Iron Mary. You sound like a conscientious teacher. I agree that your get to work at 8 and leave at 4, that is 7 hours or “work” less some useful time spent at home marking and preparing.
I am very grateful to some of the wonderful teachers I remember from years ago and I really appreciate the effort that is made.
The question I propose is would you be willing to take a smaller class size and a smaller paycheque? A paycheque that is closer to teachers wages in Advanced western Europe where socialism is firmly entrenched?
That would reduce your hours, your stress but also your paycheque. It would also help the 10s of thousands of graduates who couldn’t get jobs as teachers.
I am not a hater, I fully support teachers, but there is only so much money.

It is important for society to put the right amount of money into the right things, and therefore why should we have crowded classrooms while spending as much as other countries on education.
Teachers salaries eat up the vast majority of education spending. By reducing pay with work load I see the following benefits.

1. Smaller class sizes
2. Happier teachers
3. Lower unemployment
4. Teachers who are in it for the money leave
5. Better educational outcomes
6. Less stress for new teachers who right now have to temp and be beaten up in the first 5 years in order to have the blessing of getting on full time.
7. Because the ones in it for the money leave the ones that are left are not listening to their griping and bellyaching and the work day is that much shorter.

cupricity,
one thing you gloss over is that out of all the provinces and territories, BC is second lowest at 12th out of 13.
At the start of the Liberals in power, BC teachers were ranked #2 on the salary grid, which one might expect in a resource rich province.
I googled the teachers’ salary grid. For a teacher in PG with a Bachelor’s degree, salary ranged from $45909 to $74353 (after 10 years ). At UNBC, it takes 6 years of university to become a teacher. Not a huge salary, especially for those starting out and paying off student loans.

As a friend of mine noted, his kid, a first year apprentice made more than a first year teacher.

No mater what the trade or profession, if you treat your employees unfairly, they get mad. We aren’t teachers so anything we say about it has to be taken with a grain of salt. We don’t understand, we don’t get it, it’s not our fight. We may have kids in the system but that doesn’t mean that we know more than the next person not directly involved.

Isn’t it funny how teachers have been ‘treated unfairly’ for the last 30 years or so, while other government employees are able to make deals.

At some point, you have to stop pointing the finger at government.

Karrman,

If they want to make more in Alberta let em go. There are tens of thousands of grads who CAN’T get a job as a teacher. It is no secret that most would be teachers never even get to be temp.

As for wages the AVERAGE wage is 74,000 not the top wage, this is a function of the number of teachers with Masters degrees. The number of teachers with Masters is a further reflection of the long line ups to become a teacher and the shortage of people who actually get in.

As for Canadian vs International salaries it really doesn’t matter what the other provinces do they have the exact same difficulties in getting a job anywhere. Well maybe there are a few openings in Ft Ware, or Tuktyatok, but essentially we have a system where:

1.We pay our teachers double the average for the rest of the world (74,000)

2. There are 70,000 people credited to teach in BC

3. 31,000 teach.

4. Our kids have some of the most crowded conditions in the world.

5. We spend the same amount of money on education as other countries that have smaller classes.

Want to make more money as a heavy duty apprentice? Fly at it. 16 hour days spent wrenching in -30 on a mt top in 70 km/h winds.

http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/2014/04/bcs-teacher-surplus-is-it-more-than-a-math-problem/

There’s no doubt it’s tough for new teachers to find full time positions in the province, it’s tough to even get regular work as a teacher-on-call (TOC) in some districts. I know this from personal experience as professor in UBC’s teacher education and because the guy who cuts my hair received his BEd from UBC four years ago.

Here are the numbers, according to Smyth:

number of people currently holding a valid BC teaching certificate: 69,400
number of full-time-equivalent teachers in the public school system: 30,101.
Of course, as Smyth points out, some of the folks in the first group are not in the public school classroom, but are employed educators, either as administrators in public schools or as teachers in independent schools, etc.

