The Successful Teacher
What defines your success as a teacher? Is it the numbers years you attended college? How many years of experience you have? Or are you school board certified?
If you work in the district that I attended you will be defined as a successful teacher based off your students performance. This is type of pay is known as pay for performance, knowledge and skilled based par or merit pay. Merit pay began in 1999 with the purpose to whole teachers accountable. Based on “Targeting teachers” before 1999 a teacher’s success was based on how many of their students attended college which seem to be logical with little to complain about but with merit pay there seems to be more disadvantages then advantages. Three important disadvantages that merit pay displays is that teachers do not teach for money, and no one will want to teach challenging kids, teachers are not only the influence on the lives of there students.
The average yearly salary for a South Carolina Teacher is $48,375, which is not an awful salary but it’s definitely not enough to go expensive vacations and drive a Maserati. Based off its salary teaching is an occupation that one feels called to do. When I first got into to my teacher cadet class the first thing my teacher told our class was “ teaching is not for everyone, it takes a person willing to change a generation one student at a time to become a teacher.” It should not be about the money, teachers should not be competing over who can teach better, and battling to get the smarter kids in there class.
My favorite teacher in high school was my teacher cadet teacher for my junior and senior year, but for the last four periods of the day she is a ninth grade English teacher. She was not only my favorite teacher; every student that ever had her, will say she was the favorite teacher. She not only taught the material in a way that every student could comprehend but she was able to connect with the kids emotionally. Students are able to go her with their personal problems and trust that she will keep their secrets and give them the best advice. In our eyes she is a successful teacher but according to the state she is not because the ninth graders she teach at 3:00 in the afternoon that are tired from the day and ready to go home do not have good test scores, because what ninth grader looks for to there last class of the day to talk about The Canterbury Tales.
There is another teacher that is complete opposite, she teaches the AP and honor students all day every day, and of course those students test well; also some of the AP students just needed to be pointed in the right direction they do not need an hour lecture to grasp a couple of concepts. Do those students go to her and just vent, or is it school, school, school, with that teacher all day. I noted in a previous article that students spend majority of their young life in school, so the biggest influence on their life are their peers and teachers. Its not fair for a teacher that is a mom away from home who only teaches ninth grade English to be paid less than a teacher, that is nothing more but a teacher to their AP and honor students.
There was a student in my class my junior year in high school that went to sleep every single day in class, the only days he did not go to sleep was the days he was not there. It was so frequent that my teacher finally made him stand up every day in class so he would not fall asleep, that did not stop him from getting his quality nap. One day that student stopped coming to school and we later found out that he was living out of a car with his father and had to work a night shift to help his dad. Yes, students do spend most their life in school but we do not know what they have going home at home. For that reason it is wrong to place all the blame on the teachers because like my classmate, how can we expect him to come to school and perform well everyday if he is sleeping a car.
Teaching is much more then giving out test and homework, being a teacher is more like being a motivator. Someone there to help guide students in the right directions, to build them up with compliments and cliché phrases like “you got this don’t give up” and not break them down with tests results that label them below average. Teachers should be paid on how well there students in life not tests scores because ultimately teachers are preparin students to go out in the real and be great husbands, wives, fathers and mothers.
