Dear Mr. Landshark, I really don’t care what you think about my career choice…
Lot’s of talk is going around the blogosphere about Sarah Fine’s piece Why I Left Teaching Behind at WaPo. Overall, it’s a nice piece. I liked the first page where she outlined some really good specifics about why she was leaving that are widespread problems. I also loved the ending where she squarely faces the problem when schools are largely staffed by teachers who do not have a lot of experience.
It’s the part starting on page two, where she discusses the “lack” of respect for the profession that left me scratching my head. She felt she had to justify her choice, “Do my lawyer and consultant friends find themselves having to explain why they chose their professions? I doubt it. Everyone seems to know why they do what they do.”
Now you will notice she says everyone knows “why” they do what they do, not everyone knows what they do, or likes what they do. I would submit that most folks don’t respect Ms. Fine’s peers for choosing lawyering and consulting, in fact, they probably loathe them. They just respect that they make a lot of money, not what they are doing to make it. In fact, I would argue that this is WHY they make a lot of money, folks don’t know exactly what it is they do. You hire a lawyer, cause you don’t know how to file a court petition, etc. Most of Ms. Fine’s better remunerated peers would be hard pressed to explain what they do to make all that money to their Aunt Marge in Omaha. Ms. Fine clearly paints a picture of her work, that is at once accessible and admirable to Aunt Marge. Can a K Street type make that same claim? I think not. The Edurati Review: A teacher explains why she is leaving furthers this thread in their review which focuses in on how the teaching profession lacks respect.
I used to be a banker. I have ALWAYS gotten more respect for being a teacher. Phil Gramm and Milton Friedmann are about the only folks I’ve heard of gushing about bankers and their role in the economy (which for those guys meant the world that truly mattered). I cannot even guess how low my work creating incentive compensation for bankers who sold loans would be looked at by the lay public in this day and age, but if I had stuck with that job, I would probably be making a lot more money. Instead, I have kids rush me like I’m a rock-star when I return to campus in Fall. While not all parents are adorning, many are. I impress friends and strangers who assure me they could NEVER do my job (although I see some who probably could).
But, pay is an issue. Look at poor Bill Ferriter, a teacher who represents the best in our profession, worrying about paying his bills now that he has a new baby on the way. He is respected, but that won’t pay the bills. Pay can be a sign of respect, but there are many professions out there with little in the way of respect that pay pretty good. I think we need to focus on the cold hard cash, and quit looking for approval from a few folks who have mistaken the paycheck they earn, for respect. I leave you with these thoughts on what a teacher makes from Taylor Mali:
By Sarah Fine — Why I Left Teaching Behind – washingtonpost.com
The Edurati Review: A teacher explains why she is leaving
Go on over and congratulate Bill Ferriter on his new addition
I read Sarah Fine’s article as well. I am dismayed at the number of bright, young teachers who are leaving the profession. I agree with you that in the US, compensation in a profession is tied to the degree of respect. Or, rather, the perceived measure of respect by society is the fullness of one’s purse.
Truthfully, I have always been bothered by this. Years ago, right out of college, I spoke with a friend who had just landed his first corporate job. His base salary was twice what mine was (and he was eligible for performance bonuses). He built bombs for a living. I teach children. We’re both funded by the government. Go figure.
Yeah, but what form did that performance take? What form would you want to be judged by? Those are the really hard questions.
Thanks for your comment Natalie.
We need long-term answers and not interim solutions or band-aids. Teaching is an occupation that demands dedication, commitment, and constancy.
Whether through attrition or through layoffs, repeated turnover disrupts the stability, continuity, and cohesiveness of a school and negatively impacts student achievement. Institutional memory for the content pedagogy, testing programs, and extracurricular activities is an illusion when schools and classrooms become a revolving door.
We must build teaching into a profession, like law and medicine, that allows our brightest and our best to do good and to do well, to meld idealism and self-interest encouraging our best and our brightest to want to stay. A paid mentoring opportunity teaching is NOT.
With due respect, each of the professions you suggest emulating have an attrition problem.
Lawyers:
Before the recession, this cost money
It still causes problems with the economy of law firms
and, there is a growing shortage of general practitioners in medicine.
I don’t think those are good models to go with. I do think there is a problem of respect within the profession that was Ms. Fine’s strongest point. Don’t ask for input from teachers on their own time, then toss it in the garbage can. That’s Dilbert-esque management wherever it happens. As for recognizing teachers for superior work, there can be a problem with that…we ALL think we are above average. I’m VERY skeptical of reward pay for the “best” because I think that’s been shown to have led to a lot of very undesirable behavior where it’s been used most recently, in finance. I do think that the base pay needs to come up for all of us
Thanks for your heartfelt comment.
And as I left off my comment, what should pop into my reader but this gem on Race to the Top from Edurati Review.
