Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for April 24, 2011

It’s a daycare center in disguise.

I salute all teachers all over the world! For the most part they are unsung heroes.

Good teachers abound! Happy Easter to all.

^ I totally agree, Darkeforce.

as a 4th grade teacher, I appreciate the sentiments. :-) Happy Easter, all.

Sounds alot like being a nurse which I am. And, there’s so many people unemployed-we certainly could use more of both!

Darkeforce & Musmo - Would you allow your kid to be in the classroom with one of them?

If all of today’s parents had to meet parenting standards like those standards that they expect of teachers, etc., our schools would actually be institutions of learning and the home would be a place of love and security and responsibilities for the children. Any fool can make a child, it takes wise and commited people to raise a child.

I used to teach Jr Hi. I also experienced the crying girls and the boys who needed tourniquets… Thanks for the trip down memory lane! LOL

Great idea, Darkeforce! Kudos to all dedicated teachers!

Great gravy, Darkeforce, give it a rest! Money doesn’t make education. Good, qualified teaches do. I was a teacher for many years and I know the best education is when there are no obstacles between teacher and student. “Funding” creates bureaucracy and more paperwork, more duties, and more distractions. And speaking of needless, mindless distractions and obstacles, then there are teachers’ unions. They’re ONLY concerned with politics and power - NOT with education or students. You’ve been gulping the kool-aid too much, you don’t understand the truth.

Poor thing all of the wonderful teachers at the K-12 schools for their patiences!

Wishing all a great Easter. Huray for teachers. I work at a place where trouble kids attend. There are adults who report what a teen does when leaving a class or if a teacher needs help with a teen calls for that help. I do agree politicians and voters who do not want school to have the money to run need to see what the average teacher goes through in a day. With 40 to 50 kids in a regular class wonder who for a child doesn’t keep up.

Oh, the joys of teaching!

Hey fbjsr, where did your mom teach? 87K? I’d like to move to that school district! Here’s a link to Payscale, which tracks, as you might expect, the average pay for different jobs. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/AllK-12Teachers/Salary Teachers average 42 to 45K. Still not bad, but they do have a college education. And for everyone who thinks there’s no link between money and the quality of education, just ask yourself where the best minds go after graduation from college. Is it to a job where they can’t even make 50K? Doubt it.

Good thought, Darkeforce.Yes, teaching is more than money; but without the funding to pay teachers, without the funding to buy enough textbooks for the class, without the funding to pay to maintain schools and build new ones as needed, the students will be at a permanent disadvantage.

I agree with Darkeforce. Those politicians should also have to spend a year in the military prior to making decisions about military funding and use. Heck, the list of what they “should” have in terms of experience is huge. Maybe we should just stop electing career politiicians.

Also, the per student spending has doubled in the last 30 years and that is adjusted for inflation. (in those rankings of nations we are second in one category - per pupil spending). Money is not the answer, just a convenient screen.

i live in a city of 23000 people, our teachers get paid starting at 47,000. our superintendent gets 300,000/yr. they dont use textbooks, we have to buy our kids books! I’m all for giving the teachers much more money, how about cutting out some “administrators” then we’d have enough for more teachers = smaller class size.

Considering what passes for “text books” these days - watered down or non-existent history & math, curriculums that tend toward ‘social’ fixes rather than learning, agenda driven instead of competitive learning structures, etc, ad nauseum… Even those teachers who are competent & who’s focus it is to actually teach have got to be having an impossible time. Add top down forced rulings about what & how to teach that has no regard for the students and you’ve got a situation that cannot get better unless you’re willing to completely rid it of what doesn’t work. And to be ruthless about it. This country used to have the best educated people on the planet and we did it at the local level. Each community hired the best teacher that they could afford and the teachers taught the kids to actually think. Handing the decisions for teaching our children over to the federal government was the dumbest thing Americans have done in education. Incompetence breeds more incompetence and if there’s one thing that the feds excel at it’s incompetently screwing up the system.

My high school English teacher warned me about generalizing… but generally speaking everyone agrees that a teacher’s job is vitally important, but nobody wants to pay them very much to do it - unless the money comes from the Easter Bunny rather than from a tax levy.

Taxes that can be voted down (e.g., local levies) will be voted down. Everyone wants to dance, but nobody wants to pay the fiddler. Any excuse will do.

The end of the story is that nobody with good sense goes into teaching because of the pay scale - and they definitely don’t do it for the (dis)respect they get from the community. Most do it because they think it is important. They do it because it is significant.

The jug-heads who think they are paid too much, “blah, blah, blah” are bad for morale, but are also an example of why we need good teachers. Obviously those poor dopes didn’t have one.

How about using the voucher system. Give kids and parents a choice about where and how they want to be educated. Only allow vouchers for schools that meet certain criteria. If the private sector can do a better job teaching (and probably a better job of finding the best teachers and paying the best teachers more), maybe it should.

Is Jan Eliot not a Christian? Nothing but silly Earth day themes all through Holy Week, and not a word about Easter on Easter Sunday.

I like the idea of the “middle school” edition of Survivor right there, of course.. :)