The Beginning...

I've been thinking.

I don't make enough money for the work that I do.  I mean, I make money. Sure. I do.  I have a pretty solid salary and alright benefits.

But still...I feel like I work harder than my pay says.

You see, though, I'm a teacher. I teach 8th Grade Language Arts.  I'm beginning my 5th year (can't believe that!) on August 24th.  Teachers have been getting an awfully bad reputation of late.  They are "lazy", "selfish", and "under-educated" because, after all, "those who CAN, Do. Those who CAN'T, Teach." Hahahaha...ha..ha..h--. Yeah. That's just not nice.

I have dedicated the majority of the last four years of my life to my students.  Staying late. Coming in early. Working Saturdays. All so that my students' test scores will improve and people will stop talking smack on teachers.  I'm not going to give you all the info on me or my kiddos right now.  Some of that will wait.  I just want you to know that I'm curious about whether I'm getting paid what I'm worth.  Hence, this blog.

I am going to post about the hours that I work.  I will then divide those hours into my yearly salary so that by the end of the school year (the end of May), I'll have a count of 1) the number of hours I WORKED this year and 2) my per hour pay for that work.

I have some "rules" worked into this so that I don't over count my work, but I'll share those on a later post. :)  For now, I'll discuss today...

I arrived to school at 12:45pm and stayed there until 4:15.  Today consisted of:
Going through materials.
Unpacking cabinets and stacks of stuff from the previous year
Reading though materials deciding on content for the year

Then, once home, I sat in the chair in my living room from 5:45-6:15:
Reading materials

So, today, I worked for 4 hours.  My salary is: $44,784.

So far this year, I make $11,196 per hour. Woohoo! :)

I am eager to see where this adventure leads. I hope that I end up pleasantly surprised that I am fairly compensated for my work and my passion for my students.

Hope to see you all regularly.

*Note: In my district, teacher do not start UNDER CONTRACT until next week.