Chicago Teacher's Strike

[f3lix]

Inner city schools must pay more because of all the extra shit teachers have to put up with to teach those kind of kids. It's beyond frustrating and the market has dictated about a 10-15% increase needed to get teachers to work there.

[f3lix]

The contract negotiations are taking place at the Hilton?

Coffee is $90.00 a gallon there - not a typo. Having stayed there three times in the last three years, food is an average of $15 per meal, parking is $35 a day, and one can only imagine the cost to rent space.

These negotiations could be taking place at a school or CPS headquarters, but clearly those participating in these negotiations are more concerned about themselves than getting this accomplished.

By the end of all this, how many tens of thousands of dollars could have been saved?

[Ironic Mustache]

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

On top of this, educators are not looked at like other professional careers, like a lawyer for example. Yet you need a master's to be a teacher, and make like, what, 1/4th of what other professions do?

Did you just really compare a high school teacher's education (even the one's who have a master's) with a lawyer's? Also, let's compare the amount of hours the average lawyer works per year versus the average teacher. Before we even take into account summers, lawyers win this in a landslide. Now add 3 more months. If that actually turned out to be an accurate stat, teachers would be lucky to get a quarter of the pay lawyers do. If you take out the outliers, the average lawyer makes nowhere near $200k. I searched Chicago attorney salaries and picked Attorney II out of a I-III scale and got this:

Salary.com Salary Wizard- Do you know what you're worth?

[f3lix]

IM, perhaps you should find out just how many hours teachers put in outside of school before making such an argument.

[Ironic Mustache]

I know there's a lot of prep/grading/additional time, and I know you're a particular freak about that, but we're also talking about the average teacher. At the risk of giving you a compliment, you almost certainly put in more work than the average teacher. Maybe having gone to high school in CA has jaded me, but total hours worked can't possible approach the average lawyer, especially considering how much it dies down in the summer.

[Saint DH]

Yeah, f3lix is definitely an outlier. He's probably the hardest working teacher I've ever known.

The lax job is precisely why I would want to be a teacher. Throw in summer, x-mas, and spring breaks plus all the other days off plus 2 hour delays and snow days and pay me $50K a year? Sounds fucking great. Throw in a pension and tenure and sweeten the pot. So now I pretty much can't be fired unless I whip my cock out in class. And on days where I don't feel like doing fucking shit I'll just show a god damn movie all day.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dirty Harry

Yeah, f3lix is definitely an outlier. He's probably the hardest working teacher I've ever known.

The lax job is precisely why I would want to be a teacher. Throw in summer, x-mas, and spring breaks plus all the other days off plus 2 hour delays and snow days and pay me $50K a year? Sounds fucking great. Throw in a pension and tenure and sweeten the pot. So now I pretty much can't be fired unless I whip my cock out in class. And on days where I don't feel like doing fucking shit I'll just show a god damn movie all day.

You are...the reason our public school education sucks dick.

[Repugnant Abomination]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

Did you just really compare a high school teacher's education (even the one's who have a master's) with a lawyer's? Also, let's compare the amount of hours the average lawyer works per year versus the average teacher. Before we even take into account summers, lawyers win this in a landslide. Now add 3 more months. If that actually turned out to be an accurate stat, teachers would be lucky to get a quarter of the pay lawyers do. If you take out the outliers, the average lawyer makes nowhere near $200k. I searched Chicago attorney salaries and picked Attorney II out of a I-III scale and got this:

Salary.com Salary Wizard- Do you know what you're worth?

You missed my point. Obviously being a teacher isn't as prestigious as being a lawyer, but both require a post bachelor's education. As of now all teachers coming into the profession must have a master's degree. Why should anyone drop 50k+ (in addition to four years of undergrad expenses) to get a job that pays something on average of 35k? Throw in being the first public employees to lose your job when the economy is bad or people think they're paying too much in taxes, and it just doesn't make any sense.

[Saint DH]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

You are...the reason our public school education sucks dick.

I disagree almost entirely. While I think it's important to have good teachers, the environment and culture of our nation is more likely the culprit of poor education in America.

In our high school culture, it's more important to be popular than smart, and the two are often opposing forces. The quarterback is the big shot in American HS. The kid who is best at calculus is a fucking nerd who gets bullied. Do you think it's that way in China? Probably not. The student who is best in calculus probably gets all the tight Asian pussy.

This is not a problem I know how to fix. I guess the first thing I'd do is place far less emphasis on sports. I guess the second thing I'd do is get rid of mandatory attendance polices. If the fucking kids don't want to be there, then gtfo. All those kids are doing is distracting and taking away from kids who actually want to be there.

[Mr. Blonde]

So you agree with my Sportsfagz Philosophy?

[Saint DH]

I'm not really sure what that is, but I probably do.

[f3lix]

DH, if we removed mandatory attendance policies, what do you propose we do with all the uneducated youth running around town with no job and looking for something to cure their boredom? Those are the same kids who can't hold a job, because they are undesirable in the workplace.

[Beebs]

Originally Posted by f3lix

DH, if we removed mandatory attendance policies, what do you propose we do with all the uneducated youth running around town with no job and looking for something to cure their boredom? Those are the same kids who can't hold a job, because they are undesirable in the workplace.

They've got that figured out in Chicago: the kids sell drugs.

[angry pancake]

I was going to stay out of this. I'm probably going to look back at this and regret ever writing it.

