“Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce; they should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to it citizens, just like national defense.”
I hate how a 23 year old quote from the West Wing is still so relevant…
Next line that you left off speaks to that…still.
“That’s my position. We just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
That hits hard. Will we ever figure out how to do it here?
This might be the most memorable quote from the entire run of the West Wing for me. Our teachers are doing their job out of good will and our society is taking advantage of them because their value far outstrips what they are paid.
We’re several generations deep into a manufactured apathy meant to fragment and dilute any workers rights reforms
We stumbled into work from home due to the pandemic, but that genie will be put back in the bottle within 2 generations.
Robber barons never left, they just got smarter.
All of this is true,
instead of happening in schools for the advancement of knowledge,
it is happening in corporations for profits and egotistical power trips.
When I got sick Costco graciously moved me to a food prep and service position!
<_< That’s so great…
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I was so annoyed in high school though, because I actually did have a biology teacher who was the opposite. That boogeyman anti-faith “evolutionist” strawman.
He openly polled the class and asked each student, row by row, if they were religious, and that they had to choose between “make believe” and science.
It pissed me off not so much because of what he did, but that he proved that there really were science teachers like that, and all the anti-science conservative families whose children took his class would be using that story as an example of the “evil anti-God agenda” of science educators.
in my opinion, every science teacher should be exactly like that
Child students are a captive audience. The classroom should be a safe place for them regardless of the beliefs they’re taught at home. No teacher should be mocking or bullying students. Let the science and truth speak for itself.
I’m my state, substitutes don’t need to have their credential. You get some rough candidates as a result.
That’s usually why they’re substitutes, they have a degree, but no credentials.
In my state, teachers don’t have to have their credential.
This is becoming more and more common overall.
An acquaintance of mine I met while working a help desk job: He was in process of getting his degrees to become a teacher, did so and taught high school math for 5 years. As much as he loved, and took pride in, the work he did with teens and making a difference, the continued stress of a bullshit administration (at 2 different schools and districts) took its toll. He left, becoming a corporate training (see, still teaching) and I’ve seen a marked difference in his attitude and life. He has less stress and a fatter paycheck.
Teachers shouldn’t be put though the wringer and not be expected to react. “There’s no workers shortage, just a shortage of slave labor” is more evident in their profession than any other (outside possibly food service).
You’re 100% right. My wife has a masters degree in education and spent 7 years as an English teacher with 3 very different types of schools in different districts. She left to be an instructional designer (with zero experience in that field) and nearly doubled her salary overnight.
If America wants to take education seriously they need to stop screwing over teachers.
America* does not take education seriously. This is evident from 50 years of Republican policy.
*legislators
No, America doesn’t take it seriously, not just legislators. There’s a significant chunk of the population that thinks public schools are evil and liberal factories to send kids to hell because they teach sex education and science.
If you don’t mind telling, how did she find an instructional design job? My wife is looking to make a similar transition. Any tips for trying to make the switch?
Honestly, it was a bit of luck.
We live in a larger city in the the Midwest. Looked on indeed frequently and applied for a position at a privately owned - medium/large sized company that is headquartered in our city.
In terms of experience they were looking for 3 years of design and course curriculum. My wife had more of that, just in a different industry. Also required a bachelor’s degree and she had a masters in education. A lot of overlap skills but different titles.
It also helped that her hiring manager and two peers on the team were former teachers as well. Luck was definitely involved.
They did request sample work before one of her interviews. She YouTubed a walkthrough on how to use a free instructional design platform and threw something together. A lot of the skills and platform knowledge she has now was self taught through Google and YouTube.
Good luck to you and your wife. Teaching is a challenging career.
I’ve asked local Costco workers what it’s like working for Costco. They say the company treats them very well.
I work in a Costco. They treat me very well. Far better than the Walmart I worked at prior. Pay is far better too. As an example, I helped run the night shift as an Overnight Support Manager at Walmart. My topped out pay in that role was 50 cents an hour more than my starting pay at Costco. Now, 18 months later, I make more as a frontline grunt at Costco than I did in that management role.
3 years from now, as a frontline grunt, I’ll be making more than the Assistant Manager I worked under at Walmart.
I found your comments weird but the Wal-Marts in the US appear to be garbage.
