In which I piss in your Cheerios

I've simply  heard enough of this particular argument.  Lambaste me, call me evil, call me what you will, but I can no longer tolerate this pity party. I am one of you, albeit slightly different, and your becoming an embarrassment to what I hold sacred............

 One fine example.

Proposed teacher salary pay cuts.  It's a really popular and heated topic round here.  It's all over our multiple newspapers,  nonstop board meetings, and even to be heard as a conversational topic in some local pubs.  I think possibly the only thing that could compete in notoriety would the "Occupy" movement in this county.

I am a teacher. I am a Special Education Teacher.  I am a Special Education Teacher with a special needs child of my own.  I am a Special Education Teacher who works with the most severely affected in the county.

I teach Non Public.  I teach at the most restrictive Non Public setting there is prior to institutionalization.

I make at least $18,000 dollars less a year then the public teaching sector.  I have no union, no union contractual minimum raises, and no union protection.  Our raises are based solely on merit, and in the last eleven years we have been subject to five pay freezes because the budget didn't allow for them.  Given the current budget crisis, everybody got a flat two percent pay raise, even if they deserved much more. 

I have had my classroom budget slashed by seventy five percent of what it use to be.  I have had to take on more responsibility, work more hours, figure out ways to be more creative when it comes to still writing meaning full goals that will assist my students (sans the budget money to accomplish those goals), and go back to the drawing table to recreate the whole classroom schedule when it comes to Community Based Instruction and how to access that without the previous money that funded it. 

I still pay over eight hundred dollars a month for medical benefits for my family, with costs continuing to rise every year. 

I still put in a minimum ten hour day, every day, without the luxury of overtime.

The public sector teachers have the audacity to complain about proposed pay cuts,  the roll back of their contractual seven percent salary increase, and that they begin to contribute to their health benefits cost to save our schools from insolvency.

Are you F***ing kidding me?  Take a look around at our economy.  What makes you so special that you think you don't need to make concessions like most of the rest of the country has?  How many people have been downsized, laid off, become unemployed, lost their retirement, their homes, and those that did retain employment, not take on heaps more job responsibilities while their companies adjusted to the lack of money? 

I know my household income was cut by half, the fees for my daughters school jumped ten dollars a unit, my insurance premiums tripled, and I now help support my once very well to do parents.  What makes you any different than the rest of us that have had to give up so much?

Teaching is an insanely difficult and time consuming profession.  It's certainly not for everyone.  But it is a calling.  And with any job you may perform, you need to love what you do because it's what you want to do in life, and not base its merits on the pay you receive.  Such thinking will only set you up for the feelings of dissatisfaction that you publicly complain about now.  Waisting all this effort on being pissed off that your going to  have to become like the rest of us surely must take away from your effectiveness in your job currently. 

We all have to compromise and sacrifice and some point and time.  Some of us have made that decision long ago when we entered the field because we wanted to do more for our community, and not for ourselves.  Some of us have been offered all those extra dollar signs to work for the public entity and turned it down because we know that in the long run we wont have as much impact of the life of a student; which is why we went down this road in the first place.