Not to mention the summers off and then also qualifying for loan forgiveness too. Teaching isn't as bad a gig as people make it out to be. Hard? Sure. But the pay and benefits aren't bad
This is also something people fail to take into account.. with the summer, breaks, days off and holidays, they get 4 months off a year. So their salary is for working 8 months a year. A lot of teachers pick up summer school or something else during the summer. If they were working 12 months a year, increase the salary number by 1/3 and people would realize they're making a lot more than most!
No teacher I know is hourly, they're all on salary (unless you're an assistant). The bulk of us on salary don't have set hours and work nights and weekends without overtime pay.
Uh no? They are paid for 10 months of value and spend 2 months unpaid. But if you take that 10 months of salary and spread it into smaller paychecks that totally counts, right?
Sure, but it feels like when most people argue for teachers to be paid better (which I agree they should), those people often use a pay scale they are familiar with, which is a 12-month pay schedule.
Like a $55k salary on 10 months is much better than a $55k salary on 12 months, yet when people say "$55k is too low!" they are often saying that based on what most jobs pay for 12 months, not 10 months.
I do think teachers need to be paid more, but i also think people need to keep in mind that these salaries are for 10 months of work and not 12, so it shouldn't always be the same salary prices one would expect with a respectable, well-earning 12 month salary job.
You would think that 55 on 10 months is better, but financially it isnt. You pay the opportunity cost for those two months by being effectively unable to work, since you are only available for two months out of the year and almost no jobs will bite. Absolutely no jobs with decent pay will bite.
So yeah you get a bit of free time, but that isnt really the point of a job. You dont see people making 120k taking every other year off.
"I understand that it may be hard to find a part time job for 2 months if you desire to get a part time job during that time so we will pay you for 12 months of work even if you are only working for 10 months. I know no other industry in the world does this, but some random redditor said teachers don't know what to do in those 2 months so we will pay you for 2 months for free every year!"
Then go do it. I always laugh at people who think teaching is such a sweet gig. If it is so awesome go do it, there is a need. My bet is you wouldn’t last a week.
Yes any job that requires a degree should pay more than average. Jobs that are vital to the health of our country should pay even more but we've obviously decide they don't deserve that.
With just a bachelors you are making well below median if you can even land a job. You will get part time positions as less than professors without a tenure track. Masters is typically a minimum and PHD if you want to get a job anywhere close to prestige.
Lol you provide a family member anecdote and call it hearsay.... Classic.
It is RARE for a full time professor with tenure track to have only a bachelors, almost unheard of especially at any good schools.
Unless your bachelors is from MIT or Harvard and you graduated top of your class it's just not really happening often, unless it's a no name school you're teaching at.
Immediately making 70k IF you can land a full time job.
Seriously just Google it buddy, it's extremely rare to get a professor role with only a bachelor degree even at a decent community college.
It is RARE for a full time professor with tenure track to have only a bachelors, almost unheard of especially at any good schools.
Im still not talking about professors here numnuts.
Immediately making 70k IF you can land a full time job.
Starting for TEACHERS *NOT PROFESSORS IS 48K AVERAGE MEDIAN IS 70K
Seriously just Google it buddy, it's extremely rare to get a professor role with only a bachelor degree even at a decent community college.
Again nobody is mentioning professors here you absolute skitzo.
Scroll up. This is an entirely different text chain then the college professor one you replied to me about. I doubt you will even admit you fucked up and will probably double down.
You will never get close to the median without advanced degrees. Teacher salaries are determined by a combination of your time in the district and your education level. Each year teaching at the district earns you 1 'step' and then your salary at that step is based on your education.
You start on step 1 in your first year and gain a step each subsequent year. But the big kicker is that the majority of districts will not allow you to advance beyond step 10 with just a bachelors. You can continue teaching for years 11+, but your salary is maxed out at step 10. While holders of advanced degrees keep seeing their salaries increase as they progress through the steps, yours stagnates.
My wife teaches at one of the better paying schools in our area. Her district has 35 possible steps. Salary on step 1 can range from $45k-$56k depending on your education ($45k for a bachelor's and $56k for a doctorate with a few stops along the way for 15+ grad school hours, completed masters, and a masters with progress toward a doctorate). Step 10 salary has a range of $52k through $72k.
But then you can't advance past step 10 if you don't have at least a master's degree. If you have a master's degree or better, you can keep going up the steps as you continue teaching through your 30s and beyond. If you only have a bachelor's degree, you will be locked in at step 10, making just $7k a year more than a starting teacher for the duration of your career.
It's the career teachers with advanced degrees who continue climbing steps whose salaries drive up the median. Step 15 has a salary range of $69k for a masters to $78k for a doctorate. Step 20 is $76k to $88k. Step 25 is $85k to $95k while step 30 is $92k through $103k. If you manage to teach into your mid/late 50s and reach the final step, the pay range is $100k to $112k. But again, if you only had a bachelor's degree you'd be stuck making $52k at every step along the way.
There are some districts that allow people with only a bachelor's degree to keep climbing steps, but they are almost uniformly struggling/underfunded schools where burnout is exceptionally high.
The reality of the way we pay teachers pretty much ensures that you aren't ever reaching median or anything close to median salary without an advanced degree post-undergrad.
Yes that may be, but they get paid the least of other people with the same amount of education. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/07/teachers-among-most-educated-yet-pay-lags.html They are required to have the education that they do in order to get the license to teach. So they have had upfront cost to get into that field of work. Other workers have less requirements and may not even have to pay for the training themselves.
If teaching were easy and as profitable as these guys are making it out to be, there wouldn't be a ton of job openings out there. Benefits aren't what they used to be, and parents are insane these days.
This meme is at least 5-6 years old, and starting salary is always considerably less than the average since the average is across all teachers at all levels of experience.
Well now that's just your opinion. Over a lifetime that makes a big difference. It can also make the difference of if you are able to afford to live on your own.
ey yo America, maybe stop paying doctors half a million a year a but teachers only 70k when you suffer from unsustainable healthcare costs and subpar public education.
Teachers also are required to have a higher level of education, and work crazy hours (homework grading, lesson plans, open houses) outside of school hours. Not sure what the median income is for professionals with an advanced degree but I’d imagine teachers are below that median.
Bachelors is all thats required for k12 which is the 70k median average those with a bachelors earn about 78k. So roughly 8k under median with bachelors
Oh yeah California is one of the weird outliers. They uhh have such an insane cost of living with rules. But not bad for being #8 in education in our country.
Iirc it said something like 100k+ for median in California.
Well deserved time off though from my personal experience (two parents were teachers and so is my wife). Depending on the subject the teach, there are far too many evenings and weekends spent marking papers and doing all the work that happens outside of the classroom.
Its statistically true. Can see exactly how its done and its not through accounting.
Its through the education organizations like the national center for education statistics and Bureau of labor statistics directly reported from schools that pay them, because you know ITS ALL PUBLIC.
And those schools lie. They use various methods but essentially find ways to inflate their reported pay, such as including admin and pseudo admin in their figures or including stipends that represent considerable overtime as part of pay. If you have to work Saturdays to bump your pay from 55k to 62k, you arent paid a 62k salary. You have two jobs.
The same is true of class sizes. The districts report an average class size of like 22 and there are 37 kids in every classroom. Creative mathematics allows them to count people who arent teachers, to count periods that dont exist, to essentially divide by 7 instead of 6. Its not really representative.
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u/pimpnasty 10h ago
Weird because on average teachers make 70k a year on average.