D&D General WotC is hiring for the Dungeons & Dragons team

[MGibster]

I'll take the Screeds & Rants (slightly unhinged) department!

Slightly? Don't sell yourself short, kiddo.

 

[ECMO3]

Median wage. Average wage is higher but around 70% don't get the average wage.

Yes and the median wage includes high school students and uneducated people. Compare teachers to people with a bachelors degree minimum and you will find their wage is a lot lower, well below median for that group of educated people.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes and the median wage includes high school students and uneducated people. Compare teachers to people with a bachelors degree minimum and you will find their wage is a lot lower, well below median for that group of educated people.

I'm not making that arguement. In terms of income there's better degrees.

Go get one of those degrees but if you're collecting government money you get government wages.

Gonna be hard to claim you're poorly paid when you earn more than 70% of the population and expect them to pay for your payrise is the main point.

Here it's more the workload and cost of living but yeah most of the population is worse off than you.

You've also got job for life, job security and retirement plan. And don't have to worry about breaking your body.

Unless you're a graduate teachers then you're roughly in the middle. Teachers I know are on easy street but they're over 40 and got houses years ago think ones a paper millionaire.

 

[Blue Orange]

I'm not making that arguement. In terms of income there's better degrees.

Go get one of those degrees but if you're collecting government money you get government wages.

Gonna be hard to claim you're poorly paid when you earn more than 70% of the population and expect them to pay for your payrise is the main point.

Here it's more the workload and cost of living but yeah most of the population is worse off than you.

You've also got job for life, job security and retirement plan. And don't have to worry about breaking your body.

Unless you're a graduate teachers then you're roughly in the middle. Teachers I know are on easy street but they're over 40 and got houses years ago think ones a paper millionaire.

There's a real generational thing, I've noticed--older generations often negotiated much better terms than younger people have today, probably because of the ongoing decline in the power of unions.

 

[Zardnaar]

There's a real generational thing, I've noticed--older generations often negotiated much better terms than younger people have today, probably because of the ongoing decline in the power of unions.

Teachers union is strong as hell here. New teachers same contracts.

The only "low paid" teachers are graduates. Relative to everyone else they're still around the median pay.

Those contracts cause problems though as there's very little leeway for cost of living eg where you live or STEM.

Basically small town teacher gets paid similar to big city which may cost triple.

 

[Dire Bare]

Compared to people that are uneducated and including high school students in the sample.

Teachers make crap in wages, but then try to get an job teaching elementary education anywhere outside of a high crime part of a city. We have PLENTY of people lining up to be teachers in the suburbs, rural areas and non-violent urban areas. The only shortages are in math and science teachers and teachers in awful schools.

The reason why is people WANT to be teachers.

Here in California there's a teacher shortage everywhere. Part of the reason is that teachers did not want to retire during the recession, so post-recession there's been a huge amount of retirements.

When I applied to be a teacher 10 years ago, I sent out 30 applications and didn't get a single interview.

These days I see schools in heavy need of teachers.

These things just happen in cycles.

It's not just California. There's been a growing teacher shortage nation-wide for years, kicked into overdrive by the pandemic. Urban, rural, and everywhere in between. How much of a shortage depends on your region and the specific type of teacher (we've had a shortage of STEM teachers for a long time now). More teachers are leaving the profession than ever before, less folks are entering . . . .

Teacher pay varies widely between states, even between districts, due to the uneven way we fund our schools. There are districts out there that pay teachers a living wage, even a comfortable wage, but very few pay a competitive wage. And many pay poverty wages for professionals with a great degree of expertise, education, and responsibility.

Teaching isn't the only under-compensated profession, of course. But to wave off that under-compensation by comparing teachers to unskilled labor . . . . We're in the midst of the "Great Resignation" for all types of labor, skilled and unskilled, most of us SHOULD be paid more . . . and we should also be willing to pay higher taxes so that our public servants can be paid fairly and competitively, at least so that we can attract and retain quality folks in those positions.

Whew! Sorry . . . . can you guess what I do for a living?

EDIT: I keep forgetting we're not all American here on EN World . . . . . Canada has a lot of similarities with the US in how the education profession is structured, but there are also significant differences. I'm not overly familiar with Canadian public ed . . . . other than their unions seem to be stronger than teacher unions in the US. Teaching outside of North America . . . . no idea, other than I hear similar complaints from my colleagues in the U.K.

 

[Scribe]

Basically small town teacher gets paid similar to big city which may cost triple.

This is fact. I've got teachers on both sides of my family across multiple provinces, I hear all about it (and they are all in unions).