Since everyone is talking about how much they wish they had a job like teaching, or that they should just fire all CTU members and find replacements, I thought I'd offer a brief analysis on the salary of a CPS teacher compared to
hours of work:
***DISCLAIMER: THIS STRIKE IS NOT ABOUT SALARIES. I'm just tired of those particular statements***
Viewpoint 1
- Teachers work 190 days. Those days are 7 hours long. That
means that they are working 1330 hours total in a year. The average starting
salary is around 50K per year. That means teachers are paid roughly 37 dollars
per hour. This is comparable to the hourly salary breakdown of a dental hygienist.
Viewpoint 2 (which anyone who has actually taught will
recognize as a bit closer to reality)
- Teachers work 190 days. The paid portion of those days are
7 hours long. That means that they are working 1330 paid hours total in a year.
Now let's look at a typical week of a burgeoning chemistry/biology teacher. Said
teacher typically arrives at school at 7 AM (this is averaging the days where
he arrives at 6:30 with the days he arrives at 7:30. The former outnumber the
later greatly, but we'll let that slide). He uses the time in the morning to
prep his three classrooms, make copies, open windows due to the lack of AC, and
clean up any messes left from the day before. He then teaches for 170 minutes.
10 minutes are spent collecting papers, helping out students, and dealing with
disciplinary issues. He then spends what would be his lunch time grading
papers, and resetting the rooms. He often takes a 15 minute smoke break. We all
have our vices. We will, however, throw in an additional 45 minutes for what
would normally be the lunch break. Then, he teaches two or three more classes
(depending on the day), before the school day ends at 3:30. Thus far he has
been at school for 8 hours. On Mondays, e sponsors a club for around an additional
hour, Tuesdays and Thursdays he hosts office hours from 3:30 to 5, and on
Wednesdays, meetings take place which take the theoretical end of school (2:15)
back to the normal 3:30. After this, depending on how hot it is in the room, he
may spend up to an additional hour in his room planning for the next day and
grading. This takes the total time spent at school to anywhere form 9 - 11
hours, with roughly one hour of breaks. We'll say that's 9 hours spent working.
After returning home, he has a quick dinner while watching reruns of Breaking Bad, and then calls home. For many many homes. Then, he spends an average of 3
hours creating quizzes, tests, worksheets, powerpoints, LPs, lab reports, etc.
Also more freaking grading. We are currently at 12 hours for the average school
day. This means that teachers often spend around 2,280 hours working during
weekdays. Then there are weekends. Oh the weekends. 40 weeks in the school
year, so 40 weekends. We'll be conservative and say that roughly 8 hours are
spent working on the weekends. This is blatantly wrong most of the time, but we'll go with it, once again, to be conservative. That's an additional 320 hours, bringing the
total time spent working to around 2,600 hours. Now let's take a look at that
salary again. 50k breaks down to around 19 dollars per hour. Comparable
professions include DJs, carpet installers, and insurance agents.
Now, I will admit that this math is a bit improvised, but I
really doubt that it's far from accurate due to the fact that in my first year
of teaching I managed to lose 30 lbs after forgetting to eat most days. Now can someone
please tell me that they truly want to leave whatever profession they're in for
the high-paying career that is teaching?
