One of the counselors at my school saw this reply in the New York Times. It was in the Voices part of the paper. We believe it is a response to someone else talking about how "easy" teachers have it. I love this response.

Sick of those highly paid teachers? Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes and they only work nine or ten months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do…..baby-sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That’s right. I would give them $3 an hour, and only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. with 45 minutes at lunch). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now, how many do they teach in a day? Maybe 30? So, that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day. But remember they only work 180 days a year! I’m not going to pay them for any vacations. Let’s see, that’s $585 x 180 = $105,300 per year. ( Hold on ! My calculator must need batteries!) What about those special teachers, or the ones with master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair, round it off to $7 and hour. That would be $7 x 6.5 hours x 180 days = $245,700 per year. Wait a minute , there is something wrong here! There sure is, isn’t there?

I did the math: I have 79 students a day (I know that is not a lot) , I have each for 1 hour a day. I have a Masters of Arts in Teaching as well. Here are how the numbers work for me...

79 x 7 = 553 553 x 180 = 99540 According to this article I should be paid $99,540 a year to "babysit" my students, not teach them any math mind you just babysit. At least if I made that paying off my student loans would not be that big of a burden anymore. Imagine how much I would be worth if I had 120 or even 150 students a day. WOW!

Makes me think I should not have given up babysitting in college for a real job :-)