging graves, and picking up the garbage. Both of these educators had children to feed and school; it’s true that they straddled the riding mowers while I manned the weed eater, but they toiled in the sun for three months right beside me.
When I became a teacher in 1979, my first year’s wages equalled $11,500. Since it cost me $13,000 to live, I had to take sick and personal days to work a second job – just to survive.
All you unlicensed wannabes out there: if you’re still employed after your first ten months of teaching, you’ll see what the summer is for. It’s called psychiatric readjustment (that is, if you don’t have to work through June-July to make up for a paltry paycheck). And by the way, summer is shrinking. Our school ends on May 28 and begins on August 4. Furthermore, many of us have to attend teacher-training or professional development classes over this abbreviated time in order to maintain our certificates.
So what is so difficult about the job that one needs a “summer” off?
Try sitting next to a kid who hasn’t bathed in a month, and hasn’t changed his clothes in six months. In the “old days” the stinky kids were sent home to wash. Now, the parents come in smelling ranker than their kids. Put three or four of these “Pigpens” in a small hot room with the sun beaming in and windows that are locked shut so they won’t crawl out onto the roof when you’re not looking (it’s happened).
Try working with a pregnant teen when she’s the third generation baby maker, while sister, mom, and grandma are still drawing some sort of SSI check. When this year began, I had seven girls in the room: four were pregnant; the other three were already moms.
Try living in an area where the first thing you do in the morning is read the police blotter to see which of your students will be absent. Last year, one of my students was shot through the door of his car by a rival drug gang member. This year, one of mine was arrested for beating up a pizza-delivery-man, swiping his cash, and eating the pizza. It makes you want to order anchovies for a defensive strategy.
Try watching your students squirm as the police swoop into your classroom with drug dogs and pull wads of one-hundred-dollar bills out of the pockets of kids who can barely read and add two numbers together. Everyone knows where their entrepreneurial cash flow originates. It’s the only job available to them as college students have already filled the fast food jobs in our small city.
I teach high school seniors. They’re in this sad shape not because they’ve had poor instruction – they have skipped school most of their lives and the system promotes them to the next grade anyway.
Try sitting in a teacher/parent conference where the parent goes ballistic, mouthing vulgarities about he inadequacy of the education system. And then, when asked where he was when his child missed grades 3-6, dad hangs his head for a long pause while the school counselor reads off the rap sheet: “He was in Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.” I could go on, but you get the idea. The status quo lays the blame at the feet of teachers dedicated enough to earn licensure, but never mentions the source of the dysfunction.
Leaving work at three in the afternoon sounds great at first glance. The reality of the situation, however, is that most of us arise between 5:30 and 6 A.M. in order to arrive early and get set up for the students, who typically arrive from 7:15 to 7:30. During the years when I had to commute forty-five minutes, I left the house at 5:30 A.M. so I could be standing outside – in all weather – to assume my extra-duty getting the students safely off the school bus and safely into the building so they could get the free breakfast they weren’t served at home.
As an English teacher (for twelve years), my second work day started after supper, and continued to 11 PM because the only way to teach writing is to have students write. Marking each paper thoroughly and clearly is tough, but I earned a license in order to help kids. None of those extra hours will ever show up on my paycheck, but all of my students passed the year-end writing exam.
Teacher’s pay taxes, and thereby support their own paychecks. The city I live in has a 9.75% sales tax on everything one buys. Our teacher salaries are actually pretty good for the southeast, but below average nationwide. Health insurance averages $350 a month, and goes up with each family member added. It’s true we get to read a free newspaper each day as the local press hands out free copies in order to hook students on the written word; they go directly to the police blotter, too, to see who’s been in the can overnight.
Since I live in a “right to work” state, the “union” is in name only. Over $500 is subtracted from my paycheck for union dues each year, but by law we cannot strike. What few collective bargaining rights remain are being swept aside by the current legislature: along with the requirements for licensure and certification.
Finally, be aware that almost 50% of those entering the profession quit within their first five years. It doesn’t take much imagination to predict that unlicensed/uncertified “teachers” will take a job just to have cash flow when they’re between positions. This means that Joe Public’s child may see three or four fly-by-nighters traipse through their child’s classroom in a single year.
So come on, all you unlicensed, uncertified pedagogical wannabes. Waltz into the belly of the beast. And after you’ve been chewed up, spit out, and lambasted by the general public for failing to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, don’t say you weren’t warned.
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