Anyway you cut it, there is a oversupply of credentialed teachers in relation to available jobs in BC. This is circumstance BC educators and teachers educators have been aware of for many years, even as provincial universities have continued to graduate about twice as many BEds per year as there are province-wide vacancies (about 1,800 teacher education grads per year for about 900 teaching vacancies per year). In 1999, there were 5,000 active TOCs and a British Columbia Teachers’ Federation survey indicated that on average TOCs work worked about 73 days per year (40% of the school year) and earned about $11,000.00 per year (20% of average teacher salary).

What does an overabundance of people who have taken university courses have to do with the current crop of teachers and their demands for wages, benefits and job conditions? If we are simply going to play the supply/demand card like we do with everything from soup to gas, let’s apply the principle to what you do for a living.
If there are numerous un-employed teachers out there, either blame the people for taking the wrong career path or blame the university entrance folks for taking their applications.
Either way, it has SFA to do with contracted teachers gainfully employed by any school district in Canada.

Ummm, PG guy, it’s called a market… Why do you think people get paid different amounts for doing different jobs.
My job is so perfectly aligned with the market that if I fail to perform I am hungry very rapidly.
Why should we pay people more to do something because they have a big tough union that eats like a leach on the taxpayers back, when we don’t have too.
Many industries are paying more these days, mechanics, welders, operators, doctors, nurses. These people are in short supply. Teachers are not.
I would guarantee that you would not pay more for canadian beef at 1 store than you would pay for canadian beef at another store. Especially not 50% more.
We pay 50% more for our teachers than Sweden, France, Norway, Italy etc. We get bigger class sizes.
Who pays for these bigger class sizes? Our kids, both the ones at school and the ones who got BAs who can’t get jobs and would love to make 35,000 a year with 3 months off and guaranteed pensions.

Cupricity: your teacher statistics are very skewed. Why? The teacher regulation branch retains non-practicing teachers on their roster of teachers in BC as long as the teacher pays their yearly fees. Many, many teachers keep paying these fees to keep up their certification. The govt uses the non-practicing teachers in their stats. Also, there are many generalist type teachers but teachers with solid Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Foreign languages, specific trades, are dwindling as these groups are better paid with better conditions and respect in other occupations. These govt. statistics are just as disengenuous as the Clark Liberals announcing through their colleagues/journalists at the Black Press that they have paid off all the HST costs they must pay to Harper over the HST scandel.

Taxpayer

“teachers with solid Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Foreign languages, specific trades,are dwindling as these groups are better paid with better conditions and respect in other occupations”

That statement is too funny!! Not sure there would be many other occupations who could respect and stand up for the continual whining and complaining on work conditions. Teachers are fairly compensated salary wise and have one of the best benefit and pension plans in all of Canada. Salary, benefits, and pension need to be considered as a whole when evaluating a teachers compensation.

For once try and work with the government on fair increases.

I personally hope the government loses the court case and pulls the entire salary increase off the table. If the government loses the court case there won’t sufficient funds in the kitty to fund everything. The government will likely just pull the salary increases off the table and fund the class size ruling by the courts. I would love it if this is all they did!

Happy striking folks! Here’s hoping for 14 straight days of rain!!

Whether my statistics are skewed or not remains beside the point. There is no shortage of teachers. The classrooms are too full the teachers account. Are they willing to take a paycut to have smaller class sizes.

Cupricity,

The surplus of teachers you parrot from government is simply not true. After Justice Griffin’s ruling in February, 12 school districts submitted sworn affidavits saying why the ruling would hurt districts if they had to go back to the 2002 language. One of the key factors in their affidavits was that there are not enough teachers to go back to the class size and composition of 2002.

In regards to your last sentence. Teachers already took a pay cut to have smaller class sizes in 1998. That was the contract that was illegally ripped up in 2002. You can’t possibly think teachers are stupid enough to do that again.