Zombie Teacher rants on Teacher Pay Misconceptions

Welcome to the jungle of yet another year of political mine fields. No matter which side of the isle you happen to be on, everyone has an opinion on education funding and what we should (or should not) be paying teachers. My own state of Minnesota is debating whether or not the time is right for a hard pay freeze.

It's pretty obvious who falls on which side of the debate - Republicans for the most part want to bring the deficit down by cutting taxes, which therefore means less money for schools, so teachers in their opinion should shoulder some of the burden of reduced wages. While Democrats, on the flip side, want to increase taxes on the wealthy to help shoulder some of the tax burden that would pay for needed services and education costs.

We can all argue until we're blue in the face about whether or not taxing the rich to increase services, or cutting taxes to stimulate growth, is better for the nation, but there are some realities in education that simply cannot be overlooked anymore. I am offering a teacher's perspective of what it feels like financially to BE a teacher, instead of what people are hearing from politicians and their often erroneous statements.

After you've looked at the data for yourself, we'll see how many people feel that teacher pay has really "risen", while the rest of the market is in a recession. And for those nay-Sayers out there who still think that Minnesota pay is ahead of the curve, check out the NATIONAL pay averages here. Even on a national average, which is better than more than half of the states out there, "The salaries of public school teachers have generally maintained pace with inflation since 1990–91."

MN Teacher pay rates is cited directly from MN House of Representatives Research site:
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/databook/tchrchar.htm

The inflation data listed in the middle column of the table is taken from:
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

Average insurance cost data is from an 8-page Whitehouse report published in 2009 and more recent publications. I used a 40% contribution rate which is actually lower than what I contribute, but still much higher than the contributions of non-teaching professions that run closer to a 25% employee/75% employer distribution.

As a math teacher, I'm pretty good at Excel formulas. I took the published average salaries, reduced them by the factor of inflation that applied for the given year, and then subtracted the 40% of typical health care contributions that employees are expected to pay. Even before these calculations, you can look at the bottom row of totals in yellow, gray and red. Notice that while teacher salaries may appear to have increased by 17% from 2003 to the present, inflation has grown by 22% and health care increases have ballooned to 68%.

So while it may appear that teachers have "continued making more money each year", what it really equates to is a whopping net increase of $2972 over 8 years, or $370 per year. Take into account how much additional training the "average" teacher has obtained during those 8 years; either returning to college for a masters, seeking outside training from the school day, or just plain spending money on their classrooms (which we all do) and that increase is wiped out in the blink of an eye. Also keep in mind that this doesn't include the additional dental insurance, union dues, and mandatory TRA contributions that we pay. Lucky us! Those are tax-deductible. 

And don't even get me started on "not working summers". I don't know a single teacher who doesn't either teach summer school, attend committee meetings (sometimes paid), check emails, stop in to clean out the classroom, in addition to the hundreds of unpaid hours we spend correcting papers and updating our websites. What other profession has such a high out-of-the-work-day expectation of its employees?

This graph is a visual representation of the actual and adjusted columns from the table above. Isn't it shocking how different they look? Even back in the 1990's when the economy was booming, education was still putzing along with average increases of $500-$1000 per year, which is the same as it is today. Except for sky-rocketing medical costs. So the majority of teachers and other state employees continue to make less and less money each year, even IF we are lucky enough to get a union-negotiated raise.

So MN legislature... bring on the "hard freeze"... like a pay reduction is something new to teachers!?!? It's just an extension of the school distribution "deferments" that will never be repaid. And the state funding cuts to schools, with the expectation that local government levies will pick up the slack. You're not fooling anyone, politicians, with your "saving teacher jobs" line. Whose fault is it that the state is out of money!? It's YOUR FAULT!!! Because you spend all our tax-dollars on your high-horses pushing party-driven agendas that the other side will NEVER AGREE TO, instead of looking at realistic compromises using rational logic and remembering the original intent of taxation and common good that our country was founded upon. This video says it all.

http://www.kare11.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=785321882001

In conclusion: I am a trained professional with 5 years experience, two bachelors degrees and a masters degree. I don't buy new clothes. My boys wear hand-me-downs whenever possible. When the batteries in their toys die, they rarely get replaced. We don't take expensive vacations (or hardly any vacations). I drive a 2000 two-door Alero coupe. I pay family rates for medical and dental insurance. AND my family is HEALTHY. I have a small, but annoying monthly college payment that will require another 14 years to pay off, at the rate I'm going. And another not-so-small amount of revolving credit card debt. I've written a book that makes a pittance. I sell teacher materials on and off-line. I do freelance book reviewing and sell an occasional item on eBay. I have occasional garage sales and also attend them. I shop at Walmart because I can't afford Target's prices. We have very generous parents and in-laws.