There's a lot wrong with the U.S. The biggest wrong is that the average person in the U.S. is a fucking imbecile. Above average is just merely stupid. Some days it amuses the fuck out of me to watch the middle and lower class bicker and bash each other over stuff they really don't understand. I just watched a guy on television bitch about Obama and how much he's had to pay out of pocket in child care because of the strike. Really? I wanted to bash that fucker upside the head with a tire iron. Not so much about not having a fucking clue about Article II or the lack of federal preemption, but rather his bitching about public babysitting. Somedays it amuses me to tears. Other days it depresses the hell out of me.

My quick .02 on the strike. It's always a bad idea to strike while there is a line forming to the left filled unemployed workers willing to take your job. I get why the union is pissed, but this might be a bad time if it was avoidable. I won't pretend to care enough to know whether or not their hand was forced.

There's few things that should probably be fixed and can be fixed.

1) Education in the U.S. is in shambles.

Not all students are equal and the sooner we start acting like the better. To evaluate a teacher based on standardized test scores of student isn't really fair to anybody. You put all your low projected scorers in one class and that teacher then quits and you have a long term sub or subs finish out the year. Some kids, it doesn't matter if you have the most gifted teacher in the world. If those kids suck ass, they suck ass. Other teachers might suck ass, but they have good student who do well regardless of who the teacher might be. An analogy would be that Phil Jackson couldn't coach the Charlotte Bobcats to winning record last year. Nobody could. I could have coached the Miami Heat to a winning record last year (yes, I do believe this. I would have got out of the way).

What to do? Not all students are equal. Not everybody can do great things academically. The world needs ditch diggers too as the saying goes. But, if we are going to have compulsory education, maybe we should train the best fucking ditch diggers out there? At some point we're wasting advanced math on some kids. Maybe they should be in metal shop. or some other vocation. You can teach skills that are useful so when they graduate, they may not be able to read or write better, but maybe the fucker can work on a diesel engine very competently or be able to help in IT or some shit. I kind of think that getting away from the vocational aspect in the last 40-50 years was a mistake. Now we have illiterates who have absolutely no skills. Hell, make them bad-ass world class ditch diggers and farmers.

A big side bar: I've yet to meet a parent whose kid was not an absolute genius. Everybody's kid has an IQ over 250 and is advanced at his or her age and were doing this because it helps in development. Oh she's ranked 6th in her class and is in honors classes and going to be a doctor. . . . . . . . . .some of you are probably already seeing it already. I can't believe the shit that sells. Yeah, after 25 years of seeing my friends and acquaintances have nothing but genius kids, I'm still waiting to see the first one who wasn't a complete fuck up by age 19. The 16 year old who was certain to be a doctor flunked out of junior college three years later. Sometimes stupid is genetic.

I guess I'm saying quit wasting academic shit on kids who don't have a chance. Give them what they need and don't drag down the kids who fucking do understand calculus and chemistry. Put them in areas where they will excel at whatever it is. Tuba players don't necessarily need advanced Russian Literature.

2) Compulsory government service.

Everybody should have to serve a year or two or whatever. Not necessarily military service but something. Why in the fuck are there so goddamn many government contractors? A lot of bitching I've heard about how inefficient government is usually is a complain against contractors. For public works, why not try doing it without contractors? Those construction folks we just trained in high school, well now get to fucking work. Pay them similar to the military, work them similar to the military. Wanna opt out to go to college? Great, you're a military officer or in charge of managing the ditch diggers, or the engineer, or whatever. If the kid really isn't good for much, then goddamit put him to work doing picking onions or something and keep the mexicans out. Think of it as a nice trade off for welfare. There's no reason that a tank mechanic cant be started in high school and carried over to government service.

Maybe some college should be free. Say a person completes his two year service as a regular old clerk for the government. And this was a kid good enough to get into regular old college anyway. Why not allow him to go for an equal amount of time he put in? I'm not saying the government pays for him to go just anywhere. But rather create a university system for such things.


Or we can just have fucking stupid, illiterate kids, who bitch and bicker with each other over whether Obama or Romney is worse when it just doesn't fucking matter.

[Repugnant Abomination]

Thank you!

[Beebs]

Magnum Opus post alert

[angry pancake]

Exhibit 1.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[f3lix]

How does remembering PEMDAS relate to value in any profession?

Or was your point that most people don't remember something that some of us do from math class?

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by f3lix

How does remembering PEMDAS relate to value in any profession?

Or was your point that most people don't remember something that some of us do from math class?

The point of wasting math, albeit 4th or 5th grade math here, on some people. And to illustrate the way some people who didn't know the answer were bitching to other people who didn't know the answer.

I'm sure there are plenty of professions where math comes into play. We're all fucked if engineers don't remember the order of basic math.

[Dent]

Originally Posted by f3lix

How does remembering PEMDAS relate to value in any profession?

E = ?

()?X/+-

BODMAS is what I was taught.

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Dent

BODMAS is what I was taught.

PEMDAS = parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.

BODMAS = brackets, orders, etc.

pretty much the same.


Jesus we're really fucked if I'm explaining math to anyone.

[Ironic Mustache]

I love the guy who posted this:
((6-(1x0)+2))/2 = 4

Allllllllmost. And then, "5 ON DMAS RULE." So even if you do get that it's an order of operations problem, you still get it wrong.

[DDTempest]

I just want to say that I was in Chicago this weekend and I noticed zero difference. Therefore, I support the teacher's strike.