What's an average teacher's monthly salary where you live?

Here’s a list of all 50 U.S. states: http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state

How much experience?

45 G’s (Canadian) is a starting wage. With experience, you can move up to $75, 000.

2500€ netto per month

Here’s the starting salary by country: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_pri_tea_sal_sta-education-primary-teacher-salary-starting

And find many other stats here: http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/edu-education

Google is your friend.

When I started 20 years ago it was $24,000

Today

http://portal.sfusd.edu/data/hr/salary/CREDENTIAL_SALARY_SCHEDULE_0708.pdf

But remember San Francisco is very expensive where a studio apt goes for $1000 and a 2 bedroom is $2500’ ($30,000/yr)

where i live it´s about €4000 that equals to about $5500

Indeed is a perfect website link for this question. Just type in “teacher” and your zip code. Hit enter then click on “salaries”.

For my local it’s $37K

Two words: “Not enough”.

@erichw1504 most states don’t look that bad according to your link above. The job is only only 9.5 months per year. If you make $45K, which looked like it might be the average without doing any math, and you annualize it, that would be about $57K with generally good benefits for retirement and medical insurance, and the summer off. I am ok with raising the salaries in the the states that are very low on the curve, but it is not that bad.

@JLeslie, However, most K-12 teachers (at least my colleagues and I) spend nearly 105 of their salary on things for their classrooms and students, ranging from pens and pencils to prom tickets and coats. I realize that things could be much worse, and I’m not complaining (too much), but it can be difficult to make it on a teacher’s salary, particularly in the first few years.

@zephyr826 that is ridiculous that teachers are spending a lot of personal money on items for the classroom. That is a whole other issue. Even if you were paid $100K a year you should not have to pay for basics like pens and pencils.

I’m sure they’d happily be paid in aspirin. You’d have to be very brave to teach.

In most cases you are comparing apples and oranges when comparing teacher’s salaries to other occupations. The tendency is to compare teachers to line white collar jobs instead of management level jobs. I left a job as controller of a small IT firm @ $50,000+profit sharing in 1990. A year later I was hired @ $24,000 as a first year teacher. (The interim year I was in school full time and working 30 hours/week @ $12.50/hour. It took 15 years before I broke the $50,000 level.

I can also tell you that on an hour by hour basis, teachers work harder than most white collar workers. There are no coffee breaks or chat sessions. There are no leisurely bathroom breaks. There is no coming back 10 minutes late from lunch or leaving for an hour for an appointment. Teachers, especially during the 1st few years, work much longer hours than most other people of equal education and responsibility.

Speaking of education, most companies see the benefits in continuing education and training for their employees so they provide opportunities for employees. Teachers are required to continue their education, usually at their own expense, so for many of the last 20 years that is what I have done for 6 of those 11 summer weeks.

August is always about preparing for the year, updating the syllabus and getting things prepared. If you don’t have the 1st 6 weeks lesson plans and material in your backpack, you run the risk of sinking before the year is over.

Beyond the 7am-3:30pm school day, there is sponsoring extracurricular activities, meetings and grading papers (very time consuming for new teachers) I seldom leave my desk during the 45 minute lunch period because of the demands of the job. We have 1 hour built into the day for prep but that is often taken up by meetings about individual students, gathering resources and standing in line for the copier.

The state of California allows me $250 year for purchases but that is less than most of us spend. As money is directed toward technology, I find myself buying class sets of books to keep students thinking at a level higher than the pablum filled dumbed down texts.

I have been on both sides and know that teaching is more physically and pschologically stressful and less economically feasible than comparable work.

@galileogirl I compare it to when I worked in retail, made about the same pay as a teacher and worked the same if not more hours than a teacher weekly and only had 3 weeks off a year not 10, I’ll even give you prep time, so you get 6. I also worked the most during holidays, especially Christmas was 6 days a week for several weeks on my feet. I had to spend money on better clothes than required by teachers. My pension plan was not near as good as the teachers union and I had to wait 6 months to be able to get medical insurance. I too have worked in an office environment, it is much easier, especially physically, I am guessing retail is more physically exhausting than teaching, although I can see how teaching kids all day might be more mentally exhausting than dealing with adults, but remember the adults I dealt with were not always happy. Many times you cannot leave the selling floor for breaks or even a full lunch. Personally, I think it is crazy that children are expected to eat in 30 minutes, and I feel the same for teachers also. The hospital I have been working at most recently only gives people a half an hour for lunch, which I think is awful. Many employees wind up eating while doing their job, which technically I think it is illegal to not pay them if they are stiill on duty, even if they are eating, but they deduct the money.

The thing about our country is generally you don’t get paid a lot because your job is important, you get paid a lot if you are one of the few who can do the job. The laws of supply and demand. Personally, I think teachers would get more respect if they dumped the union and tenure, tenure is ridiculous and makes everyone outside of the profession pissed off. What other industry in America has that type of job protection? I also think teachers should get together and not buy anything for students. Let parents complain or come up with the funds or fight to get it from the government. How is it your responsibility? If you keep doing it, it will never change.

True that some industries/companies will pay for continuing education, but that is being done less and less, like everything companies are cutting expenses in these difficult times. Companies also are doing away with pension plans altogether.

@JLeslie Maybe you should have joined the Retail Clerks Union. You certainly didn’t deal with 35 customers at a time. You didn’t deal with people who refused to shop You didn’t have parents, politicians and the community who blamed you if your customer chose the wrong garment. You had lunch periods and some flexibility to your schedule. You didn’t sell on your day off. You weren’t required to pay for a college education plus continuing education to keep your job.

As far as worst jobs, I have to say I win with my time at the USPS. But this isn’t about worst jobs, it’s about jobs that pay less than comparable work and retail clerk (which I also did for a while) is NOT comparable to teaching-not by a long shot.

But your assumptions are wrong. I had 30 people reporting into me when I was a cosmetic manager/buyer, responsible for a $5.5 million business. I could not leave for lunch if a customer needed my attention, and I had to coordinate with other managers working that day if I was on the night shift (when I was in sales I had to coordinate lunch with the other sales girls, you don’t get to just walk off the floor when you feel like it, typically salespeople start their work day at 9:30 am and start having lunches at 11:30 so not more than one person is gone at a time). As a manager there were days I was in the store working on my day off. In the store, not grading papers at home. I would agree that overall there is a little more flexibilty because the store is open 7 days a week, so you can take the day off if you want when you have a doctors appointment, BUT you are EXPECTED to take the day off if you have a doctors appointment.

If what you say is true, then you should have reported your employer for unfair labor practices. Nordstrom’s had to pay millions for requiring unpaid work. Teacher’s don’t have the same protection because of different career grades.

@galileogirl Nordstroms paid out for hourly workers. I was a salaried Manager. True that sometimes they may have been actualy breaking the law, but not like the class action filed against Nordstroms which I think involved braking overtime laws and some other things.

around €1000/month in Greece (where I am this month). Slightly less in the Czech Republic (18,000 KĈ) and much less in Poland (2000 Zl). Depends on the school though (since there are private and public schools). I got €1,900 in my last teaching job (more than $2,000 a month) but I was preparing students for exams, and most of the money was from bonuses because of my passing rate. I would probably get half that amount if it were primary school.