And we still *barely* make ends meet each month.

Tragedy strikes in small-town Montrose a few blocks from home

My family's thoughts and prayers are with the family of Hayden Solien. We often take it for granted that small town life is safe and quiet and slow-paced, and the tragedy that occurred to end 7-year old Hayden's life on Friday has shaken our community to the core. While waiting on the sidewalk for his bus to pick him up for school, Hayden was hit by an out-of-control car that had just ran the only stoplight in town. Both the boy and the driver of the vehicle were killed. Below is a link to the full article of what happened.

http://www.startribune.com/local/139095129.html

As parents of two boys, my husband and I had a very hard time with this news. We deliberated about whether or not to discuss what had happened with our 2- and 4-year old children. Would they understand what had happened? Could they generalize about the danger of cars and street safety enough to apply it to their own sheltered lives? I didn't think it was appropriate. But after driving by the accident scene this morning, where a touching memorial of teddy bears and flowers and a cross had already begun to form, I changed my mind.

So we stopped by the store and picked out a soft little teddy, all the while I was trying not to get teary-eyed thinking of my own boys, and how precious they are to me. And the deep sympathy I feel for Hayden's family and teachers and friends as they try to cope with his loss. 

As we drove home, we talked about the little boy and how he did everything he was supposed to do, waiting safely on the sidewalk, and how the car was out of control and the driver wasn't able to stop. We talked about how you can never be too careful around streets and cars, even if you are on the sidewalk or in the grass. And sometimes accidents happen anyway, even if everyone is being as careful as they should be. 

The boys watched from Red's Cafe parking lot as I crossed the street and added our teddy to the memorial. We sent a prayer up to heaven for its newest little angel, that he find peace and happiness in his new home.

Shout out to my Zombie audience!

One of the coolest parts about blogging is checking out who is reading. Sure, you can write a book or submit an article that is published in paper form, but you don't get timely or specific feedback into who your audience really is. So thanks to Blogger.com for housing my musings! And for being so easy to use! And for all the tools that make a semi-illiterate website builder like myself look like I actually know what I'm doing. 

For those of you who have never written a blog or played with its tools and settings before, this is what I see when I log into my "stats" tab:

 

 I am so thrilled and honored to have such a diverse crowd of readers. So I wanted to give a shout out to my fans in Europe, (especially the Hoobble crowd in the Netherlands!) and various other countries I've never been to, but always wanted to visit... like Germany and India and Australia. A big part of that readership has to be attributed to blog readers on Facebook and LinkedIn. What wonderful times we live in! 

The Pageview Browser pie chart is also pretty interesting to look at. I knew that we at my house have loved Firefox for years. But I had no idea that it had taken over so completely from Internet Explorer! Heck, even Google Chrome is giving Explorer a run for its money. 

And then there is the Operating System pie chart... Windows is crushing Mac on the operating systems of choice for Zombie readership. Sorry to my Mac fans, but I always have been, and probably always will be, a PC lover. How you Mac users can tolerate not being able to right-click!?!? I'll never understand it. I try to right-click the radio in my car sometimes, like I could pause live radio or something.

Although, maybe I am misinterpreting all this data? Does it have more to do with zombies than my content? Do the living dead have a PC preference because Macs are too hard to use when your bones are crumbling to dust? If I started blogging in broken Spanish, would I start picking up readers in the southern hemisphere of the globe? Or are they just not that interested in zombies? 

Fascinating questions. Food for thought for the weekend. Peace out.

Real-world Volume & Capacity connections from Zombie child

Happy weekend, dear readers. My math classes are currently studying surface area and volume of solids and we came across the conundrum of cylinder volume. How oddly counter-intuitive is it, that a short, seamingly smaller cylinder, can actually hold more capacity than a taller, skinnier cylinder? Hence the video above, in which I try a classic conservation of quantity experiment out on Zombie Teacher's 4-year old son Ethan. (who is not currently a zombie)

Piaget would tell you that the conservation of continuous quantity is a developmental skill. By the time we are six years old, most of us have some understanding that equal amounts of liquid or solid don't change quantity simply by putting them in taller or fatter containers. But it's quite amusing to try out the experiment on younger children! And occasionally on older kids and grown-ups, just to see how spatially advanced they are.

