Arithmetic

The school year has now been in session for 50 days. That's 48 student contact days, one inservice and one "data" day. If a teacher's day is to be 7.5 hours long with a .5 hour lunch, that means I should have put in 350 hours to date. According to my records, I have put in roughly 565 hours so far this school year. That means I have effectually donated 215 hours of my own time to this job, this school and this district. (For the record, that's 21.5 hours per week, or an extra 4 hours per day.) The district is paying me about $43,000 a year for 180 days of work, or 1,260 hours. That comes out to just a little over $34 an hour. By that calculation, then, I have given this discrict over $7,300!! If I had picked up even a minimum wage job instead, at $8 an hour, I could have earned $1,700 for those 215 hours, which would have neatly covered the $700 I've already spent on supplies, books, rewards and manipulatives AND given me about $500 extra per month to put toward rent, car payments, student loans and my VISA bill.

I think I need to have my head examined.