High Scale Employment Jumps Are The Ones That Can Make A Living Off Of?

Professor Alejandro Lee starts his morning playing word games on his phone in bed. Equipped with the best coffee he can brew, the computer isn’t too far away from him at 6 in the morning. He describes this as relaxing and calming. According to an online statistic, Central Washington University has a 19 to 1 student to teacher ratio (“Central Washington University Faculty Composition,” n.d.). While others are asleep, Lee scrolls through his two Facebook pages while sipping on his cup of joe and thinks about life. Reading emails with coffee on the tongue, he is all too ready to answer back with one to two dim lights on as the day begins.

Institutions of higher education often struggle to find strategies that successfully engage students in learning. In the article “Faculty Work, Student Success,” Colleen Flaherty attempts to address this problem by analyzing the benefits that undergraduate research has on students and faculty. However, she points out that faculty have a hard time balancing the demands of focusing on teaching students while keeping up with research, without sacrificing the quality of one or both pursuits. Flaherty uses the College of New Jersey, as an example of an institution that took a risk and did a complete reformation of their curriculum focusing on the teacher-scholar model and undergraduate research (Flaherty, 2014). Since the implementation of the program in 2004, it had benefited both students and faculty alike such as increased retention and recruitment rates and increased student-faculty interactions (Flaherty, 2014). The new curriculum lightened the faculty teaching requirement to three courses a semester than were focused on undergraduate research and scheduled time to pursue their own research while encouraged to include students in that as well (Flaherty, 2014). While this new model has worked well for this university to engage students in learning through an emphasis on undergraduate research and balancing the faculty’s workload by changing their curriculum, this model may just not be feasible for some institutions since they vary greatly in size, focus, and resources, etc.

II. As an education major, the minimal salaries that teacher’s receive has caused me to worry

A study was conducted on the campus of a major university, in which there were approximately nine hundred participants who were full-time faculty members. Questionnaires were hand-delivered to the head secretary of each department on campus, with the request to put one in the mailbox of each full-time faculty member. A total of 263 faculty members responded to the survey. The demographic breakdown for the sample was compared with that reported for the university (Ghorpade & Lackritz, 2011).

     High school teachers’ average salary varies across the world. The United States is said to be one of the richest countries in the world, yet our teachers are being paid one of the lowest amounts. The Education Intelligence Agency, author of the article “Ohio Teacher Overcomes Union’s Tolerance” published an International Teacher Salary Report ranking the fifty states by “how much the average salary exceeded per capita personal income.” According to the Education Intelligence Agency Ohio’s percentage rate is only fifty- five point one percent. According to the Education Intelligence Agency the lowest state percentage is in South Dakota at twenty- three point six percent and the highest state percentage is

America has encountered a change within the teaching profession: concerning, experience, age, credentials, and ethnic background (Feistritzer, 2011). It is almost as if the year of 2005, overturned the trend of older employed teachers (Feistritzer, 2011). A six-year survey shows that the amount of teachers under the age of thirty has increased drastically, and that most teachers have earned master degrees. Also, although teaching has been a predominately white profession, more Hispanic and African American teachers were hired between the years of 2005 and 2011 (Feistritzer, 2011).

February 25, 2015 was the national adjunct walkout day. Like the previous year, adjunct faculties performed a rally around their administration, a shout out for their rights for a couple of hours and returned to their homes. Adjunct faculty members are, in fact, the professors, instructors, and other employees who work part-time and are non-tenured in the universities and colleges. Although the national adjunct walkout day educates about the problem that adjunct faculties are facing and it is negatively affecting education in schools, it is not causing the educational system to increase their pay nor is it giving them rights to be treated equitably to tenured faculty.

I feel that adjunct need all the help that they can get. Many adjunct do have limited access to resources on a College campus. Many must share an office with others simply because there is not enough space for each adjunct to have a private office. This makes meeting with students an even greater challenge since the office space must be shared with others. The online format has changed the classroom and there must be adjustments to how adjunct teach in order to help these students. An ongoing professional development program would be helpful to teachers this would allow them to get better at what they

The low pay for our educators is causing many negative effects. New York Times shows that the low income is causing sixty-two percent of teachers to have a second job outside of their teaching jobs. Just to have enough money to support their families and make ends meet. Most everyone decides to college to prevent having these struggles with money, and to avoid having to work multiple jobs, when they get older; however, not when it comes to living off of only a teacher’s income, the struggles to have enough money are interminable. This low pay is also causing most teachers to retire, and find new jobs. New York Times states, “every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the

