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posted by martyb on Monday April 16 2018, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the going-nationwide dept.

Common Dreams reports

Colorado's teachers' union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that's planned for Monday at the state's Capitol in Denver.

[...] Englewood School District, outside the capital city, announced on Sunday that schools would be closed the following day as 70 percent of its teachers had indicated they wouldn't be working Monday. It was unclear on Sunday whether more school districts would be closing.

"We are calling Monday, April 16th a day of action", Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association (CEA), told KDVR in Denver.

[...] According to[1] KMGH in Denver, "The CEA estimates that teachers spend on average $656 of their own money for school supplies for students." The state's teacher salaries rank 46th out of 50, with educators making an average of $46,000 per year.

Public schools are underfunded by $828 million this year, Dallman told the Post, and lawmakers have said they could inject at least $100 million more into schools--but they have yet to do so.

[...] The planned protest follows a trend that was seen in West Virginia and Kentucky before moving west this month to Oklahoma and Arizona as well as Colorado. In all the states where teachers have walked out and rallied at their Capitols, teachers have reported paying for school supplies out of pocket, working second and third jobs to make ends meet, and coping with funding shortages while their legislators hand out tax cuts to corporations.

[1] For a laugh (or perhaps a deep sigh), check out all the whitespace in the source code of the page.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Monday April 16 2018, @03:35PM (12 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Monday April 16 2018, @03:35PM (#667662) Journal

    What kind of professional job is available for 6 weeks over the summer and in 1 and 2 week blocks at other times of the the year?

    Teachers are typically highly trained, would you expect them to take a job flipping burgers during their vacations?

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:50PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:50PM (#667668)

    "Teachers are typically highly trained"

    lmfao! if you mean they paid an absurd amount of money to jump through asinine hoops for 4 years while being taught/indoctrinated with bullshit, then sure.

    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:32PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:32PM (#667717)

      Hmm, while the above is worthy of flamebait I can attest there is some amount of truth in it. Getting a teaching credential requires a looot of bullshit classes with very little value to actual teaching.

      The entire school system and the teacher credentialing system need a compete overhaul.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @06:09PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @06:09PM (#667736)

        Hmm, while the above is worthy of flamebait I can attest there is some amount of truth in it.

        When I was an undergrad, I took a particular geology class just for fun. We visited spots all over the state all day every Saturday looking at rock formations and collecting fossils. It was a blast and we saw lots of interesting things. I had NO pre-requisites since I was not a geology major. Each week, we had to turn in basically a show-and-tell paper describing what we saw the prior week. I finished the class (that I had no preparation for) with a 103% since I got some extra credit.

        There a few people struggling. One young lady, struggling poorly, complained about how hard it was. She took the class because it was the "easiest class" that satisfied her laboratory sciences requirements. She was an education major in her final year. I don't think she would have fared well in my electromagnetics or thermodynamics classes.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:27PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:27PM (#667763)

          Anecdotal evidence of "teachers can't do"?

          What was the point again?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:41PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:41PM (#667768)

            The point is that education majors curricula of the time was (and may still be) ridiculously free of any core skills classwork. The geology class was hardly college level work and yet sufficed for a sciences credit for education majors. I also thought about it while I was required to take four quarters of calculus and differential equations when they took none.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @11:22PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @11:22PM (#667845)

              Ah, well like I said comparing science/math classes to liberal arts is apples to oranges and doesn't really add much here. Most teachers get their bachelor's in something other than education though, an education major is probably going to end up in administrative / academic roles and not actually teaching children.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @12:54PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @12:54PM (#668024)

                ...an education major is probably going to end up in administrative / academic roles and not actually teaching children.

                You're crazy if you think a freshly graduated education major is going to waltz into a nice administrative position. They are going to substitute for a year or so and end up teaching first graders. You are going to need a master's degree in applied bullshit to get into administrative.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Monday April 16 2018, @03:52PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday April 16 2018, @03:52PM (#667669)

    I will say that back when I was a counselor at overnight summer camps, our most experienced staff tended to be teachers during the rest of the year. But it's not great pay: You're talking something like $2-3K for the summer + room and board. But of course if you're not a college kid or something, you have to maintain your home elsewhere while you're working at the camp.

    And yes, you could work retail or fast food or something as well, which would net you something similar. So revise the $46K up to $49K. Wow, huge improvement.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @04:33PM (#667689)

    Education has the highest rate of grade inflation of any college major. "Highly trained" is dubious.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 16 2018, @05:30PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 16 2018, @05:30PM (#667716) Journal

      It's my impression that teachers *are* highly trained, but that the people who are training them in teaching don't know how to teach. It generally takes them a few years to unlearn their training...but the training is a requirement for being hired for the job.

      You can call it silly, perverse, absurd, etc. and I'll agree with you. But it also seems to be true. And the horrible thing is, the idiots who teach teachers how to teach are still better informed than the greater idiots who design the curriculum.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by slinches on Monday April 16 2018, @04:52PM

    by slinches (5049) on Monday April 16 2018, @04:52PM (#667698)

    What kind of professional job is available for 6 weeks over the summer and in 1 and 2 week blocks at other times of the the year?

    That's a tough one. If only there was some sort of school that was open during the summer ...

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:18PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:18PM (#668031)

    Consultant / contractor

    As a young recent grad, two times at one small employer I ran into a former instructor helping out with some short to medium term project over the summer. Kinda weird. When instructors are out of "instructor mode" they seem more chill at the workplace. I vaguely remember going out drinking with my coworkers with the guy who taught me 68hc11 assembly language as an elective class a couple years previous; kinda weird.

    That of course is assuming EE code monkey stuff, teaching future EE code monkeys, teaching kindergarten and teaching high school gym class are all at the same identical level of professionalism.

    My SiL is a kindergarten teacher, a long tail survivor near the end of her career, and she did sub work for day cares when she needed cash. Note that some employees "careers" at day care are only a couple weeks, so her working there for two months makes her a lifer. Although again, hard to say if elementary school teacher OR day care worker is a professional job. I'd say "no" to both.

    All the tech ed / shop teachers had summer jobs in their fields and saw it as a valuable way to make contacts for their students; I had a CAD teacher in high school trying pretty hard to recruit me into a couple of his favorite employers. Is CAD draftsman a professional job? I donno.