FoxTrot by Bill Amend for February 27, 2022

crafty

1/3 + 1/4 + 1/6 + 1/7 is just a tad under 9/10

As for me, I wonder how long it is until she decides to use her Masters Degree for something that pays better than teaching high school. TikTok, maybe not so much… though people do dream…

Today’s classic Sunday strip we’re missing:

https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2001/02/25

Ten minutes before she drafted that homework

If anyone else is curious, those expenses add up to 102% of her income, putting her even further into debt.

I think she probably meant OnlyFans instead of TikTok, but didn’t want to get in trouble with the administration.

If we don’t start paying teachers a living wage our education system is going to be in more trouble than it already is. A lot of school districts just can’t find enough teachers.

And that’s no joke.

1 1/56th

And what amount is spent on classroom supplies for her students?

The sad thing is that the above scenario is all too true of so many American teachers. Even with a master’s degree, salary is not enough to cover expenses. And I didn’t have student loan debt.

She just needs more expenses, to make use of the fact that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … = -1/12.

What is a Tok-Tik dancer?

And don’t forget the parents yelling at you because you gave their precious baby a bad grade. And don’t forget the school board meetings where people with no kids at all scream and call you names and threaten board members. Is it any wonder there’s been a growing teacher shortage for years?

Did anyone forget that “Uncle Sam” and the State want some money too.

If “Mary Lou” has a Master’s Degree, and had ANY kind of marketable skill, she wouldn’t be worried about her income. Mary Lou must be a millennial who thinks the world owes her a living … welcome to the real world Mary Lou!

This is depressing but true.

Too late. Mary Lou already is a Tik-Tok dancer.

cracked me up!

She should move to Canada. My sister and her husband taught high-school, and they owned a large home, one of those monster GMC motorhomes, and a Mercedes. They spent their summers travelling the world on luxury tours.

I started teaching in a school in East Saint Louis. I had offers in the suburbs, but MLK had just been murdered, and I figured I would do whatever I could to help take up the slack. There were no supplies, such as pencils, paper, and the kids families were having trouble putting food on the table. They had to share books, and what they had was years old. Around Christmas, my husband asked me " Honey, I know how much you love your job, but do you have any idea when you might start at least breaking even?"

About 40% of those people who major in education, get a teaching job and start teaching are replaced before they make tenure year. Very few who survive that five years are poor teachers. I have taught and I have worked in an office. The major difference is that when you are working in an office you do not have to be paying 100% attention 100% of the time. This isn’t a demand from the front office. It is necessary to maintain the classroom discipline and get the job done. A poor teacher pays for it in student disrespect, and they pay for it heavily.And, when you leave work, you leave work. Each class requires about 20 minutes of prep time if you are revising lessons you have done before. If it’s a new lesson, an hour or two is more likely.After getting a total of 6 1/2 years of college and working for 32 years, I was making about 75% of what my nephew was two years into a sales job.All of the ideas for improving education add about 20% to the classroom hours, and no additional money seems to be available to get extra people to help with the job. Paying the people who are doing it more might make them happy, but it’s not going to increase the quality, because it would be an overwhelming amount of work. Eventually, they are going to get to the point where no one with the intelligence to do the job is going to be dumb enough to take it.

Where does she live that taxes are less than 1/4 of her income?

And people wonder why I quit teaching…

Masters, Shmasters, what you need is to be a Dancer

Ah, Mary Sue math…

Yes we should pay teachers more. Then we’d maybe have better teachers. There are those who don’t think we should be paying them too much as teaching is a calling. But shouldn’t we be paying people better for doing such important work? And inflation sucks for all but a few of us now.

Mathematics fan fiction.

The irony is that you don’t need a Master’s degree to teach high school math so she could have saved on her student loans.

Cut out the excessive wine consumption and she might hit her goal sooner…

And thus the porn industry was created.

Problem #1: the old adage is, you shouldn’t have to spend more than 25% of your salary on your rent/mortgage, but Mary Lou is paying 1/3.

Problem #2: where does most of the money used to pay the teacher salaries come from? If it’s property taxes, then the problem is getting enough of the homeowners that don’t have school-age kids to pay for a property tax increase that “only helps someone else’s kids.”

