Walt is back with a Blog.

In my older age I have either forgotten how to directly add content or never could and forgotten that too. Would you be so kind as to add the following with the same title? Thanks,
Walt

Chris (or was it Jeff?), go take a powder, this will upset you.

First off, so as to not offend anyone's sensitivities, Pauly, you are doing this town such a tremendous service with this blog, you certainly deserve kudos. Thank you. But, when you are wrong or ill-informed or don't know the full facts, well, it's only fair the 'opposing' view gets aired.

Pauly, and others, you want to go after school teachers? Really???? OK. But before I get started there, allow me to point out we live in Mayberry RFD, not South Boston, not South Providence, Not da Bronx. Why are there local patrolmen clearing over $100,000 per year. “Get it?” The Chief of Police, who I think is doing a terrific job and, ultimately responsible for the safety of all of us, does not get anything near that. This is Mayberry.

What's the worst that happens, well, besides the few unfortunate self inflicted things I won't go into....some twenty-somethings, new to alcohol, get into a fist fight, some ex-boyfriend gets liquored up and slashes his ex-girlfriends tires to convince her she made the right choice. Since the dawn of time, raging testosterone and alcohol never ever made a good mix.

Let me tell you something about teachers you folks likely don't know, man behind the curtain and all. Well, OK, I need to preface what I am about to say by acknowledging there are certainly bad teachers, just like there are bad highway dept workers, bad barbers, bad politicians, etc. Get it? They are few and far between but they do exist. Who I refer to are the good ones. Allow me to enlighten you all about what you don't see. These people spend four years of their life, post secondary education, getting a degree in something, math, science, history, etc and then minor in education. No, not fluff, not easy A, there is a science to teaching kids, early childhood, elementary, middle school, and those really nasty of critters, the post pubescent high-schoolers. That's right, there are specialties in education. Get it? So these, now 22 year olds, get lucky enough to get a job teachers everyone's ...um...youth. No, it's not prancing through any fields of wild flowers, it's fricking tough. You get NO respect from the parents and certainly none from the kids. It's a thankless job. BUT, you're not done with your education, you have to, by law, get an advanced degree in education, either, early childhood, elementary, middle school math/science, middle school humanities, or high-school subject specialties, like English, Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History. So, you got your day job, your night-time job, papers and research for it plus, oh yeah, you got the homework you assigned to correct. And you have to do that for years. OK, so now you got your Masters in Education degree. For many, STILL not done, you got more, you have CAGS, you have PhD. CAGS, btw, is Certificate in Advanced Graduate Studies. The requirement for that is only slightly less than that for a doctorate. Back to salaries, nobody comes out of the gate at $46,000, grade 1 step 1 is something like mid 20's plus or minus, likely low 20's. You add the time and effort it takes to do a day job and go to grad school 12 months a year and after many years the salary increases. So you've got someone with 20 years of education, no not 20 years of breathing air, but of education and you (collective you, not just Pauly) are whining they earn $46,000 per year? Really???? So you have people, most of whom, have advanced graduate level degrees and they are still being treated like shit by the parents who don't know how to be parents, don't enforce or encourage, their...um....offspring to study hard, pay attention, learn, and get to the point they can be successful as adults. Equally they get treated like shit by the, um....children, who for some unfathomable reason are allowed to get away with gross disrespect for adults.

What do these people do during the summer? They take more graduate level courses, they re-tweak their lesson plans so as not to be stale. They read the latest work done in science or math or history or education or work on how to make their course more interesting to the students. Of course there are some that frack off but the good ones, the ones that deserve to be kept, work. For those other $24,000 per year workers, when they leave the job at 3pm or 4 pm or lunch, they are done for the day, done until the following day. Teachers, grade papers, teachers do lesson plans, teachers take graduate level degree courses, on their own dime. From late August until mid June, a teachers day rarely ends before 11pm, 8am until 11pm. Get it? When you do the math now the kid who cold packs the pot holes is making more money per year than a lot of teachers. To be sure, we need the kid who goes out and fills pot holes, just make no mistake about the per-hour rate teachers get compared to other town employees.

Have I lost anyone yet?

Oh, there will be a part II. I am sure I raised more than a couple of eye brows with my 'be successful as adults” comment. I will give you all a hint though... please go our and read “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. When you get done with that, read “That Used to Be Us” by the same author.

Ah, before I take a breather, I want every last one of you to close your eyes, no, not now, keep reading. Close your eye and imagine, if you will, spending 7 hours a day with disrespectful kids, prepubescent, or slightly post pubescent kids, no not 1 or 2 or even 20, but 40 at a time. I'll give you all another hint, at 40 to 1 it isn't teaching any longer, it is warehousing. At 30 to 1 it is a challenge to keep the ones who what to learn from being distracted by the ...um....others that are hell bent to distract them from learning and be the stars of their own show. Every time you vote down one of these overrides, you raise the student, and I use that term cautiously, to teacher ratio which results in a poorer result for everyone.

Again, I urge everyone to read those two books. If you do nothing else this summer, read those two books. I'll be back with part II.