For example, these two cylinders do NOT have the same volume. But can you guess which one holds more liquid? Think it's the taller one? You're WRONG! We are studying the math in class right now and it's as simple as stacking coins. Prism volume is equivalent to the area of its base, (big B) multiplied by its height. In the case of a cylinder, the area of the bottom "coin" or base, is equal to volume of a 1-coin cylinder (except in units cubed instead of squared). The "height" of the cylinder then becomes how many coins are stacked; thus, increasing the volume of the first "layer" by its height/layer factor.

Area of the shorter, "horizontally gifted" cylinder, then, is 7 x 7 x 7 pi = 343 pi 

Area of the taller, "vertically gifted" cylinder, then, is 18 x 4 x 4 x pi = 288 pi 

SHORTY WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I like to show Ethan's conservation video after having taught the formula, and then to challenge my students to go home and try the experiment with family members (hopefully younger ones). AS LONG AS they make an attempt to explain not only the purpose of the experiment, but the math behind it, to the subject of their experiment. This forces them to internalize the formula in an effort to explain it to someone else. Because we all know the best way to really learn material is to have to teach it yourself!!

Yes, those are match box cars playing with the solids.

Other cool tricks that kids can try, or you can demo before the class, include the pyramid/prism and cone/cylinder volume conundrum. Did you know that there is a proportional relationship between the volume of a cylinder, and the volume of a cone? and a sphere too? There is a similar relationship between square- or rectangular- based prisms and pyramids of equal base sizes. It just doesn't visually make sense.

I like to survey my class first, either with fingers or on paper, to write down how many times they think the pyramid solids will fit into their prism counterparts. I tell them they can give me "half a knuckle" if they think it needs a decimal answer (it doesn't). Then I show them either with rice, or on this absolutely fantastic interactive web page from CMP2. Make sure you have the sound on because it has fantastic sound effects! The little sink "fills" the solids, and the drain "empties" them out. 

First, fill the cone and pour it into the cylinder. It's not full. Do it again. It's still not full. Do it again. It's full! The cone fills the cylinder 3 times. Hence, the pi x radius squared x height formula is proportionally true for a cone; it's just 1/3 the answer.

Try filling the cone and dumping it into the sphere. The cone fills the sphere TWICE! 

And the creepiest, coolest one of all, is to fill the cone and sphere, and empty them both into the cylinder to fill it perfectly! The cone fills up all the gaps between the round parts of the sphere, like melting ice cream from the cone back into the tub.

The 1/3 relationship also works with a rectangular- or square-based pyramid and it's equal-based prism counter-part, LxWxH (x1/3 for the pyramid). And you do NOT need to spend any money at all to use the online app. You just need either a computer bay for students to try it themselves, or a Smart board to demo it in front of the class.

I am lucky enough to have both... so I show it on the Smart board and with the rice first, and then give the kids a chance to try it themselves. You'd think it was a preschool party, with how many 7th graders try to swarm the rice "sensory" table to play with my solids sets. And oh, how nasty the floor gets. I get down on my hands and knees after school to scrape up as much of the rice mess as I can, so the custodians don't report me for destruction of the carpet! And I feed them a lot of cookies at Christmas time :o)

Try it out. Play. Experiment. See!? Math is fun.

New Kitty photos of Bruce for no particular reason

Thank you to the Animal Humane Society of Buffalo for not only posting pics of our precious new kitten on the AHS website and sucking me into adopt him, but also for making the adoption process so easy. We got food, a litter box, litter, some toys, and of course the kitten there. 

He was dropped off on a Wednesday, neutered on a Thursday, and ready for adoption by Saturday when we came to get him. Shots and everything are up to date! He stopped hiding after only a day or two and now prances around our feet and lays on our laps and chairs and pretty much just looks darn cute all the time. And he has the most ADORABLE little meow and purr purr purr.

Enjoy the pics. As you can tell, he likes hiding in our shirts ;) Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!

Mommy Zombie family/recipe post! (there is life outside the classroom, after all)

 Happy Sunday everyone! 2012 is going very well so far and I thought I'd take a break from anything related to work and just blog about family life.

Emerging from my sweater in this photo, Alien-style, is our new kitteh Bruce. He looks so much like our old cat Merri that it's uncanny.

Our other cat Toby and our dog Milo welcomed Bruce with open paws. After only a week, Bruce is clearly accepted as a full-fledged member of the family. He uses the litter box regularly, aside from tracking an occasional #2 present around the carpet or wearing it on his back. He eats and drinks as much as Toby. And he has the loudest, most calming purr. Ahhhhh, the life of a kitten. To be so young and free and loved, with no responsibility at all! If there is such a thing as reincarnation, God, you know exactly what animal I want to be in my next life.

