Central Illinois | billw - 10/19/2016 19:56
Teachers have the week off between Christmas and New Years too, plus they have spring break, some schools have fall break, etc. The "in-service" days seem to be very plentiful anymore, and the kids are not at school then, so it's not like every day the teachers are at school they're working directly with the kids or accumulating homework from that day to grade at night. Same with conference days and teacher work days when school is closed.
There is no such thing as a teacher work day in any district I know of around Illinois. She does have 2-3 "in-service" days that are spent jumping through government hoops that have little to do with education. As far as accumulated student work, it never ends until summer, regardless of whether a student is at school on a day or the day is without school. Only three or four times a year does she not go into school on a weekend and spend an 4-5 hours working on something for the students.
Mathematically teachers time off is not nearly as skewed as people make it out to be compared to many private sector careers. Just the time in the classroom is about 75% of most private sector careers, which is what people prefer to look at, but if one adds in weekends and nights it is closer to 125% working.
In response to defined retirement, my wife's father had a defined retirement, and we are in central Illinois where many major employers do have defined benefits as well.
In response to finances, with my wifes education, she has looked in the private sector and has found most jobs that she would be qualified for to start at 2-3 times her current pay. When she hired on at her current school she replaced a teacher who left for a private sector job as it had better hours and payed significantly more than teaching. I will admit that she is not the average teacher in education as she is in sciences and with her background knowledge in physics, mathematics and science she is more sought after than someone who teaches in most other areas of education.
All jobs are challenging in their own right and I find it silly to compare one to another, I only do in response to people who feel a need to make comparisons. I dont expect anyone to change their mind, but it would be nice if they actually did the math on hours of teachers vs equivalent private sector jobs, and actually compared apples to apples.
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