The issue of teacher shortage today is continuing to grow. The effects of the achievement gap are reaching the teachers, not just the students: “...good administrators and teachers, who are doing their best under difficult circumstances, will be driven out of the profession…,” (Boyd-Zaharias 41). The achievement gap is part of the reason teachers feel they are underpaid, which happens to be one of the leading cause in teacher shortage considering, “Teachers were paid two percent less [than comparable workers] in 1994, but by 2015 the wage penalty rose to 17 percent,” (Long). Being a teacher requires passion in order to stay in the field, especially if the money in teaching is decreasing. Money is an important aspect for people when it comes to their careers, therefore, fewer people want to become teachers. This lack of teachers and the lack of college students studying to become a teacher leads to unqualified teachers and larger classroom sizes (Ostroff). Both of these causes are eventually affecting students’ learning environments. I chose this issue in education for my project because I have personally felt these effects, and I know others who have as well. As a future educator, I want to see better wages and better benefits, but this can only happen with qualified, passionate teachers. I plan on being one of them, and I plan on sparking a change. I am a future educator fighting to end teacher shortage.

Teachers have and will always have a big impact in everyone’s life and if not everyone, well, at least they did for me. They teach you everything you need to know about a subject and valuable life lessons, so why are they not paid sufficiently enough to make a decent living? Teachers salaries have always been low and I believe it is the time that changes. Being a lawyer, doctor, or engineer is great, but none of that would be possible without the insight of a teacher, I will inform you in this paper on why I believe there is a need for action. I will go over the background of teacher’s salaries, my ideas on what would be best for teachers not just in Texas, but nationwide, and pros and cons on the issues and ideas at hand.

With beginning teachers usually earning entirely less than other college graduates, the profession is at loss of top-notch, quality people who tend to find jobs seeking more money. Almost 50 percent leave the profession within 5 years, lured by higher pay and prestige elsewhere in the booming U.S. economy (World, 1999, par. 7). Starting teachers average a $25,735 salary in the United States compared to an engineer earning $56,820 or a physical therapist earning $56,600 (Engineer, 2000, par.1). And what signal does it send out about the value of good teachers and a good education when a 45-year-old teacher with a master’s degree earns $45,000 a year and a 25-year-old out of law school often starts at $80,000, considering a six year education for a master’s degree and a seven year education for a law degree (Greenhouse, 2002, par. 4)? A teacher is also given no compensation for the long hours spent basically in overtime work. The teacher’s day does not end when they leave school because if lesson plans, grading, or planning is not completed, it will have to be finished on their own time. Accountants, paralegals, and engineers all are compensated and get paid overtime for work that does not get completed in a regular day or if they want to stay and

While at the University of Missouri, Smith encountered many supportive and persistent professors that were dedicated to their students learning. Transitioning from a small school to the University of Missouri was a very overwhelming experience for Professor Smith. However, he claims the determined, passionate and caring nature of his professors allowed him to flourish at a large university. It was in this environment that Smith decided to pursue the field of academia. Professor Smith wanted to provide other students with the dedication and support that some of his professors at the University of Missouri had provided him. Although he was unsure of what level he would like to teach at or what subject matter he would teach, Smith knew that he was going to become a teacher.

Lurking over our great country is a troubling issue that is plaguing the professional educational workforce. When compared worldwide, American teachers work the most hours, yet are paid in the lowest brackets when related to the top 32 nations (Teachers Pay). In addition, when you compare a teacher’s salary to other four year degree salaries, teachers are among the 5 lowest paid degrees (O’Shaughnessy). Not only are the salaries among the lowest in the American workforce, a typical teachers at home workload exceeds all other professional jobs by 20% (Current). Furthermore, teachers were only given a 2.3% salary raise in 2009. Yet the rate of inflation rose to 3.1% causing a loss in purchasing power and creating a hardship on the

In almost every industry, employers are trying to do more with less. Educational facilities throughout the United States are working hard to deal with budget cuts and growing demands on limited resources. Additionally, trade schools, college campuses and Universities across the nation are witnessing that student enrollments are at an all-time high. Simply put, more is expected to be done with less. Hard working educators are working to meet the expanding demands in their classrooms and laboratories. Davis Applied Technology College in Kaysville, Utah is certainly no stranger to the higher demands set forth on the staff and administration due to on-going budget cuts and record high head counts. Like many educational facilities, Davis