Teachers’ Cars

It’s a cliché that teachers don’t get paid enough and that everybody should commiserate with us about it, but I’ve never bought that.  First of all, we chose this job, knowing full well what we were getting into. 

Second, how many teachers do you know who are living off of food stamps or sleeping in a homeless shelter?

Several years ago, I was at a school where the student newspaper got into a lot of trouble because they took pictures of some of the teachers’ cars in the parking lot and ran them in the paper, suggesting that this was proof that they were paid pretty well.  The staff went nuclear.  I thought that was sad–it was brilliant thinking on the students’ part, but instead of using the opportunity to engage in a discussion, the school just shut the students up and taught them that angry authorities are always right. 

The worst part is, those students had a point.  Take a look around your neighborhood school’s staff parking lot.  See too many ’79 Pintos?  Not exactly. 

How many of those desperate, angry, truant teachers in Wisconsin–the ones screaming about how any cuts to their standard of living will put them in a Dickensian debtor’s prison–are driving anything more than ten years old?