I appreciated your thoughts, and look forward to hearing more about them when you get back here to Sacramento (which is finally free of smoke in the air!

Larry

You’ve said a lot so I’ll just echo the first part of your post…Many tech teachers I see in my district, for example, do not have down their content knowledge or teaching pedagogy down. You’re right that we need to be honing our general teaching skills as well as tech savviness.

I also agree that although I find a lot of the blogging theorists interesting they’re not writing in a place where the average teacher lives.

What makes this question even more interesting is the idea that we just might be harming ourselves by going above and beyond all the time!

I sometimes wonder if the extra effort that I put in at my school and for my students beyond my contract and long into the evening for no additional compensation is simply being taken for granted by my administrators, by law makers, by the community.

People have just grown to expect that I’ll do whatever it takes to make my kids successful.

And while I’m passionate about that work—and committed to helping kids regardless of the personal costs—I worry that I’m making it easy for “the powers at be” to avoid giving me a raise!

Why pay me more for work that I’m already doing for free?

What’s more, I worry that I raise the bar to ridiculous levels for other teachers. You see, I haven’t been lucky enough to be a parent yet, so I’ve got more extra time on my hands than the average teacher.

I invest that time into reading and writing about my profession and developing cutting edge instructional experiences for my kids. I also spend more on my classroom than most teachers that I know. If we need a new digital tool, I’ll buy it. If we need new books for the bookshelf, I’ll buy it.

And while I earn plenty of celebration for that work, other teachers are criticized because they’re not more like me. “If Mr. Ferriter can do all those wonderful things with his kids, why can’t you?” they’ll ask.

So the question rumbling through my mind is do Uber-Teachers who go far beyond the normal expectations for educators do more harm or more good for our profession?

If we drew a clear line in the sand and refused to cross it, would we be able to get others to value the work that we’ve always done for free?

Sure—it would run contrary to all that we are as teachers to turn away from meaningful work that would be left undone without us…..but if we just keep doing this work without demanding fair compensation, will our salaries ever rise to levels comparable to other professionals?

You’ve got me thinking today…
Bill

Teaching is unique among professions. We do become attached to our students and their families. We should and must give of ourselves, and, for most of us, the time, money and energy spent on our students goes way beyond what we are paid for.