It’s Called Desperation With A $250 Price Tag

After working in both “regular” and special education schools, I truly understand why many new teachers leave within 5 years (the burn out rate is supposedly 3 years for special ed.). When I began teaching at my current school, a young lady who was hired at around the same time that I was, quit in less than a month.  While I haven’t seen any teachers quit that soon, I’ve seen teaching assistants and other aides last anywhere from a week to a few months.

With each person who bit the dust, I didn’t fault them at all.  In my mind I was saying, I understand.  The pay (anywhere between $8 and $11 an hour) isn’t worth the physical and mental risk.  An aide at my school had a book thrown, full force, at the back of her head last month, in addition to being cursed out and called just about every name under the sun on a daily basis.  And that’s just the kids.  I don’t have it in me today to go into detail about the the A.P. who is always on the internet looking up sports and suddenly becomes busy when help is needed with a difficult kid.  And don’t get me started on the micromanaging, control freak DoE, who saunters in and out classrooms critiquing everything that students and staff are doing, and making assumptions after spending less than a few minutes in the room.  

Today on Craigslist,  I noticed an ad in search of teaching assistants at a well known special ed. school in the L.A. area.  This school states that they are growing and is therefore in need of more Help.  This school is promising $250 to anyone who completes 30 days of employment for the remainder of the 2006-2007 school year and an additional $250 to those who stay on for 30 more days in the 2007-2008 school year.

On a side note, my school once advertised a higher rate of pay than what some of the aides who had been there for a while were getting paid, along with benefits that went into effect immediately.   As you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with most of the other aides.  In fact, two quit over this issue of pay and working environment. 

However, I just wish this particular school who placed the ad on Craigslist would keep it real.  I see advertisements in the L.A. Times and on Craiglist from this particular school on a regular basis.  They are constantly in need of staff, like many other non-public special education schools in the area.   The truth of the matter is that there is simply a high turnover rate for staff in this segment of Education.  Nobody stays long if they can help it.  To me, the school’s advertisement blares: WE’RE DESPERATE FOR HELP!

But seriously folks.  $250 . . .  250 whole dollars?  Do you think it’s  worth it?

BrightMinds Featured on USA Today

To my surprise, after having been away from my blog for a while, I log on to find out that I caught the attention of USA Today.  Wow! 

My post, It’s No Longer Safe To Teach In Public Schools , caught someone’s attention I guess.  That particular post was more of me releasing some pent up frustration.  Surely I could have named other incidents involving student threats and actual attacks.  Whatever the case, my feelings remain unchanged. I don’t think schools can been seen as safe havens anymore.  Not when kids are shooting up the place, teachers are routinely being physically and verbally assaulted and no one, not parents or school administrators, seem willing to put their foot down to put an end to this mess.

If the link within the post will not display the USA Today site, click on the link below:

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Unintended Hiatus

I know, just when you were beginning to think that I was MIA, voila!  I show up.

Sorry for having been gone for a while.  It was truly unintended.  I got caught up with work and school (a recent paper caused major writer’s block and anxiety) and one day blurred right into the next.  Then when I emerged, or at least wanted to emerge, I grew extremely frustrated with WordPress because it is restricting many things that I would like to do with this site, namely adding polls and surveys for my readers.  My frustration continued to grow yesterday when I tried to upload photos and the files weren’t being read correctly.  Ugh!!!  That’s when I began looking at other blogging services. 

While I think WordPress has a very easy to use format, it is limited in comparison to others such as Blogger and TypePad.  I have a trial membership with TypePad right now and I’m trying to get the hang of their format.  In the meantime, I will remain here, but know that a change could come.  I will definitely let you all know when or if it happens.

So, keep on reading.  Blogging and the feedback that I get from all of you is my catharsis.  As cliched as it may be, the pen keyboard is indeed mightier than the sword. As using the sword on some of the students (and colleagues too) that I work with  would most likely land me in jail!

Take care folks and have a great day!