Evolution of Teaching: Salaries, Unions, and Impact on Teachers

1. Chapter 9Professional Issues: Who Will Influence My Career?

2. Historically Speaking: How Has Teacher Work Changed – For Better or Worse? • Educator Margaret Haley’s 1904 speech to the NEA contained the following criticisms of teaching conditions: • Salaries are too low • Teachers lack job security and pensions • Overcrowded classrooms • Lack of respect and demands for conformity to external rules

3. Historically Speaking: How Has Teacher Work Changed – For Better or Worse? • Haley believed that by creating a professional teacher’s union, these problems could be fixed • Though conditions have definitely improved, many of these problems still exist today

4. How Much Do Teachers Get Paid? • The average teacher salary is $51,009 • The average starting teacher salary is $35,284 • Teacher salaries vary greatly depending on the state, district, and cost of living • Teachers receive substantial benefits in terms of health care, pensions, and job security

6. How Much Do Teachers Get Paid? • In the past, many groups of teachers have received unfair salaries • 1920s: Many female teachers had rebelled and received comparable salary to men • 1940s: Minority teachers earned 40% less than white teachers • 1960s and 1970s: All teachers, with the help of unions, demanded and received increased salaries and improved benefits

7. What is Tenure? • In the past, teachers could lose their jobs based on political favoritism • Tenure is the right of a teacher to keep his or her job subject to good behavior • Often awarded after a short probationary period, normally 3 years • Now, some educators worry that tenure makes it too difficult to get rid of an ineffective teacher

8. Will I Join a Union? • Two largest teacher unions: • National Education Association (NEA) • 3.2 million members • American Federation of Teachers (AFT) • 1.3 million members

9. Will I Join a Union? • Controversy over teacher unions today • Critics claim that unions are a barrier to progress in education reform • Union advocates say much more needs to be done to achieve appropriate salaries and professional respect for teachers • Some argue not against unions, but for union reform

10. What About Me? • What are your thoughts about unions? How might they affect your professional, and personal, life as a teacher?

11. Why is Professional Development Important? • Since 1975, professional development has seen remarkable growth • Professional development is an activity focused on helping experienced and beginning teachers strengthen their capabilities

12. Why is Professional Development Important? • Teachers are becoming more intellectually engaged with their profession through: • Higher level activity during professional development events • More time spent talking with other teachers • Becoming “reflective practitioners”

13. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday?

14. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Fellow teachers • Many teachers isolate themselves in their own classrooms • Teachers, especially novices, greatly benefit from interacting and sharing ideas with colleagues • When teachers work together, they can represent an organized, focused front when rallying for changes in a school or district

15. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Administrators • Administrators have different work lives and responsibilities than teachers • Sometimes have differing views on issues • Teachers will most likely face both effective and ineffective leadership during their careers • “Good” schools are usually characterized by strong, consistent, and inspired leadership

16. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Parents and community members • A third of teachers list “communicating with parents” as their most significant problem • Teachers need to do everything they can to connect with other adults in their students’ lives • Effective schools keep a balance between less healthful community invasion and community alienation

17. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Don’t go it alone • Relationships with administrators, fellow teachers, unions, parents, and community members are not always easy, but they are essential • The idea of the “lone teacher” does little in the way of producing wide-sweeping reforms that benefit all students

18. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Students – Class size • Current research is divided on the benefits of smaller class size • Advocates for smaller classes cite findings from Tennessee’s Project STAR and other studies • Many critics claim that teacher quality is far more influential than class size • With decreasing budgets, schools have to decide between smaller classes and cutting funding for other programs or activities

19. Join the Dialogue • What are your thoughts on smaller class sizes? If you were in charge of a school’s budget, would you choose to enlarge classes to save money before cutting other programs? Why?

20. Who Are the People Who Impact a Teacher’s Workday? • Students – The reason we teach • Students are the point of all of the work that goes on in schools • Student-centered teachers do not forget about the other adults in the school, but they do keep their “eyes on the prize”

21. Reading: “Why Teachers Should Organize” by Margaret Haley • Haley protested against the lack of moral and financial support for public schools and teachers • She credited many of these problems to the struggle between two opposing ideals present in American education: • The Industrial ideal: Worker is subordinate to machine and product • The Democratic ideal: Humanity is placed above all machines

22. Reading: “TURNing Unions Around” by Adam Urbanski • Urbanski pushes for union reform, but writes that: • “[U]nless it is voices from within the teacher union movement who are driving the call for reforms, there is a great risk that the voices from outside would be viewed as hostile ‘bashing’” • He claims that unions need to build on their “foundation that has been laid” but focus as closely on professional issues

23. Reading: “The Desecration of Studs Terkel: Fighting Censorship and Self-Censorship” by Bill Bigelow • Bigelow writes of his personal experiences with administrative censorship and support • Ineffective administration can be a censoring agent but Bigelow believes: • “[T]he most powerful agent of censorship lives in our own heads, and we almost always have more freedom than we use” • Most often, administration is supportive and encouraging rather than repressive

24. Reading: “Two Teachers of Letters” by Margaret Treece Metzger and Claire Fox • Fox writes to former teacher about how many have trivialized her decision to become a teacher • Teacher, Metzger, writes of the benefits and annoyances of teaching • She writes, “I know that teaching well is a worthwhile use of my life. I know my work is significant” • Metzger also writes of problems associated with teaching, including classroom management, school politics, monotony, and poor pay