Salary boost. How do you feel?

[Philly]

Pretty much every professional job out there is evaluated by results, and not by your boss stopping by to observe you for 10 minutes randomly. My boss doesn't care if I have an Eagles or Phillies blog up when he walks by, but I would be held accountable if I don't deliver results, even though I have to get others to cooperate with me in order to achieve results. If people I need to cooperate with me are refusing to do so, I need to figure out a way to make it work. If I couldn't find a way to get others to work with me I would probably eventually lose my job, because even if I'm working hard all day, I won't be able to deliver anything unless I get others to work with me.

For some reason teachers think standing up at the front of the class and carrying yourself professionally while someone from administration takes notes is "merit". I don't mean this as a dick or anything. I'm just saying the student is the customer, the client. And clients are CONSTANTLY acting childish and stubborn, but we somehow have to get them to work with us in every other industry, so why not education? If you fail at this, you fail at the job. Why should you be rewarded for putting together a great lecture for the class if you can't get any of the students to actually tune in and learn something from it?

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Philly]

Menson, I have no lack of respect for how difficult this is. That being said, you endorsed merit pay but are now basically saying results don't really indicate if you're a good teacher or not cause society is f**k up. In other words you're telling me you can't do your job. But you want merit pay.

[The Comrade]

so the teacher that gets stuck teaching the idiot kids can never hope to be paid shit? this isn't dangerous minds. not every group of shitbreath students can just be motivated by a teacher with enough moxie.

[Philly]

[The Comrade]

i don't think there's anything wrong paying teachers for being great teachers. i mean putting in the effort and whatnot is important. it seems silly to penalize a person if they are doing everything right and giving 110% simply because they teach a group of spiteful idiots with underdeveloped brains.

[Philly]

Teacher's job is to teach. The fact that they're trying is nice but if no results are being produced then I have problem with giving them merit pay. Merit Pay, which perhaps is just not a good idea, is intended to reward teachers who find ways to be effective and teach students. Perhaps we should just acknowledge that some classrooms are pretty much unteachable but it's kind of part of the social contract that we try and just give teachers a larger base salary because it's kind of a shitty job and we'd preferably like to attract somewhat smart people to do it. Obviously that doesn't solve how f**k a lot of our schools are but I can't see the value in merit pay if it isn't based in results.

[The Comrade]

if someone refuses to learn, but is legally mandated to attend class, how does this reflect in any way on a teacher's merit?