I taught high school math and computer science for five years in the mid-80's. Despite the fact that I had a Master’s degree in Math and two years towards a Ph.D. I had spent the previous five years being an acrobat and supporting myself generally by jobs involving driving.
I delivered flowers for the guy who came up with the idea of putting cut flowers in supermarkets, I was a clerk’s helper in one of those supermarkets, spent some time doing the dairy case at a Trader Joe’s , was a carpenter, a mover, and finally reached the pinnacle of my blue collar days. I landed a Teamsters union job delivering dairy products.
Unlike in education, the salary structure of the job was very egalitarian. Once I had completed my 60 day probation I was making the same as someone who had ten or fifteen years in, and that came to $27,000 per year, a substantial sum in 1982.
That sounded great at the start, but they have other ways of handling the seniority issue, and that came down to job assignments. We all got paid for 48 hours per week no matter how much — or how little — we worked. The old guys had routes where they handled 100–150 cases of product daily delivering to sites within 5–10 miles of the dairy. I, as the rookie, had a special truck, the only one with two rear axles to handle the 300+ cases I was toting out to my route which was 20–30 miles away. I was lucky to finish in 12 hours.
When I found out that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was so desperate for math teachers that I could get an emergency credential and start teaching — and earning — immediately, I jumped at that opportunity. I was teaching within months.
That was the good news — the bad news was the substantial cut in pay. My first year salary was $13,500, which is ironically half of what I was making as a Teamster. Keep in mind that even to get that job required at least a Bachelor’s degree (I had that plus Master’s, plus two years towards a Ph.D.) while I do recall that the dairy did require drivers to have a high school diploma.
Oh yeah, the other bad news that there was no coasting when it came to volume of work. I always had 4–5 different classes, so there were a lot of preps. I spent many hours in coffee shops, grading papers. At least I was a math teacher and did not have to wade through hand-written and poorly executed essays like you English teachers do.
I also had to take college course work towards a full credential. I did have the summer off, but as I was only paid during the nine months I was actually teaching I really had to work and struggle to stay afloat until paychecks started in again in the Fall. Hard to put enough aside from that whopping $13.5K salary to make it though the lean times.
The saddest part of the whole educational structure is that the teachers who are working the hardest are getting paid the least. The new teachers who are learning new material, preparing those lesson plans for the first time, and riding high on motivation are making only a fraction of what the old fossil who hasn’t created a fresh lesson plan in the last 20 years is earning.
Maybe we should have a system where we get really good, motivated, and energetic folks and pay them good salaries to teach for maybe a five year hitch. Then it is on to something else. Worked for me — except for the paid well part — and it seems to have worked for you too.
