worldtraveler wrote:Most teachers could make more money doing something else if they chose to. You don't think people with math and science degrees could have had a more lucrative degree had they chosen to do something besides teach?
Why does it even matter what people are giving up? If the point is about service, why get into a pissing match about "OMG I could have made so much more money but I'm important because I chose to teach?"
Dude. Drop the idealism. A teacher in the second worst school in the city didn't choose between that and being a nuclear physicist. So, no, I don't think someone who only qualified for a job at a terribad school had boundless opportunities before them.
It matters because
you were asking what makes TFA volunteers different from teachers. You are what my mother called wrong and strong. Jumping from one argument to another as you lose them and refusing to concede.[/quote][/quote]
What is so disgusting to you about being compared to other teachers? You act as though all non-TFA teachers are low-lifes that take these jobs because it's the only thing they can do? Has it occurred to you that some of them take these jobs for the same reason that people join TFA? No...apparently only TFA people can do it out of the goodness of their heart, and other teachers do it because they aren't smart enough to do other things.[/quote]
That is not true. I know plenty of people who are teachers and do great things. However I do also have my personal experience in the school I teach in. I teach in the worst high school in my city, and the teachers are here are mostly transfers from other schools because they could not hack it. From MY experience the other teachers I work with are lazy and don't care, but that is why they have been placed at the school I work in. It is an unfortunate but true situation that my school district has put the poor performing schools in. The best teachers get the jobs at the best schools, which while not an easy task to work there, is a very different struggle from the school I teach in.
So I guess it would bother me to suggest that the teacher who teaches next to me who watches movies three days a week, and has free days the others should get a boost just because she works at an inner city school.