It's shocking how little we pay the people that spend so much time with our kids.
I'm not even 5 years out of school as a dev (and not even as a college level graduate), I already make way more than I would have been 15 years into my teaching career (max salary!), my schedule and quality of life are orders of magnitude better. I don't regret my decision other than the impact having a man teacher can have on some of those kids.
This. My state pays well. I have friend who earned his teaching cert but never used it because of how terrible student teaching was, including child behavior and school policies.
You'll always make more money in private industry but you will probably work more and have less time off. Teachers get a lot of time off and work about 35 hours per week during the school year. And then of course the summers. It's an especially good career if you have kids yourself as you are home when they are.
Sure they do, although I think most places call it a RIF.
Wait until you live in an area with stagnant or declining enrollment due to demographic changes (even if your city is still growing).
EDIT - please remember that >50% of US counties faced population decline in the 2020 census!
Unless you're one of those that scrapes by doing the bare minimum, teachers frequently work about 60-80 hours per week during the school year, and 20-40 during the summer to prepare.
There are lessons to plan, classwork/homework/papers/tests to grade, extracurriculars to coach/lead, students needing extra help to work with...
Teachers don't get laid off, they just rot for decades in a society that doesn't value their work in increasingly difficult teaching conditions (increasingly large groups, larger numbers of behavioral issues, etc) for poorer and poorer pay that doesn't follow cost of life increases.
I do know I'm in a bull market where I have the bigger end of the stick. I also have the ability to put way more money aside and be prepared if the market shifts and I have to, too. I don't have issues with W/L balance.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RrA-OUnfVui8ACFEusfDSzRzL4w...
They also get weeks of breaks during the school year around Christmas and in the spring.
Being a teacher won't get you rich but it's a pretty sweet job for people that don't want to work much/do the corporate ladder thing, only work when their own kids are at school (big benefit!), and want generally good benefits, etc.
For example, you could live in a community where the public school offers a low salary to teachers but you don't send your kids there. Instead you send them to a prep school where you pay $30k-$60k per year. The classes are small and the best teachers are attracted to the school as the student body is more enjoyable to teach and the pay is better too.
Is that significant? The preschool I send my child to's child care provider has a boat. Neither factor into my purchasing decision.
Everyone is going to have hobbies of some sort outside of work. How much I will pay isn't going to change depending on what hobbies they have chosen.
Most tech jobs provide absolutely no value to the planet, mine included, compared to the value a teacher provides children.
Your point is unclear. What difference does this make? She could have once travelled to the moon, but that wouldn't make her participation in the same job worth more. The buyers of services pay for the work being done, not for what you may have done in the past. They do not care about your hobbies.
Do you think people are paying less for the software you help create because you didn't graduate from high school? Of course not. They couldn't care less. They are only concerned about what the software can do for them.
> Most tech jobs provide absolutely no value to the planet, mine included, compared to the value a teacher provides children.
Problem is that childcare doesn't scale very well. A single person can only care for so many children, especially when they are young. This means that the cost can only be distributed across so many parents. If the cost to the parents is too high, the parents will stay home and provide that care themselves.
In contrast, a 99¢ app across many millions of customers provides very nice scalability and a fortune for those involved in it. Per customer, the childcare provider is paid substantially more, but is limited to how many customers they can have.
Perhaps someone with a college degree should be using their experience to solve for the scalability issues, but a hobby one had in the past is no indication that they have interest in continuing with that hobby, so it is unrealistic to place that expectation on anyone.
Most of school budget comes from the property taxes inside school districts. To pay teachers more money, the voters simply need to go through whatever are the steps to increase the property taxes to accommodate the budget increase. Until that is done, all of this is just talk.
is $17/hr supposed to be outrageously low? According to[1], the median wage in NC is $35,750/year, or $17.19/hr. Someone with a college degree making median wage, in a job that pays below median wage[2] doesn't seem too outrageous.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2020/may/oes_nat.htm, comparing "Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education" $15.35 median hourly wage, against "all occupations" with $20.17 median hourly wage.
Capitalism favours the narcissistic and the psychopath.