"A few extra months?" Haha, ok.

That's an insane value prop for a lot of people. Again, most Americans get 10-15 days off per year.

I'm proposing we highlight the freedom and flexibility teaching offers. Want to teach during the year and then fuck off to Indonesia for the summer? Go for it.

Want to spend your summers writing that novel you've always wanted to write? Go for it.

Want to tutor on the side and bring in extra income instead? Your decision.

Not a lot of jobs offer that level of flexibility or freedom. Easy to imagine a social media campaign that showcases this.

But the solution isn't to raise wages on an already comparable overpaid and underworked class of government employees (in comparison to their government employee peers).

Well if it's your time to sell then salaries don't need to be raised to compensate for that time.

With that argument you're saying that the $60,000 teachers are making working 8 months a year isn't enough? Seems like a stretch.

We're talking America here - and Pennsylvania to be exact.

I'll get 15 days off next year. You're saying that at the low end (just for summer) you get over two full months.

Factor in the spring break (full week off) that you're enjoying now, winter break, thanksgiving break, and all federal holidays...and then add in your own PTO on top of that, it's easily 4 months.

I'm not saying teachers don't work hard when they work. I'm saying they work less and are paid commensurate per hours worked in exchange for a unique and freeing lifestyle. Which is that should be communicated to the next generation of teachers to attract talent.

At $60,000 in a low cost of living city (basically any city in PA), teachers should be comfortable. And that's the average teaching salary in Philadelphia.

If someone lives outside of their means and wants to subsidize their income with another job, that's on them.

But there's no reason for taxpayers to subsidize what otherwise would constitute 4-months of PTO and allow teachers to double dip.

Again, if you want to attract the next generation of educators - the original point of this post - the answer isn't more money (because it's unjustified). It's instead more of a marketing issue, where teaching should be framed/sold more in terms of freedom and impact.

Exactly.

They are paid at a reasonable rate for their number of days worked.

Yeah, and they get paid to take on those extra responsibilities.

Haha and chaise lounge bikini? Don't know where you're getting that from. I'll get 15 days off next year (but probably take 10 or less). That's it. And I largely work when on vacation as necessary.

Work is quite literally my life. What I'm saying is market teaching as a profession where your career isn't so totally all-consuming. That could attract people who are interested in it, not purely driven by the financial upside, and who value their relative freedom and time more.

Not dismissive. It's important work.

Just contesting that it's underpaid. If you look at the hourly rate, it's up there with many other professions.

I'm not saying pay more. That's the lazy answer.

I'm saying highlight the benefits more, the main one being that you get 4+ months off per year, whereas most Americans get 15 days.

I see a lot of people commenting to increase the pay. Of course that would lead to more people going into teaching, but is it justified?

Teachers get ~3 months off during the summer, a week off for spring break, almost a month off for winter break, almost a week for Thanksgiving, along with all other federal holidays. That's almost 4.5 months off work per year.

So teachers are working less than 2/3 of the time an average white collar worker works. People cite "lesson planning" and claim it's outside of working hours, but teachers only teach ~3-4 classes each day, with the rest of the day preserved for this lesson planning and any miscellaneous tasks such as grading.

To that point, most teachers recycle the same content and lesson plans year after year. There's not some major planning that needs to be done before each year/class, comparable to a company's quarterly planning.

To summarize, if you project out the hourly wage of a teacher for actual time worked and factor in the value of their state-sponsored healthcare and pension benefits, they don't seem to be underpaid.

I'm not sure if raising their salaries to attract a new generation of talent is justified. Maybe there needs to be a campaign focused on highlighting the extreme benefits of time off - especially to a generation that seems to value their time more.