"I can be in the fight for the children AND still expect reasonable pay"

“Fighting for the children while the shrapnel seems only to be killing teacher after teacher.” | Get Schooled [AJC]
Until I can pay for groceries or my light bill with my students’ appreciation or their test scores, school districts across the country must be willing to pay teachers for their services.

Here's where I lose every friend I have who's a teacher. I'm not convinced your pay is all that pitiful.

Don't give me that look. I know what you make. I do a teacher's income taxes every year.

Your financial situation sucks, that's true, but the biggest reason for that is all the school and office supplies you have to buy out of your own paycheck. I've seen too many schools where paper is as precious as money, where teachers who intend to give their students customized photocopied worksheets are expected to pay for the paper out of their own pockets. This is disgraceful.

True, you do take your uninterrupted two month vacation every summer (a luxury no other industry has) without receiving paychecks throughout. But the paychecks you do receive are a bit larger than equivalent level private sector employees, and with a bit of basic budgeting (the math you're supposed to be teaching my kids) you can get by. Or you can take a job teaching summer school.

But you do get paid a full year's salary for ten months work. (And you earn every dollar!) If any of you had spent any time in the private sector, you would know that. Every educator I know who has worked in both environments makes more in teaching than they make in the private sector. And when they work up the nerve to say so, the teachers around them close ranks and reply, "Wow, you must have had real $#!+ jobs."

No. Just normal. You have no idea how your teacher salary compares to normal. You've spent your entire life in the education industry and have nothing to compare it to. Some days, you seem aware of this, when you threaten to leave teaching because "you can't afford to stay". And then you get a look at what real jobs pay and you scurry back to school. But the lesson doesn't stick.

But your money is leeched away by the system for which you work. Middle-managers in other fields don't have to pay for their own paper in order to send interoffice memos. (I've worked for companies where I wished they did, just to motivate them to send fewer of them.) Education is structured in such a way that the daily work cannot be completed on the clock. The industry depends on unpaid volunteers or, worse, people who pay to volunteer for the privilege of helping you out. (You call them PTAs or PTSAs.) Or, if you can't get volunteers, you work long into the night without pay -- the true shame of the education industry.

I'd also ask you if you think you're getting a fair return on your investment from the unions you're required (or peer-pressured) to join.

There's plenty here that needs to be fixed. Your base salary isn't one of them. But the peripheral supplies and services you're forced to spend it on? That's something the school system should be providing at no expense to you. I get billed for the paint on your "teacher of the year" parking space. I'd much rather pay for your copy paper.