Something to speculate:

A woman trains for a career in teaching in a specialty catered to children with learning disabilities. She obtains a certificate within a few months and for the next year she slowly builds her clientele. She hears about a school that offers to teach kids with dyslexia and she applies to become one of their in-house tutors. The school offers her a job, but with a starting wage that doesn't even meet up to the poverty line. However, eager to begin her career, she accepts the job offer. Seventeen years later, she begins to feel a bit disgruntled at her employer. She loves her job; the children are wonderful and she feels a sense of accomplishment at seeing growth in her students and how much they have developed their reading and writing skills since she first worked with them. What she is concerned about is that her salary has not met the standards of inflation -- she hasn't seen a change in her wages for the last seven years! She could quit the job, but the problem is trying to find one that requires her expertise, offers comparable and decent wages, full-time, and with reasonable working hours that allow her to take care of her two kids at home. She expresses her concerns with colleagues and together they offer a proposal to the employer that asks for a $300 increase in tuition annually, which will ensure that the educators' wages will be met at industry standards. The employer says there's just enough money to raise tuition by $200; this means next year's students will pay just under $13,ooo for schooling. That still won't cover salaries. The woman is struggling to make ends meet with the current wages as is; she even has to take up three more after school students to drum up enough money for groceries and bills. Her days consist of 10 hours of teaching, often more. She's also noticed the increase in unqualified people, a few who speak English as a second language and have no specialized training prior to the job, that are hired to teach dyslexic children. Who can blame the ones who are qualified to teach at this special ed school? No one wants to work for an employer who will not even pay their workers more than at the poverty level, despite all their credentials, experience, and knowledge. What is the woman to do?

The above scenario typifies the ongoing situation that most of my colleagues are going through. I am disgusted at the treatment of my colleagues, who are the backbone of our school. Without these tutors, children suffer through their dyslexia in schools that are overcrowded, where teachers have very limited resources and time to provide additional assistance, and in some cases, where children with learning disabilities get teased by peers for their delays.

As a teacher, I am not facing the same wage issues as they are, but I am concerned about this nonetheless; these are the people I work with everyday and I see how much time and effort they put into providing quality education for our students. There is so much more that I haven't complained about, but just too many to blog here. My final thought on this: How does one measure someone else's worth?