Calculating Your Salary-seventy cents per student

Calculating Your Salary....

is interesting and fun and depressing and eye-opening.

Of course everything is relative, we all have enough to live, no teacher is starving, yadda yadda, simplicity, Oprah, be content with what you have, Om Shanti and Namaste.

Moment of Zen over.  (Ever notice how practitioners of certain professions are advised to be content whilst others are advised on how best to preserve their wealth during a volatile market??)

Okay...back from Other Musings...

Let's say you make $40,000.  That's a lot of money.  At least, it sounds like a lot of money to me, right now.  More on this later.

What is your per kid wage?  How much are you being paid per child you care for?

Selling Lesson Plans (hiatus over)

Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions


To me this is entirely non-controversial.

Do you sell cookies you have made at home (occasionally)
Do you sell private music lessons?
Do you sell your expertise on your off-hours in such endeavors as plumbing, yardwork, painting houses, how to do algebra, et cetera, times a million?

Then why in a million universes would you not be allowed to sell lesson plans?* 

I commented:

"I'll tell you who doesn't own my intellectual proerty--the school system. And as soon as schools begin laying claim to this intellectual property, teachers need to demand 1) higher salaries, 2)profit sharing in the materials developed...or they need to WALK. Teachers need to think seriously about the implications of this--what if you write a book about your classroom experiences--something unobjectionable, uplifting, non-defamatory. Perhaps that book might even land you on Oprah--you could become rich. Does the school system own the copyright?

All of this needs to be spelled out to teachers BEFORE they sign their yearly contracts. College professors know precisely what their intellectual property rights are and avail themselves of multiple opportunities to profit off of their expertise, on the lecture circuit and through publishing."

Dear Readers: forgive my typos--I was in an apoplectic fit!

***
So, finally, after weeks if not months of promising, I will begin to compile where and how you can increase your hourly wage.  Thanks to the NY Times, I have found these two websites:

weareteachers.com
teacherspayteachers.com

Soon I will be posting how to earn money delivering instruction online; however, I personally have found this terrifically difficult to break into.

Most radical--starting one's own private school, charter school, home school, tutoring company-whatever you want to call it. 

"Unschooling-inspired commune slash ashram."

More to come.


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*Obvious reasons why (not):

• you did not write the lesson plans--this is called plagiarism--DOI!!
• you co-wrote them with other colleagues--hey--split the profit!  Get their permission first!
• the school system paid you to write them - still unclear--a newspaper may pay you to write an article, yet you STILL OWN THE COPYRIGHT!!!!  It's called an anthology--I writemusic criticism, and do plan one day tocollect these and other writing togather for publication.  I'd like the newspapers to try to stop me.

Laugh, then cry, then laugh again.

Who here is so exhausted they can't see straight?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Try laughing:

Rated G: http://dilbert.com/

Why does this not exist for teachers?

Rated PG: http://mylifeisaverage.com/


Rated PG-13: [Is The F-word "PG?" I don't know and am too lazy to look it up...]

This is the funniest thing I've read....in forever, and I can't even LOOK at the "Owl" posting because it makes me laugh so hard I thought I'd have to go to Patient First....

Rated R: http://www.cracked.com/

In brief, this site saved my life many times.

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On Twitter: Please follow "TeensAreMorons."  I just discovered Twitter, oh, 7 1/2 minutes ago.  Turns out a good friend of mine, a teacher as well, has this tweet.  Actually, I think she changed it to: "Moronic Teens."

Whatevs.

Should you visit a student's home?

How about "no?" [short answer--long answer below...]
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Texas Teacher stabbed and killed

"A special-education teacher who had a passion for music was fatally stabbed Wednesday morning in a Texas high school classroom, and police took a 16-year-old student into custody.

***
I don't want to sensationalize.  It is sad when anyone dies, when anyone is killed.

For some reason I am particularly affected when a teacher is killed.  It seems that the student was not in control of his own behaviors--I don't mean in the way a lot of our students are "out of control."  I mean in the sense that he may have been psychiatric, so I'm sure his life is now ruined, in some ways.

For some reason, I'm not in a mood to lay blame, to scold, to pout, to rant, perhaps because it feels disrespectful.