Quoted: My wife teaches at a private school and sadly makes much less than if she were in the school district. But she absolutely loves her job, and the kids are great. As ARin said the majority of the time a QUALITY teacher puts in, is the time spent on the Lesson plans, grading, inputing grades, keeping class website info current, curriculum changes, communication with parents, striving to find "fresh" material/activities, portfolios, Accelerated Reader tests, ... Icould go on and on... I know that my wife puts in 50-60+ hrs/week to stay on top of things. Allocation of the money and accountability of expenditures seem to be the big problem with the district.
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What surprised me over and above the extra hours (grading, impromptu parent teacher conferences--they just drop by) was the money that teachers spend out of their own pockets for their classes. They need learning tools and games for their classes? Or prizes for exceptional behavior? They are at Learning is Fun buying stuff. Sure, SOME of it is reimbursed, but it's pretty inspiring when you go there weeks before class to see the dedicated few who are they diligently and meticulously setting up their class rooms for their incoming class.
As for the language issue, sounds like my kids will have an advantage, if the grandparents (Lolo and Lola) keep talking to them in Tagalog
Quoted: I feel the accent will be a hard one to deal with. The school district is NOT putting these teachers in the better schools... but in the lower performing schools. A majority of the kids at the lower performing schools are Latino and some already have a problem with the English langauge to begin with. Now, you throw a Mexican (legal or not) kid who has hard time understanding English and have a Philipina teacher who might have a heavy accent and there are going to be some problems.
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I think it's a little premature to judge the accent before you actually hear it
This is no different than the Chinese or Russian Calculus teacher that I had in high school. Couldn't understand a damn thing they were saying, and you'd have to bust ass reading the text book.
As for teacher placement, teachers are free to apply at diffferent schools. Some go to schools closer to where they live, for an easier commute; some because of better teacher support; etc. Some pick schools with lower learning disabled kids. If the County is utilizing 'plug and play' with these teachers, they will go to where there are openings.
Some communities (green valley, to be specific) provide tremendous support for their schools. My wife worked at one in GVR, and saying how in a student fund raising venture, the community/parents raised some crazy amount of money, like $40k. You can't get a tenth of that in some of the less affluent communities.