Not really. At the higher end 4 year colleges, there are A LOT of liberal mindsets almost to an extreme.
I do what I can to balance it out with my students.
That is simply a bad online class, unfortunately not abnormal. In my online classes, I check in and participate in discussions and grading with feedback multiple times a week and check emails daily, plus have a cel where they can text questions for faster responses, sometimes at 1am.
I agree, I personally did online on a schedule with a zoom lecture for 3 hours. I only did online anytime that once, and it was a 5 week mini.
3 straight hours on zoom is hard as a student. I max at about 2 for attention. But yes, some online classes can be almost as good as F2F with the teacher involvement such as with giving live zoom lectures.
I do agree teachers need to be in person at the college level and secondary education.
I need to ask some teachers whether they can get both soc sec and their retirement from teaching which would be fare like someone getting a pension.
I know that every state is different on this issue.
In New York, public school teachers get a pension and social security and the majority that I personally know participate in a Voluntary Tax Differed Annuity as well that in my city guarantees 7% return if you choose the fixed amount.
This one already answered that. In Texas, the answer is no, but it does differ by state.
You can get both. But there is a catch, TRS may reduce a portion of SS depending on amount. This is because S is designed to only replace some income upon retirement, not keep the wealthy wealthy.
“In some instances, the calculation of your Social Security benefits may be affected by the TRS benefits that you receive.”
https://www.trs.texas.gov/Pages/active_member_social_security_at_trs.aspx
I would guess that as a late starter in teaching, you would get most SS, and only a little TRS, but I have not done calculations since I have paid so little into TRS, Mostly TIAA and several decades into SS pre-teaching and through another school.
edit: another source
Ok that sounds rights to pick the bigger amount as a choice between soc sec or their pension. It’s what I heard also.
Reading that last link, they have a chart where there is no reduction to SS if you have paid in for 30 years or more.
Does anybody invest with their pension? I have not sat down to look at the options, but they send you this giant packet on how to grow your money.
I talked to my wife and she confirmed that it is possible for a teacher to get both soc sec and the teacher pension if they are fully vested in both programs.
So I teach. Been teaching for five years. Was in sales and sales management for 16 years before I made the switch. Did my alternative cert in 4 weeks. So I rolled my 401k into a 403b and I put as much as I can afford into it. I love this job. My wife and I lost a child at birth with Down syndrome and I decided that one day I would give back to that community. Took me 6 years to finally pull the trigger but I jumped into developmental sped and have loved all of it.
My thoughts on the tea retirement. I paid lots of money to social security so it will prorate my trs retirement. At 60 I will be able to retire since my age plus years teaching will equal 80. I will get 52% of the average of my 3 highest years paid as my pension until I die. But when I am able to get social security my trs pension will decrease by the amount of my social security. So right now I would make roughly 29k a year before taxes and trs medical. Better than nothing but not a true pension. I get 52% because of weird equation. At 21 years I get 54%, and so on. You would have to teach for dang near 50 years to make 100% of your salary.
I disagree with some on this post about the schedule. It is awesome. Amazingly awesome. I never got a week off for thanksgiving and 2 weeks for Christmas and a spring break in the private sector. Never. I also can take my 10 PTO days whenever I want. And they roll over and that never happened at my previous positions. I can take a day or days off to hunt, or travel or whatever. They are mine. I have about 9 in the bank to end the year so I will start august with 19 days to take.
Now why are teacher quitting? Have you met Gen Ed kids these days? Not your kids, but other people’s kids? Jesus they are a handful. No child can be left behind so we keep slowing the process down to keep up with the slowest kids. No one is allowed to fail so tests are given and given and given again. No one, NO ONE, is held back. Sometimes kids just need to fail and fail big with repercussions. Parents are not connected until something goes wrong and unfortunately education still agrees that all customers are right. I have seen good teachers get written up and fired because of holding the line with rules and parents just complain and administration is weak.
Another huge thing is that the more degrees you get means the higher you rise. A lot of folks with phds are terrible at managing adults.
And let me tell you about the bureaucracy of paperwork. I spend roughly 40-50% of my time in the classroom completing forms for funding and dat collecting. I have amazing systems I have created to cut that time down a lot. My sped department has 6 other teachers and 2 are retiring this summer because the paperwork since the covids has doubled. And check out the school districts around here and their job postings right now in the pic below.
You can pay more but we will just have higher paid teachers burn out. You can let teachers teach, take away the outrageous paperwork and kill the meetings about the paperwork and bring back some discipline. That fixes a lot. You wanna fix the whole thing let school choice happen and let customer service rule the day.
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I think you have it right. Teaching is a good gig vs the private gig. You have a more secure retirement and many more days off.
What’s happening is teachers just complain about the salary which is lower than private but if you stay long enough, it really works out. 52% of salary till you die is way better than the stock market.
College educators are grossly underpaid, and have to work at multiple colleges just to meet the bar financially. It is wild we pay the least to the most qualified, and pay the most to the least qualified.
Should definitely incentivize those who studied contemporary methods of research, vs. a gen ed who passed a science 8-12th test, or some nematode that barely understands mitosis.
It’s a FANTASTIC gig and the pay is INCREDIBLE! That’s why there’s such a drastic teacher shortage!
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That just seems to be unfair to me if it is a dollar to dollar loss, for a constant net.
I have a a defined benefit pension with a company (ie not govt) and it’s also offset by social security benefits received.
I paid into SSN until I was 38, then TRS (when I began teaching) until I took “early” retirement at 64. Because the state of Texas would not allow me to continue paying SSN while paying into TRS, I received a 40% penalty on the SSN that I legitimately earned when I began drawing my benefits. In states where teachers are allowed to pay both at the same time, this penalty does not occur.