Ah, the holidays. ’Tis the season to gather round the hearth, feast on turkey and pie, and enjoy the company and conversation of loved ones we see but a few times a year. And thank goodness for that! You love them dearly, but it’s exhausting fielding all those annoying questions about the teaching profession from your well-meaning but clueless family.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of comebacks to crazy questions, so at this year’s holiday dinner (or any other time your professionalism is called into question: legislators, are you listening?) you can show the whole family why your profession is worthy of their highest respect.
Teachers are just glorified babysitters!
OK, you can pay me what you pay your babysitter. Ten dollars an hour for six hours (even though I actually work 9 or 10 hours a day) is $60 a day, times five days a week (even though I often work weekends) is $300, times 36 weeks a year (even though I’m taking classes and professional development year-round), is $10,800 – but that’s just for one student. Multiply that by 30 students and that’s $324,000. That’s a good start.
All your union cares about is bargaining for higher salaries and more benefits! What about the students?
Actually, when state laws allow us to, the National Education Association routinely bargains for student-friendly conditions like class size limits, staff training to improve student learning, collaborative time for sharing effective classroom techniques, school building health and safety, desperately needed classroom materials and equipment, and joint union-management problem-solving on ways to better teach students in low-performing schools. But shouldn’t we also have competitive salaries so we attract the best teachers? Don’t the students deserve that?
Teachers have tenure. You can’t be fired no matter what kind of job you do.
Tenure does not mean a “job for life.” It means there needs to be a just cause to be fired and you have a right to a fair hearing to contest charges. Any tenured teacher can be fired for a legitimate reason, after school administrators prove their case. If I want to thrive in my profession, I need to do a good job…
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Adapted from content by We Are Teachers