Attrition in At-Risk Schools
It is common knowledge that most urban schools have difficulty attracting and retaining capable and experienced educators. Rates of attrition in at-risk schools are higher than attrition levels at more affluent schools. Nearly 50 percent of new teachers in America leave the profession during the first five years (Michigan Education Association).)
I don’t think law or medicine has the same attrition rates. Because of the economy, law is experiencing a fall out.
Too many seem to think because they were once students, that qualifies them to teach.
Even if law doesn’t have as bad an attrition problem as urban teaching, it still has an attrition problem. Look at the problems listed with law practice in large firms listed in those pieces. Basically, they are really well compensated, but are given little feedback (and none that is positive) in the hopes they will make partner one day (and not all of them will). Is that REALLY the career model that you had in mind? There is little respect within the legal profession, which was a large part of Ms. Fine’s complaint about teaching in D.C. The only change would be better compensation. Obviously that hasn’t been enough to compensate for the hassles to many lawyers in that profession. I think she’ll find a lot of her friends who took the law school option are in different careers in a few years too.
Hmm look back at that article on lawyers:
Now those are TFA level attrition rates! My point, pay alone won’t fix this, but good pay will be a pre-requisite.
Ms. Fine’s story is interesting. And, the subsequent comments here are intriguing.
However, I do have one problem with Ms. Fine’s article: her use of the word “burnout.” It is a word I hear frequently in education circles. And, my feeling is that by using this word, there is an assumption that one was previously on fire.
Ms. Fine may have been “on fire” at one point in her teaching career. Sadly, it appears to me that she became more absorbed with respect (or her perceived lack of respect) and the size of her paycheck.
Yeah, but I think some of her points do resonate. I think there were two parts to her respect argument, the lack of respect within the profession, and respect from outsiders. That stuff about having work dismissed by admins will eat away at morale. I don’t think we can underestimate that. This is something I’ve experienced, and I think it is a real problem in a lot of professions, but contributes to high rates of teacher attrition especially in urban schools.
Strangely, it seems to be part of the same problem for attrition in the legal profession:
So I think we need connections, which involves respect. I’m not as worried about respect from outsiders, but more from within schools and districts.
If teaching has a high attrition rate, what about administrators? I went thorough 4 in my first year teaching in Oakland (I AM NOT KIDDING). How can we build the type of camaraderie that Fine cites as necessary to run an urban school well with that going on?
Better pay cannot be ignored, but neither can working conditions, otherwise we’ll just end up like associates at top law firms, pimping our souls for a paycheck.
Hey Alice,
I’m really enjoying this strand of conversation and your comparisons to attrition and respect in the legal profession—one that we often throw about when debating whether or not teaching qualifies as a profession.
For me, I think the key to compensation is creating a range of additional roles that teachers can fill to be full-time employees if they need/want additional compensation. Overall, I’m satisfied with my monthly paycheck. The hitch is that I only get 10 of them!
I’d jump at the chance to work as a professional development provider for two additional months a year. Or to be paid to study my practice for two additional months a year. Or to be paid a competitive salary to tutor struggling students for two additional months each year. Or to fill an internship at a local business that does work in the field that I teach for two months each year.
The problem is that none of those opportunities are available to me.
An easy first step towards redesigning compensation would be to develop a few hybrid roles for the teachers who want to stay in the classroom but need to increase their salaries. Let’s ditch the thousands that our districts invest in external consultants and full time professional developers and turn that money over to teachers who are looking for ways to make more.
Not every teacher will bite. Some like sitting around the pool during the summer with their children or traveling with their spouses.
But for some of us, hybrid roles can extend our life as practitioners.
Any of this make sense?
Bill
Stipended pay is the “safest” route to take on incentive pay. I did some grant writing this summer, that should have been compensated (some of this is my own stupidity). I do that training things myself, but not on a full time basis. Lots of training is up in the air for next year. Honestly, I’m having to hold off, and “ration” how much time I devote to training. I worked almost two jobs last year between teaching, helping run an after-school program, doing trainings, and doing some work for my husband. Take a look at what you are doing for “free” and figure out how to get paid would be my advice. You should still do some free if it will improve you, but try not over do that?
I think there are not a lot of easy answers out there. I think base pay needs another pick me up, but that will be hard in these times.
I really liked that Edurati piece on Race to the Top article, and I’m pretty fussy about what I like to read on that topic.
Good luck to you Bill! We’re all watching to see how things turn out.
Thanks for pointing to the discussion, Bill! Fascinating.
Alice, I think I know more former law-firm associates than I do former teachers ;-). Many of them are young women who became dissatisfied with being pushed, pushed, pushed for billable hours with little feedback or support. Sound familiar? However, their leaving the law firm did not necessarily mean they stopped working as lawyers.
One thing that some of my friends have been able to do is practise law from their own homes or for government (or semi-government) agencies, thereby making less money but also majorly decreasing their stress.