Just read that average ASM makes $40k a year. The Wal-Mart Canada average salary is $60k. All of the ASMs that I kneel about at the store I worked at made over $100k.
The amount of other shit that you have to do and the long hours makes the US ASM position very unappealing.
The Wal-Marts in Canada also do not have a top threshold for wage. You continue you get you little wage increase each year.
Costco Canada does have a wage cap based on role in Canada. It’s only 3 dollars above min wage here. But you reach that 3 dollars much faster than you would at Walmart
My ASM showed me his contract. It was for 55k/year. He expected to see a 6k bonus as well. That’s it, and yeah, his hours were and are shitty. He works 10-11hrs per day on average, 6 days a week. One stretch he worked 23 days straight.
At Costco Canada, and I’m reading this straight out of the Employee Handbook right now, my wage will top out at $28.45/hr, as a front-line employee. Every 1,040 worked (26 weeks @ 40/hrs per week) I am getting a 1$/hr raise. Those amounts are set and not discretionary. There are 8 steps from starting wage to topped out and I’m at step 3 atm. This means that in roughly 30 months I will be making $28.45/hr.
When I reach 12,000 total hours worked I also start getting a payout of 3k every 6 months. I keep trying to convince my ASM to quit Walmart and sign on with Costco…
Everyone who can should shop there, max markup is 14%, they stand by their products, generous warrantees AND they treat their people very well
Any work reform, pro Union, ethical consumers out there should actively shun Walmart, shove a finger into Amazon’s ass, and shop Costco when possible, support an ethical supply chain
I feel this story buries this: Costco above other stores is a step up from most careers
I bought a router from Costco once and a week later they mailed me a check for $20, explaining that they lowered the price on the item after I bought it. Like, who does that? They have an amazing return policy too. Costco is awesome. If you drive a lot, then just the gas savings alone will cover the cost of membership. If you do most of your shopping there then the executive membership rebate at the end of the year will cover the entire cost of membership plus some extra money.
Edit: oh, and they sell hearing aids and hearing aid batteries at cost, which can save people who are hard of hearing thousands of dollars. Literally thousands of dollars on a one time purchase. For example, they have the top of the line Rexton hearing aids for $1499. Those cost $6,500 at any normal audiologist office.
If you drive a lot, then just the gas savings alone will cover the cost of membership.
Their membership fee is $60 which I cover in a few cases of beer. I pay what I paid for a case of beer ten years ago at Costco. They don’t have everything, but what they do have is often a much, much better value than any other store I’ve shopped at.
They also only carry good brands, unlike the shit you’ll find at Target and Walmart. If Costco carries it, it’s almost certainly high quality.
I have a close friend from high school who has worked there for 15 years now, she said she never thought Costco would be more than a summer job between college searching but she’s happy there and they treat her well. Nothing wrong with that
Well it’s nothing wrong with working at a company who treats their employees well, it’s sad that there are so few companies that we can name off the top of our heads like Costco in the US. What’s sadder is how poorly the teachers in this country are treated.
Far-right media and muslim extremist are going hand in hand, blaming school of turning kids transgender. I cant believe I just wrote that sentence. Here in Canada and Québec, no one wants to work in school anymore because of those brainwashed idiots, and I dont blame them. You think school teachers have a agenda because they try to teach kids about having basic human decency? Then fucking school your kids at home and let’s see how that goes. I am fed up will all those idiots who chose to boycott their brain.
“Then fucking school your kids at home and let’s see how that goes.”
They are, and not well.
Not sure why you made a distinction between far-right and musilm (or any religion really) extremists. Those venn diagrams are practically circles.
Gotta shut them down.
This is less of a news report and more of an ad for Costco.
Bullshit jobs are paying better than shit jobs. Might be a sign corporations are sitting on most of the money.
Teacher in school makes half of what teacher in Costco makes sounds like endgame for scociety.
Actually, 2/3rds. If she’s earning 50% more, that means the previous wage was 100 and now is 150. 100 / 150 is 0.6666… or 66.66%, 2/3rds.
Sorry for the pedantism, but it’s the kind of math that needs to be correct to avoid misunderstandings.
Still an awfully sad thing, tho. Teachers should be paid the same as doctors, IMHO.
