I taught for some years–after being in business–then I left teaching and went back to business. Who knows? I might return one day. I enjoyed it.

But, I used to say two things in the teachers’ lounge:

1-If you think teaching is hard, leave for a year, go sell furniture or mine coal. You’ll be kissing the lounge floor when you get back that you’re employed as a teacher.

2-You can’t pay a good teacher enough. But, not everyone’s a good teacher. If you’re a teacher, then you know that far too many are more concerned with anything but teaching. Unfortunately, the teachers’ unions have made it almost impossible for these people to be replaced. I used to say that you had to rape the principal’s daughter in order to get fired. In our county, I can only remember 2 teachers getting fired in a 24-year period.

When teachers get serious and demand that their unions reward good teaching, then people will get serious about returning teachers to the status they had in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Teachers want to be treated as “professionals” but act like anything but. The only thing that qualifies them as ‘professionals’ would be their argument of continuing education–which unfortunately, as I’m sure you well know–involves many times taking classes in Communications, Education, anything but their core teaching fields.

Again, I’m not saying that this is all teachers, but the good ones have allowed the others to co-opt them and the public has taken notice. Teachers should do something about that instead of attacking the people who pay the bills.