Pragmatist…MOST of America’s teachers belong to the NEA and only for their liability legal expenses. The good ole North and East Coast teachers along with some areas of the West Coast are the rabid unionists.
Most of America’s teachers have never attended a union meeting and may well have to think awhile to remember who their NEA rep is in their school!
Many States have two teacher associations, one that is affiliated with the NEA and one that is afffiliated with NO UNIONS…up to the teachers to decide.
Most of the States I’ve worked with, teachers are paid on the baisis of ‘hourly salary’ and not salary. Many local districts today require the teachers to ‘punch the clock’…in and out.
Most teachers depending on their grade level work in excess of 60 hours per week on the clock and off the clock. There are after school activity requirements for the upper grade levels, after hour meetings such as admin, grade level leaders, distric EIP mediation, district special ed mediation and parent teacher conferences, etc., after hour planning, and a boatload of ‘homework’ requirements. Our local district requires a clock-in time of 7:00 am and and a clock-out time of 3:15 pm.
Teachers are faced with mandates of perpetual experiementation by federal and State education bureaucrats and a boatload of specific rigid laws that nearly all carry the potential of immediate termination if you don’t keep you lawyers hat on while doing everything else required. Teachers have NO legal right to know if any of their students have HIV or Hepatitis. Study up on ‘inclusion (federal law) and co-teaching! Could fill a book about what todays teachers go through without addressing behavior and family attributions…and is why the nations teachers on average leave teaching by their seventh year and for most is three years short of being vested in their teachers retirement.
Nope! I’m not an educator nor have I ever been, though I have a number of years in legislative consulting in education.