Aaaand the fact that a correction on this was even relevant… Oof
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Not sure this comment deserves downvoting. As a teacher (UK) I get 13 weeks off a year, which is pretty much all time off (no expectation to prep/mark). Private sector friends tend to get around 4-5 weeks max. Similarly, the pension is far better than private sector pensions.
Whilst I might be able to change career for more money, I’m not sure it would be a net benefit, even for 50% more.
That said, the “work time” as a teacher is fairly full on, at around 55-60 hours a week for me, so that’s some form of trade-off. You do have to like doing it!
Though the trade off with all that holiday is that… Going on holiday during that time is like 4x more expensive! 😭
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You are not paid for summers. This is a very common misconception. You essentially agree to give them an interest free loan every paycheck and they give you that money back during the summer as a “service” to you. And usually you are spending that time doing professional development or a second job.
If anyone here lives in California, please express your support for AB-938. It increases teacher pay and attempts to maintain it at an inflation adjusted level.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB938
Let you assembly person know we need this now.
c/aboringdystopia
welcome to costco, i love you
An inspiration, all teachers should do this!
A Costco recruiter wrote this article (and probably made this post)
Clearly there would be a bias there, but are they wrong?
While I’m one that normally would suspect such a thing myself, honestly, they wouldn’t need to, they already have such a great rep in the states where they’re located.
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I’m not shilling, I’m not paid by them at all, but honestly, I’m a lifetime customer of theirs. I wish all companies were like them.
If you had actually gone back and read any of my posting history here and/or on YouTube comments, you wouldn’t say what you’re saying.
I am no fan of most corporations.
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Depends on the party. >;-)
lemmy should ban corporate lobbyists
The beauty of lemmy is that if you can come up with a way to do that effectively, you can just host your own instance that does that.
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This reads like a bad ad.
Because it’s basically right wing propaganda very subtly pushing the message that we should privatize education and that corporations are good
Then it failed, because it made me want to nationalise education completely and make it free of charge, and to give teachers immense salaries
Well thats depressing
Not only that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more job satisfaction in retail than teaching. Teaching in the US is a dog, and I’m frankly amazed they haven’t already run out of teachers.
You also didn’t read the article, at all - clearly
Yeah, you got me
Not just the US.
If enough teacher leave, maybe we’ll start to pay them more
Florida’s approach was just to give anyone with a police or military background a teaching license.
They won’t up teacher pay. They’ll just hire shittier teachers because the primary highlight of public education is that it is free daycare for their exhausted, working parents.
“primary highlight of public education is that it is free daycare for their exhausted, working parents.”
In their eyes. That doesn’t make it true. Education is, and should be treated as, the backbone of society.
Oh, I’m a teacher by trade. You needn’t convince me of the merits of my job.
That point was meant to underline that the most bankable benefit of public education in the eyes of the American public is having the security of knowing their kids will be cared for free somewhere during (most) of their working hours. People are fucking exhausted from work, stress, and fear, robbing them of the potential of seeing it as much else.
Oklahoma is doing the same. My first year I was teaching the other “teachers” the material they were expected to teach students.
Some states? Maybe. Georgia (as mentioned in the article), likely not. There has been a continual war on education in the US and we see it on display every election cycle.
Despite their best efforts (including paying teachers in red states poverty wages), those who would keep us dumb and scared are frustrated to find a new generation that doesn’t give a fuck about division along arbitrary demographic lines and is increasingly aware of class warfare.
This drives further education cuts and cries from extremist/hate motivated groups to further crack down on our schools because these parents are so weak willed as to be offended by diversity and critical thinking.
I hope these are the last dying wails of this kind of hatred and ignorance, but I’m not taking that for granted. Vote, educate, and promote solidarity and unity at every opportunity because the shitheels who are on the other side will fight tooth and nail to destroy education funding and cut down our teaching corps.
Edit: How a teacher of eight years experience is making $47k a year is a travesty.
Nah, the only people that will still be teaching will be ideological extremists and people that want to hang out with children for other reasons.
Oof…you’re probably right to a degree. And that will make culture war polarization even worse when it comes to what is taught in public schools. It will be a sad state of things, when the majority of teachers are mere activists.
As I understand it, the problem with teacher pay is with corruption in the school system, not the schools themselves not getting enough money. They have plenty of money, but they’re still not paying their teachers well.
They’ll just shut down the schools