The median high school teacher is making $62k for 9 months of work+2 weeks at Xmas and another week+ at Spring Break. Teaching can be hard but it can also be easy.I had teachers in the 60s who would not grade papers-we would exchange papers in class and the teacher would call out the answers and we would mark each other’s papers(which was a great way to cheat by over looking wrong answers for a friend). The same teachers often would just copy test for the teacher’s edition of the textbook.

Looks like a coded message for help…….

News Flash! It’s not just TEACHERS! Teachers just have a bigger lobby so their plight is pushed harder. Most people who read this who are not public educators or related to one, are probably thinking the same thing. It is tuff on us all now. Many good people who are not teachers face the same type of numbers monthly. Inflation is killing us people!And our government keeps printing more money! And giving it away to other countries. The Ukraine funding alone is huge. ($350 million this week) (1/22 $200 million & 3/21 $125 million , 8/21 $60 million,) that is $735 million since 3/21! Think what those numbers could do at home! Not Ukraine!And our borders are still open! And our oil and gas production strangled.And are homeless numbers keep increasing.Yeah, all Americans have it tuff these days!Just keep in mind that teachers only have 170 student contact days a year!

It’s a teachers conspiracy…

Teaching is one of the few professions where the participants are treated like hired help (and temps at that)

One of my cousins was a math major. She took a job as an insurance actuary after finding our it paid more than twice as much as a math teacher. Owned her own home outright in Los Angeles before she was 30.

When I was working, my teacher friends were making very close to my salary. They didn’t have the burden of contributing to their pension accounts. Their health care insurance was paid for in full by their employers. Those 2 benefits alone put their salary well above mine … And yes, I had a 4 year degree, additional education and had to be certified. Then there was the “benefit” of shift work, working weekends and leaving for work on Christmas morning while my children were still sleeping.

But, somehow, I was the “rich” one.

You’d think someone with a master’s degree could figure out that they could do Tik Tok dancing as a second job to add to her income.

I’d say about a 102% chance…

Mary Lou should have gone to trade school to become an HVAC tech.

Yep, it’s hard to make money when you are spending 57/56 of your check. (Not to mention taxes were probably another 30%…)

For those of you saying it’s “nine months worth of work” it’s not. Teachers have to be in school AT LEAST one week (usually two weeks) before students arrive. Teacher must be at school AT LEAST a week after the students leave. During the summer they must take continuing education classes, often at their own expense and often the choice of the district. Anticipating getting many Displaced persons from war torn countries? You get a course on teacher students who are suffering from PTS and how to teach students whose home language is not English. School district rolling out new technology? You get a course in that. As for teachers passing students who can’t read, write or do math, look to the schools administration, the local school board and the states’ Department of Education. Recently in the school district in which I live, the state handed down the requirement that no student could be given a grade less than 69. Even if they haven’t done any work (including tests) during the semester. Because they "want the student to keep working and believe they can pass. " One of the parents I am acquaintanced with just met/contacted their kid’s teacher for the first time. It’s the end of the 3rd nine weeks. They were there to report their unhappiness with their child’s playmates. No questions about how/what the kid is doing in class.

Sometimes Fox Trot strips need to come with an answer key.

All the anti-teachers on here that are utterly clueless about the lives of teachers disgust me, but that’s what 40+ years of propaganda does. Once Qanon and the anti-CRT crazies take over every school board and mandatory school choice is passed, we won’t have public schools anymore. Because that’s been the goal of the far-right since Brown vs Board of Ed came down in 1954. It’ll be the largest tax cut on the rich ever produced because property taxes will be gutted which is the last mandatory tax the rich have. And then, you’ll be paying to send your kids to “Christian” academies that teach fiction, or if you’re poor, you’ll “homeschool” your kids resulting in even more blithering idiots wandering the streets than there are in the Republican Party right now. That’s their goal, and every single time you attack teachers and public education, you inch towards that.

Mary Lou chose her home costs and her car. If she’s a math teacher, she should maybe sit down and redo a budget that works with her income instead of scaring the kids.

finally! the nightmare is over. i read all the foxtrot comics up to date. 5 months of foxtrot. all over :)

Or as I’ve seen online …

If you’re walking on ice cream at 5 ounces per toaster, and your bicycle loses a sock, how much gravy will you need to repaint your hamster?

The teacher better do the dancing while she is still young. She will make more money than when she is older.

When she realizes that he COL is 33% MORE than her income

How long will it take Mary Lou to get from San Francisco to New York if she Tic Toc dances all the way?

wow i honestly think this strip teaches GEN-Z people a lesson.

???