One of the changes in Education not for the good

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I was eating supper in a restaurant and over heard some teachers talking across from my table. They were complaining about parents who did not get enough different colored folders for their children. These teachers felt that there should be a different color and unique color for each subject. Having been school shopping with my grandchildren (a long summer experience as we shopped different sales each week to get the best price). As I looked over the list for different elementary schools I saw some very interesting items. A metal 12 inch ruler ($4.59 vs $0.01 for the plastic sale one), Vinyl folders ($0.79 vs paper ones on sale $0.01), a notebook not wire bound(Composition book $1.59 vs wire bound sale $0.10). What made this interesting was the teacher were talking about their weekend and one group spent the long weekend at their cabin up north, while another was water skiing at their parents summer lake home, while anther was talking about going to the cities (Minneapolis-St Paul) to do school shopping for her children. Both my wife and I were in education for over 50 combined years. What I saw was a new generation of teacher who were better off than most of the people in the city where they taught. They were talking of vacations and new cars while most of the parents I saw shopping the Back to School sales were telling their children that they could choose the color of the sale ruler they wanted or did they want the black or blue sale pens. It seems to me that we are getting a generation of teachers who are in teaching because they enjoy working with kids but also for the pay (STARTING SALARY BETWEEN $30,000 AND $40,000 PLUS HEALTH AND DENTAL INSURANCE AND AN EMPLOYER PAID RETIREMENT PLAN), vacation time off both during the year and the summer, and the guaranteed raises not based on performance, and after 2-3 years tenure. Many are from middle class or better and have lost touch with the families of the children they are teaching. I am not advocating that we go back to the days when teacher were one step above poverty but they need to be held accountable and produce results with their students. We need to stop the practice of giving professional education credit for an English teacher to tour for 4 weeks in Europe and attend 4 Art Galleries and count it as professional development. the same applies to teachers who are also coaches and take a coaching seminar and get professional development credit for their teaching. Many teachers do not live in the real world nor do they understand what most people go through to make a living.