“It was like when you’re a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it’s just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.”  —  Sarah Dessen

What are teacher’s institute days, really?  I ask because there are a lot of them.  I ask because they frequently seem to coincide with holidays.  I ask because when I drive past the school on these days, there aren’t any cars in the parking lot.  I’m even going to go out on an unpopular limb here and suggest that teachers actually seem to spend more time away from school than they do in it.  I don’t think there is ever a month during the school year in which school is actually in session every weekday.  There is Christmas break, spring break, every single random holiday, snow days (seriously?!) and the big one, summer break.  Then there are these mysterious institute days.  On top of that, they do get some sort of personal time/vacation time/sick time, because my kids’ teachers have subs fairly often. 

I’d love to know what really goes on during teacher institute days.  We have one coming up this Friday.  How ridiculous.  Not even two full weeks after Christmas break, they have a four day weekend, because, SURPRISE, Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I highly doubt that this is a coincidence.  What do they do?   Is it just another paid day off?

There’s more!   A teacher’s workday is 6 & 1/2 hours.  I just looked it up and the average salary in my average community (which is also a fairly young community so none of the teachers have been here for more than 10-15 years, most are new, right out of college) is $53,000/year!  They don’t have to pay into the useless and almost bankrupt social security system, and can retire comfortably after 20 years, without contributing one penny of their own to the pension plan funded by our tax dollars. 

What a racket!  I may have to re-think my entire career path.  For that kind of money with those perks, even I may be able to put up with 20+ children (or teen-agers, God forbid) for a few weeks a month, nine months a year.

Come to think about it, I can remember only one teacher in my entire public school experience that made an actual impact on my life.  One.  So far, I have only been really impressed with one of my sons’ teachers.  One.  This would seem to indicate, as is true in any field, that only a few are actually exceptional.  Yet, the average salary is well above the national average overall salary, which includes mostly people who actually work full time!

Maybe I’m missing something.  Fill me in if I am.  And PLEASE tell me what goes on during institute days.

Thanks for stopping by!