My friend emailed me a job posting today, just for fun. There is an opening to be a secretary at the local naval shipyard. The pay scale for a secretary starts as an GS6, the salary range is $36,469 to $47,408. The salary of the secretary is higher than a teacher.
The secretary position is a government job, the salary comes out of the same budget as the education budget. Teachers are told on a daily basis that there is no money and this is why we are paid such a pittance, and yet, there is money to pay secretaries at the shipyard more than us.
While being a secretary at the shipyard would certainly have challenges, is it a job you can leave at the end of the day. You are responsible to your boss. You answer a phone, collate, transcribe and mange an office; I know this, I used to be an office manager. To be a secretary usually does not require a college education.
And so, after seeing how much a government secretary made, I decided to look into other positions in the state. What I found was shocking.
A clerk for the social security administration (working at the front window, taking checks) starts at an GS7 rating, which starts at $40,000 and goes to $52,000.
An air conditioning worker starts at 47,642.00 and can make up to 60,064.00.
Finally, civilian "painter/paint worker" working here on the local military base starts at 41,113.00 and can make up to 54,470.00.
The Job description for the "paint worker" is as follows:
"Work is performed outdoors, often under adverse weather conditions.
Work requires frequent bending, stooping, walking, standing, working in cramped positions, and climbing.
Work requires exposure to high noise levels.
Work requires lifting and moving heavy items."
The salary of a fifth-year teacher in the state of Washington ranges from $36,000-$48,791. In order to make $48,791, that fifth year teacher would have to hold a PhD.
A "paint worker" with no education of any kind can make more money than a teacher of five years who holds a PhD.
To be a teacher, you are entrusted with the lives of 25-30 children at any given moment. The abilities of these children range dramatically from the highly gifted to the traumatically deficient. Some are well-off, with parents who care and work with them at home. Many others come to school hungry, living in the worst imaginable situations with various forms of abuse and neglect. Our classrooms are as diverse as a US city and are expected to keep them engaged, entertained, fed, clothed, protected and well behaved. Most of us provide our own extra school supplies and food and clothing items for these children out of our own personal funds.
In the meantime we are also expected to continue our own education, on our own dime.
As teachers, not only do we hold bachelor's degrees, but teaching certificates and have completed or are pursuing Master's degrees as is the expectation by the time we have finished our fifth year. Doctors, lawyers and teachers, we are the only professionals who are required to complete the stringent educations programs completed by culminating exams which determine our qualification to work. When teachers have finished with the basic education required, we have gone to school for a minimum of six years, but usually closer to seven or eight, (the same as lawyers.) Most of us have six to eight years of student loans to pay off, however, unlike doctors and lawyers, we will not have a salary to help us compensate for the education we have obtained.
Teachers are not paid overtime.
Teachers do get the summers off, but our summers usually start the first week of July and end the first week of August. Many of us spend those four-six weeks taking classes to continue our own education, or, we teach summer school or work other part-time jobs to supplement our incomes--we don't get paid for that time off, remember.
We know all of this before we join the profession, we do it anyway because we love and care for our students, and want to see them grow up to become successful, contributing members of society.
What is insulting then, is when jobs such as the job of a secretary or a painter are posted by the government, and the pay scale is not only the same, it is higher than ours. The same government that pays our salary and sets our budget, sets the budget for that secretary and that painter, and has determined that the job of a secretary at a shipyard or the painter on a naval base is more important than the job of a school teacher; a teacher who is responsible for the emotional, physical and educational well-being of our children and future.
What is insulting, is when at times such as now, we are in a budget crisis and once again the first thing to be cut is education. Good teachers are fearing for their jobs, and enrichments programs are being slashed and burned.
At the same time, jobs are being posted for clerical and labor positions within the same government, and those jobs pay higher than those of teachers; teachers who are being told they not only can't be paid a reasonable wage, their own jobs are in jeopardy.
Is it any wonder we rank so low in comparison to our global neighbors?
What will it take for teachers to be valued?
