Teachers Make Too Much Money

By Sarasota Values Education on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 8:32pm

Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 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. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 childrenX 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

(I lifted this from ChiTown Girl who lifted it from Ricochet - thanks for sharing, I think this is something everyone should be required to read.)

Not Good

The following amateur videos are from the Euro News website. If this continues, the boys will not be going to Iran with husband after all. I'd love to see the Iranian government overthrown by the people but I don't want my children in the middle of it. Praying for peace...

I'm Just Not That Into It

Grad school started. I have an unbelievable amount of reading to, um, read. A research project proposal to write. Classroom curriculum to observe and link to the readings. Group projects to do.

And I just don't care very much.

I waited until the very last minute to pay my tuition for this quarter. (And almost hyperventilated at how much it was.) WHAT THE HELL IS MY PROBLEM?!?!

Is it burnout? Does it mean I have doubts about wanting to teach? Am I just lazy?

Motivation...I needz it.

It Gets Better

Dan Savage is an editor and columnist for The Stranger, a Seattle area alt-weekly newspaper. In response to the recent rash of children - some gay, some identified by their peers as gay - committing suicide due to unrelenting and brutal bullying, he started the "It Gets Better Project" on YouTube. This project is a collection of videos submitted by adults - gay, straight, bi, queer, trans, and cis - telling their stories in an attempt to show kids that it does indeed get better.

I've watched the videos but this is the first one that made me cry. First because I was sad for this gentleman's 15 year old self, and then because I was happy for the wonderful life he has now. I don't know if my kids are gay - I don't care - and I will show them this video. They will stand up to support their LBGT peers. As a parent, I will stand up to support their LBGT peers. Only when kids and their parents start speaking up against bullying behavior will it stop. All kids need to speak up - the LBGT kids desperately need the support of their straight peers. The loud, in-your-face, stop fucking with my friend, kind of support. Adults are failing to protect them so we need to teach our kids to do it.

Spread the word. There are kids out there who need to see these videos. They need hope. It might save their lives.

Bad Sun, No Biscuit

The last time I got blood drawn & analyzed, the doc informed me that I have a Vitamin D deficiency and need to take supplements. I was surprised at this news because I am a sun worshipper (as much as a person can be in the Pacific Northwest anyway) who gets tanned every summer after getting a badass sunburn on the first nice day. It never ever fails, I've been sunburned at least once every year for almost my entire life. Yes I am an idiot.

I've even been known to use tanning beds. Shut up, it helps my acne and gets me through February.

So now...now I've got an appointment with a specialist to have a spot of Basal Cell Carcinoma removed from my chest.

It's not really a big deal. Basal cell is superficial, doesn't metastasize, and grows really really slowly. They'll freeze it off (or something like that) and I'll be self-conscious about the mark for awhile, and then all will be right with the world. There will be lots of follow-up appointments with a dermatologist to make sure I don't have any other little nasties cropping up and I have to switch to Vitamin D supplements instead of frying myself to a crisp every time the sun makes an appearance.

Put sunscreen on your kids.

Put sunscreen on yourself.

See a doctor if you have any weird spots that won't go away.

Flip the sun off whenever you think of it.

Kids Don't Belong in the Hospital

We need some more prayers, get well vibes, tree-fairy good wishes - whatever you've got - sent to two sick kids.

Remember Spanish Teacher and her beautiful twin girls? One of the girls is home now with her family but the other one contracted viral pneumonia and was re-intubated a few days ago. She is on the mend but still on the ventilator. The girls turned four weeks old yesterday and she still hasn't gotten to go home to her family who is anxiously awaiting her arrival.

And my cousins five year old son is at Children's Hospital with bacterial meningitis, a strep infection in his bones that is baffling the infectious disease specialists and possible brain damage from the brain swelling that was so bad they performed surgery to put a shunt in his head. He will be in hospital for two to six MONTHS according to what the doctors know right now and needs all the help he can get. His parents are worried sick and they also have a nine month old baby to take care of.

It's so scary.

Grateful

Remember Spanish Teacher? I've written about her a couple of times. She's the sister I always wanted and the kind of friend that everyone should have.

She had twin girls last week. (Yay for surprise pregnancies and YAY for surprise twins!) The girls were seven weeks early, tiny, but are healthy and thriving in the NICU.

Not so much my friend. She developed pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in her lungs) because of being on bedrest and we came way too close to losing her. She's still struggling to recover from that as well as the c-section so on Thursday afternoon I'm flying down to Denver to help her husband Computer Whiz with their older two kids and the house-laundry-cleaning-cooking crap so she can concentrate on getting well and being Mommy to four now.

