Hey, it’s good …

… to be back home, again! Or, so goes the line from an old John Denver song.

I’ve been back about three weeks, now, and I have to say it really doesn’t quite feel like I am “back home.” As I drive around the city (Yes, drive! I bought a vehicle, after seven years of self-imposed pedestrianism.) I see some familiar sites, but I also see some new development, especially along Great Northern Road.

But the house that I had called “home” for almost thirty years belongs to someone else, now, and most of my possessions are in storage. I spend my days in an unfamiliar workplace – a west-end school - and my evenings and weekends in a motel room, which will be “home” for the two months that I will be in the Sault.

There are still some familiar places that I go, like my church, and various shopping centres, but the fact that I am driving to them, rather than taking the bus or getting a ride, only contributes to the unfamiliar feeling I am experiencing.

Despite this odd feeling, I am enjoying my time “back home.”

I am also enjoying teaching! It just feels right, and I am convinced that this is what I should be doing. It’s just too bad it’s taken me over twenty years to figure it out.

I have known many teachers over the years, many of them family and friends, so I have had a good idea what the profession involves.

Some would have us believe that teachers are “scum sucking pigs” who get paid far more than they deserve for working far few hours than anyone else, not to mention all that time off for PD Days, Holidays, and, of course, summers off. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For the past three weeks I have been teaching at a west-end school. When I arrive there are teachers who have already been in the school for a half-hour or more. During the first two weeks I stayed to assist with an extra-curricular activity, and even when I left at 5:30pm there were still teachers in the building.

I can attest to the marking and planning that teachers are required to do, and that one often has to take work home to ensure that it gets done. In fact, I have planning and marking to do myself this weekend.

Those who find ways to berate teachers may have some long-held argument with them, but their objections about teachers not earning their pay is patently absurd.

On that note…

… this is an e-mail that is currently circulating, especially amongst teachers and their friends.

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Sick Of Those High Paid Teachers?

Their hefty salaries are driving taxes up, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they really do: babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That’s right! I would give them $5.00 an hour, and only for the hours they worked, not any of that silly “planning time.”

That would be $32.50 a day (8:45 to 3:15 = 6.5 hours), so each parent should pay $32.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their kids.

Now, how many children do they teach in a day… 25, maybe 30 at most?

So that’s $32.50 x 30 = $975 a day. But remember, they only work 180 days a year! I’m not going to pay them for vacations. Let’s see … that’s $975 x 180 = $175,500 per year. (Hold on! My calculator must need batteries!)

What about those special teachers, or the ones with Master’s degrees?

Well, to be fair, we could pay them minimum wage. So that’d be $8.00 an hour, times 6-1/2 hours, times 30 children, times 180 days … that works out to $280,800 a year.

Wait a minute! There must be something wrong here!

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Maybe that helps put things in perspective. When you calculate what a teacher makes on a per-student, per-day basis, it really isn’t all that much. Certainly not enough to complain about.

But… that’s just my opinion.