 

In other wonderful news, my closets are finally cleaned/organized! There comes a point half-way through winter when you finally throw your hands up and decide I HAVE TO FIND THE MATES TO ALL THESE MITTENS AND BOOTS!!!! And so I did. The basement walk-in closet is re-stocked with folded sweaters and pants, and all the empty hangers have been clothed with wrinkled garmets. Even still, I did catch the elder cat Toby "hunting" my hubby's sock in the laundry room today. 

My children are napping peacefully as we speak. After an hour running around in fluffy snow and the park, sliding up and down all the ice-coated jungle gym equipment, we found a hoard of pine cones that made their way back to the living room. I am starting to wonder if bringing them into the house was the best idea, as they shed all over the carpet.

In cooking news, I spent a fortune at the grocery store on Saturday. But that money is being put to good use in the form of home-made lasagna for dinner last night, and hopefully less spent on fast food and eating out this week.

In the spirit of math and proportions, here is my easy, teacher/parent-friendly lasagna recipe that requires no hamburger browning or prior knowledge of Italian cooking to make. This recipe fills an 9x9 square baking dish. If you want to feed a crowd, make it into a math challenge and scale the ingredients up to 150%.


Ingredients:
-one package pre-cooked pepperoni slices (I did 3 layers of 16 slices)
-one jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce (I used Ragu garlic & onion for extra nice breath)
-shredded mozzarella, 2-3 cups
-tub of cottage cheese (the medium sized one, I tossed it before I could check the oz.)
-6 pre-cooked, ready to bake lasagna noodles
-italian spices to season to taste

Directions:
-Preheat the oven to 350
-Spray the pan with Pam (not sure if this is really needed, but I do it anyway)
-spread a thin layer of spaghetti sauce on the bottom of the pan

Do this for each of three layers:
-lay the first pair of noodles down side by side to cover the bottom
-spread a thin layer of cottage cheese on top of the noodles
-arrange 4 pretty rows of 4 pepperoni on top of the cottage cheese
-shake a little Italian seasoning on top of that layer
-pour and spread another thin layer of spaghetti sauce down
-shake and spread a layer of mozzarella on top

-repeat directions for two more layers, making an extra-thick top layer of cheese
-Bake covered with foil for 30 minutes
-Remove foil and bake another 15-20 minutes
-Turn the broiler on for the last 2-3 minutes and watch carefully to brown top cheese
-let stand for 5-10 minutes to thicken and cool
-enjoy! (I promise it tastes better than it looks in the picture, and makes AWESOME leftovers)

How 'bout that! You didn't know the Zombie could cook, did ya? Boo yeah. And now the children are awake. Time to put their laundry away. Boo.

A teacher manifesto worth 2 minutes to read, and 20 hours of thought

Praise heaven! No work followed me home from the classroom on Friday. Granted, I had to stay until 5 to accomplish this, but hallelujah anyway! Naturally, that lends itself to more time to dink around on Facebook, and actually look through my friends' profiles; as opposed to simply rifling through the News Feed. 

Whilst perusing the many interesting happenings in the lives of my acquaintances, I noticed several of my teacher friends sharing and commenting on the post "In What Other Profession", shown below.

http://m.examiner.com/k-12-in-topeka/in-what-other-profession

After clicking and reading, I have been sitting and thinking about the statements, and the truth behind them, and the injustice of all of it, for the last half an hour. And probably will continue to think about it for the rest of the night. 

PLEASE read the post and share it if you agree with its sentiments. It needs to go viral. If I were a crappy teacher, or a lazy or unmotivated one, I probably wouldn't be sitting at the computer in my spare (unpaid) time reading educational blogs in the first place. But clearly if you're reading mine, you're not one of those sad few anyway.

Why did politicians decide to start scapegoating teachers for the systemic problems facing education today? Haven't the majority of those same issues stemmed directly or indirectly from outside political intervention into the educational system? When did it become the job of educators, who are paid for 7.5 hours per day, 9 months of the year, to solve all of the problems (educational, social, emotional, parental, financial) of America's youth today? And how are we supposed to not only maintain, but continue to improve student test scores and graduation rates, with ever declining funding and increased poverty in our student body?

If anyone has easy answers, I'd love to hear them. But I don't think there is an easy answer! And I don't care either way. Because I love my job, and I love my school, and I love my students, and I love my coworkers, and I will continue trying to be a better teacher and person for as long as I live. (sounds kind of like wedding vows! hmmmm...)