Please say a little prayer, cross your fingers, send good get-well vibes - whatever - to Spanish Teacher, two very tiny little girls, an exhausted husband and worried big brother and sister in Denver. They need it.

9-11

Every year on September 11th I watch the History channel - or any other station that is airing coverage of the nine-eleven attacks - and I bawl my eyes out. This year is no different. Some years it feels like it was yesterday and other years it feels like it's been forever since the world shifted on its axis.

My children don't remember what it was like before 9/11/01. They don't remember when being Muslim or Middle-Eastern wasn't synonymous with terrorism or when going through security at an airport meant someone glancing at you to make sure you didn't have an AK-47 strapped to your back, not taking off your shoes to check for explosives. It breaks my heart to compare their knowledge of the horrors that people are capable with to my own innocence at the same age. They have been teased at school because their father, the love of my life and one of the most kind and generous men I've ever known, is Iranian. Daughter and her friends joke about her terrorist family background and the Things - taking everything literally and personally - come home two or three times every school year filled with indignant rage because someone called them 'terrorist' at school.

Joking or serious it all cuts me to the quick. They know about things that no child should know about - as do all of their peers. Childhood has changed forever and always in this new world that we live in.

But...

When it became known that the monsters behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were evil, crazed maniacs who called themselves Muslim, our next door neighbor called us just to let us know that she knew we were good people, good neighbors and she "prayed we were not victimized" because of husband's background.

The kids teachers invited husband to speak to their classrooms and put a face to the nameless label "middle-eastern" for their classmates.

We received phone calls from parents of our children's friends letting us know they were talking to their children about the danger and wrongness of blanketing every foreigner with the label of terrorist.

Firefighters, police officers and other first-responders after the attack are heroes I hold up to my children to show them that despite all the horror and evil people are capable of, they are also capable of unbelievable courage, bravery and selflessness.

My children know about evil, but they also know about good. My job is to make sure they see and recognize it.

This is the day that I remind myself not of the bad that is in the world, but all that is right and kind and good in the world.

And I cry for us all.

Horror in Iran

I've been glued to the twitter feed about the events in Iran all day long.  Husband managed to get through to his sister on the phone this morning and she said it is so bad in Tehran that we should keep motherinlaw here with us longer than the 6 week visit we had previously scheduled.  Then they lost connection and husband couldn't get her back on the phone.

This video is graphic, don't watch it if you are super sensitive to blood, violence or death, but I think it's important for it to be available for viewing because protestors in Iran are risking their lives to get photos and information out of the country about what is going on.

The video of Neda's death may well be what brings down the current government of Iran, Time has a great article by Robin Wright about why.

I want the Iranian government to change just as much, if not more, than anyone else but I desperately wish that it didn't take the death of innocent people to achieve that change.

Physician Assisted Suicide

In November, Washington State voters passed Initiative 1000 - the Physician Assisted Suicide Law - by a margin of 59% to 41%.  I voted against it.  The idea of allowing doctors to help people kill themselves gives me the heebie-jeebies and an uneasy feeling that by making it legal and acceptable, we are starting down a road that ends in a very bad place.  

I couldn't articulate my feelings - and got into a bit of an argument with Grandmother over the whole thing- until I was directed to the website for Not Dead Yet by a Professor for a school assignment for my Disability and Human Rights class and I started to read the articles and commentaries there.  After spending a lot of time reading all the info on their site I felt relieved that I wasn't being paranoid and bizarre about the whole thing and thought I would try to put into words just exactly why I think legalizing physician assisted suicide is a terrible idea.

The health care system in this country is a for-profit endeavor.  Health insurance companies and executives make money, a lot of money, and if people who have been diagnosed terminally ill are given help to kill themselves then a lot of insurance companies are going to save a lot of money by not having to cover costs for pain management, hospice care and other care designed to make the patient comfortable at the end of their life.

Now all health insurance companies make their profits by collecting premiums and denying whatever benefit coverage they can get away with - end of life or not.  Personally I feel that the entire system is immoral, no one should profit by preventing another person from recieving medical care.  But it strikes me as being even worse for an insurance company to cover the cost for a doctor to kill a terminal patient - regardless of the phrase 'physician assisted suicide' it is a doctor giving their patient a treatment that results in the patient's death, it is the doctor killing their patient - and increase their bottom line by doing so.

People with disabilities are discriminated against every day in this country.  In the media we get the message that it would be better to be dead than to be disabled.  People like Professor Peter Singer say that parents should be allowed to kill their children in infancy if they are expected to grow up with disabilities for the simple reason that infants are "non-persons".  He also says it should be legal to kill older "non-persons with disabilities".  Ironically Professor Singer is also a well-known animal rights activist.  Apparently "non-persons" are different from animals and shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt that animals do.

