They are. A few years ago I still thought they were oeverpaid and then I married a teacher. She's absolutely underpaid. It is very much not a 9-5 job and, that time off during the summer - some of it get used for required continued education and a good deal of it makes up for the fact that teachers generally don't have vacation time remotely comparable to most other industries.
My wife wakes up and goes to school about 2 hours before classes start. She comes home, makes us dinner, then sits on the couch all evening watching tv while she answers student and parent emails, works on her lesson plan for the next few days/weeks, grades papers, tries to figure out how to squeeze kids in around others during her prep hour or before/after school that are requesting help, find time to squeeze in phone calls during those same time slots with parents that are unhappy with a student's grade or want help for their child.
The weekends are more of the same, a lot of grading/lesson planning/creating content for teaching.
This summer she had 2 weeks of full-time college classes in the middle of summer to keep up with her continued education requirements which required her to purchase about a dozen books that weren't textbooks for the class and required a few binders, several papers, then a 20-page paper. Then weeks before the school year started she had to go start prepping her classroom, attending meetings in person, etc.
Just look at babysitting rates. If you look at the cost of daycare and consider any k-12 child at babysitting rates, teachers are extremely underpaid. Last school year she had roughly 185 students she saw daily. So, the average rate for a local babysitter in Indianapolis, IN is $12.75 per hour as of January 2021 according to Care.com's data.
Assume she had each student for 60 minutes a day - as a babysitter she should have earned $2,358.75 a day if my math is right. She was doing a lot more than babysitting, after marrying her I fully joined the stance that teachers are horribly underpaid.
We treat teachers like these magicians who should find a way to make economically stressed kids fantastic students.
I myself went through tons of housing instability , and an eviction while in high school. In no universe was I going to get into some type of premiere college.
But you just keep seeing more and more pressure to make kids college ready. Kids who can barely read English are now told to take a foreign language( I've always hated foreign language requirements because I think it gives a big leg up to people growing in bilingual homes).
Your wife is a saint. I can't imagine how much stress this reopening drive is causing your home.
A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid.
Nice try. Also, continued education is a requirement as it should be for such a career, but don't forget that her pay will go up as she completes credits (on top of her yearly increase).
Just so you know, teachers in my area start at $55K/yr right now, not including benefits.
You're just massaging the data to benefit your point. Go find a babysitter that'll find 5 parents an go "yes, I'll watch all 5 of your children if you all chip in and give me 12.75 total".
Even your own source of care.com has a "Nanny Share" program that reduces the cost more. Without sharing, full time care (40 hrs a week) for 2 kids in my area is $16 an hour...which is less than 2 bucks more than minimum wage. $17.65 an hour if its 3 kids. Certainly not three times the $14.65 an hour that is for a single kid.
Also this “9 months a year” thing is really getting tired. Every teacher I’ve ever met works 60-80 hours a week or more, including weekends. When they work does not correlate to how much they work.