I’m wondering how far we can push this analogy. Are we looking at charter schools or homeschooling groups as an alternative to teaching in urban schools?
Just rambling, Hadass.
Well, it sounds like Ms. Fine was teaching at a charter. I don’t know if it was unionized (the Edurati piece seemed to assume not). What strikes me with charters is that they seem to not use the flexibility to pay less for few hours from teachers (which in elementary could be made up with having more prep/specialty classes), but instead have teachers work longer, sometimes for more money, sometimes for less. My son is in a charter than has higher pay, but lower class size (they have few custodial services, etc. to safe money) with 25-to-1 in middle (grade 6-8).
I’m building in some flex into my schedule (easier with a prep job). Rather than scheduling all the PD after school in a grant proposal I wrote, I asked for other trainers to do some of that, and set up school day trainings, and my going into classrooms, and having them pay for a sub for me. I’d make more money (what Bill wants to do) if I did after school trainings, but I don’t want to be “burnt out” (sorry Shea, lol), so I’d rather skip the money, get a sub and do it during the school day.
Great conversation. Thanks for getting it going.
Teaching is a very difficult, challenging, and somewhat solitary profession where the outcomes and results aren’t always readily or immediately apparent. At the same time you are dealing with upwards of 30 different personalities and moving all of them toward one agenda. Not everybody can work under those conditions every day for an entire school year. But those of us who have been teaching for a while know that there are MANY rewards along the way, each and every one of those days.
I am not sure that paying new teachers a boatload of money will keep them in the profession or attract the best and brightest. If you are working just for the paycheck, don’t you think those 30 kids will pick up on that immediately? I just can’t see how that could possibly lead to success in the classroom. The best teachers I had, bar none, cared about me and my success. I knew it and performed accordingly.
I think the respect and support must be there from the administration for these young teachers. Our society has convinced many of our best and brightest that money earns respect. A young teacher with that impression probably needs to find support that what he or she is doing is worthy of respect. I find it interesting that this discussion has made several mentions of the respect afforded lawyers as opposed to teachers. But when it comes right down to it, I can not think of one “teacher” joke but have heard many, many lawyer jokes.
I imagine paying “beaucoup” bucks would not help, because we see a high attrition rate in the top end of the legal profession in spite of over-sized compensation, but better pay would surely be in order?
I like your last paragraph, frankly, I think educators get a lot more respect than lawyers from the general public. I thin the respect within a site or a district is really what can be critical for retention. If I had any advice I would have given Ms. Fine it would have been to look for a new job. I’ve done that myself when I had incipient burnout, and it worked a charm. These are very difficult times to employ that option though.
One thing I like is that doctors and lawyers do is that their interns are paid, whereas you and I pay for the privilege of providing free labor to another teacher with no guarantee we’ll get anything out of the deal when we “student teach”.
I’m not sure if this would be a good or bad idea, but the professional organizations governing the legal profession are quasi-independent of the state, and their members are all in the profession. As you can see from the Commission on Teacher credentialing in my state, there are “teacher” and public representatives, and some elected representatives who are “ex officio” members. (http://www.ctc.ca.gov/commission/commissioners.html vs. http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_generic.jsp?cid=10103&id=1421) almost like we can’t be trusted to police ourselves. I note that the state medical board has member appointed by politicians, but almost everyone is a doctor, the exception currently being two JDs (lawyers). Let’s see how that stirs the pot, lol.
I think your last point is the most interesting one – there is a difference between respect from the lay public (which, to some extent, I agree teachers have), and respect from policy makers.
Things like NCLB and zero-tolerance policies make it obvious to me that those creating the policies do not respect teachers’ professionalism, and the appointment of non-teachers to the highest positions in education reinforces the lack of respect for our ideas.
When comparing the teaching profession to the legal profession in terms of respect, it might be interesting to look at the reforms handed down by national and state authorities to each group. For years, there has been talk of reforming tort law, in particular, but nothing has ever come of it. By contrast, NLCB and tying teacher pay to student performance on standardized exams was implemented without consultation with, and despite the wishes of teachers.
Is it more important that we are respected by our neighbours, or by our bosses?
So here is my follow-up…is that respect for lawyers, or fear? Is it lack of respect for teachers, or a need to keep us in our “place”? How much of this is due to the perceived gender identity (female) of teachers?
Alice – bingo. Bunch of uppity women, we teachers. Like nurses. Get paid way less than doctors.
I think I can only talk in 140 chars or less right now ;-).
Hey! I resent that – I’m an uppity man!
Hey, there’s the fight I was looking for!
Me fight with Ian? Dream on, Alice ;-).
LOL, Ian. That’s the point, I think. Most teachers are still women, especially in elementary. I think you’ll find more people respect you than your local kindergarten teacher 8-(.