Please read this article by Harriet McBryde Johnson about her conversation with Professor Singer.  It is ten thousand times better written than anything I could ever hope to write and is truly enlightening.

In a society that devalues the lives of the disabled, a policy legalizing physician assisted suicide is truly troubling.  I can't say it any better than Diane Coleman does in her op-ed article titled "Disabled Group Objects to 'Dignity' of Assisted Suicide, Doubts Motives"...

"Why, disabled people ask, do we see so many news stories lately about the burdens we impose on our caregivers, and so few articles about the nation's ability to provide the long-term care people really need and want?

If the values of liberty dictate that society legalize assisted suicide, then legalize it for everyone who asks for it, not just the devalued, old, ill and disabled.  Otherwise, what looks like freedom is really only discrimination."     ~Diane Coleman

This article was published in the Rocky Mountain News on March 19, 2005.

Some of the people I love the most in the whole world are disabled.  The implications of legalized physician assisted suicide to them is extremely troubling and scares the shit out of me.  No matter how well a law is written, abuses are always possible.  Ask any lawyer, social worker or judge.  And if we, as a society, begin to believe that it is acceptable for doctors to end patients lives, are we starting down a road towards euthanasia for the disabled, infirm or those who are costing us time, money and effort to care for?  Is this a step down that road?

Grandmother is ninety-three and terrified of ending up bedridden for years and years.  She was an enthusiastic supporter of Initiative 1000 and has told me many times that if she becomes bedridden, unable to wash or toilet herself or out of her mind from dementia that she wants us to help her end her life.  I don't know what I would do if it came to that, but I do know that whatever we - her family - do if such a situation arises, we would do it out of love.  It would be the hardest decision any of us would ever have to face in our lives, it would be messy, and it would break our hearts.  And that is the way it should be, not as simple as a doctor writing out a prescription.

Suicide should be difficult, Initiative 1000 makes it easier and that scares me.

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Ok, so I totally do NOT have time for a real post.  It's mid-term time at school, my house is in imminent danger of being taken over by roving gangs of dog-hair balls and if I don't do laundry today we will all be wearing snow-pants and halloween costumes tomorrow since they are the only clean clothes in the house BUT...

I just had to share this bit of public health information with you because I am a giver.  Do you have swine flu?  Go here to find out.

Actually this whole flu thing is a little worrisome to me because Grandmother IS ninety-three years old and I'm not sure she would survive a case of normal flu let alone the piggy variety.  I gave her some Purell and make her use it whenever we've been out and about but I suspect she thinks I am overreacting.  Which I probably am but better safe than sorry.  I'm not ready to lose her just yet, especially not to something called SWINE FLU for fuck's sake!!!

A gazillion thanks to Suburban Correspondent for finding that little internet jewel.

Letting my Baby Leave the Nest

Daughter spent last weekend - Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon - at "Jesus Camp" as she put it.  Or Youth Group Church Camp as I referred to it.  Until she said Jesus Camp.  Now that's what I call it.  I let my kid go to Jesus Camp.  And she's been going to Youth Group on Wednesday evenings for a few weeks now.  

I can't blame her for enjoying it, I did the same thing at her age and it's hanging out with a bunch of her friends playing games, listening to music (the church has a real live band that actually isn't awful) and talking.  Because there is only one high school in our district, the kids all know each other and really enjoy spending time together outside of school.  And after all, it's CHURCH for pete's sake.  It's not like she's hanging out at a local crack house getting high and turning tricks.

So what is my problem?  Why would this bother me just a little bit?

Things like this, and this, and this.  

Thanks to Dan Savage's Youth Pastor Watch on Slog for digging these stories up and making sure attention is paid to them.  We cannot ever again allow a systematic cover up of the sexual abuse of children.

The issue of sexual abuse and manipulation of children and young people by their religious leader is not something that is just a series of news stories for me.  It's personal.  As a kindergartner I attended a neighborhood church with Grandmother and absolutely LOVED the minister.  We moved away and I didn't go back to that church again until I was a teenager.  The same minister was there and I was ecstatic to get to spend time with him again.  I went on a youth group trip to Purdue University at 13, participated in church activities and really enjoyed it.  I still loved the minister - he was a big, teddy bear kind of guy, grandfatherly, generous with hugs and he simply radiated love and kindness.  He did a children's sermon every Sunday using some of his huge collection of hand puppets and did different voices for each of them.  Every kid in the church loved him and looked up to him.

Then he was gone.

I don't remember how it all went down exactly, I was older and working in addition to being a high school student and wasn't as regular about going to church and youth group.  But there was gossip, a lot of the adults were upset including Marvelous Mom and Stepdan (maybe they were just dating then?) and I wanted to know what happened.  I loved this guy and couldn't believe that he did anything wrong.

So Mom arranged for the interim minister to come to the house and explain the whole situation to me.  The minister I loved, who I had known since I was a little girl, had an affair with a young man who was a member of the church.  I don't think he was young enough to be jail-bait but I don't think he was 18 yet when the affair became sexual.  He was also in a fragile mental state and under the care of a psychiatrist for a mental illness.  The boys mother had asked the minister to talk to him, counsel him - and instead he seduced him.  The minister I loved had shown porn to young people from the church in his home, not just the boy who he had an affair with but others also.  His wife, who I also loved, had known about it.  It was not a one-time thing, it was ongoing and lengthy.  It must not have been anything technically illegal because I don't think he ever went to jail or even faced charges, but it was a massive and brutal violation of trust that the church members placed in him.  He resigned and has never worked in ministry again as far as I know.

I fell apart.  The poor interim minister - who is an awesome guy and I will always appreciate for telling me the unvarnished truth and treating me as a thinking, intelligent individual - and my Mom were a little shocked at my reaction.  I don't remember all the specifics of the conversation (obviously - if I've gotten the details wrong I hope Marvelous Mom will correct me so I can fix them) but I remember crying and crying and wondering how I could have been so stupid for loving someone who would take advantage of his position and influence over a boy who was young and in need of help, not sex.  This man who I looked up to and admired, fell off the pedestal I had put him on with a thud that hurt my heart.

After that I never went to church regularly again and became very suspicious of organized religion.  Now that I'm older there are other reasons for my suspicions but the experience in my childhood has forever tainted my trust in people, especially church leaders.  I let the kids go to church - the same church - with Marvelous Mom and Stepdan when they spend the night with them because my folks are both very active in the church and its leadership and know everyone better than we did back when the evil minister was in charge.  I know that there are precautions in place within that specific church community because there are still members who bear the scars from the events of 20 years ago.  And I know the church is inclusive of all types of people including gays, minorities and the children of Muslim-raised fathers like my children.  My kids will not hear hate-filled speech or radical fundamentalist intolerance.  But we don't go regularly.  I don't think I will ever go to church regularly again.

Now daughter has a fabulous group of friends, really great kids that I like a lot, who go to youth group at a church in our community.  Of course she wants to go and we let her.  I have talked to the youth pastor at the church, I know their basic values, and daughters 6th grade teacher who I respect and trust is a member of the church.  But its still a church full of people I don't know well.  

We let her go.  I talk to her about my past and my concerns regularly, she knows about the minister I loved who hurt so many people and she knows our feelings about fundamentalism and intolerance.  I trust her to know what is right, to be able to protect herself, and to grow up and go out into the world without me.

And while she is gone, I wait by the phone with a knot in my stomach

Very Scary

Daughter called me this afternoon from tutoring, more than a little freaked out.  The backstory is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays she goes to a tutoring center for extra help with math.  She takes a different school bus, gets off at the closest stop, and then has to walk about 3/4 of a mile to the tutor.  It is along a main arterial road that is adjacent to her old middle school.  I pick her up after her 2 hours of tutoring is over.

Today she was walking along and a police officer cruised by her three or four times before finally stopping in front of her and motioning her over to his car.  He asked her if she had noticed that a guy on a bicycle had been following her for five or six blocks.  She hadn't, and he told her that this guy was known to the police and not a good person to have following her.  Police officer got her name and cell phone number, told her to take her iPod headphones out of her ears and walk to where she was going without dawdling while he went to "talk" to the guy on the bike.

She was disturbed by the whole episode, and made it quite clear that she didn't ever want to walk to tutoring from the bus stop again.  I am disturbed too.  The what-might-have-been is hard not to think about and I'm also more than a little pissed off by the fact that a high school freshman cannot walk three-quarters of a mile on a well-travelled small town street and feel safe.  I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation, and yet here we are.

I sent an email to the city police station to thank that officer.  Had he not said something to her, we never would have known and this weirdo who was following her (and how weird must he have been acting WHILE he was following her for the cop to pick up on it from a moving vehicle?!?!?) might have noticed the pattern of her walking along there every Tuesday and Thursday and made a move to hurt her.  I don't know that officer but if I ever get to meet him, I might just kiss him.  I shudder to think about what might have happened had he not been so observant and concerned for a young girl's safety.

I'll be changing her tutoring schedule so I can drive her from now on.