Recently at a birthday party, a group of us post-college graduates discussed how to find more free time, yet still get paid and not have to really work. Life comes to a struggle between making money and working for the man and trying to find something that’s enjoyable in life.
As usual, the conversation turned towards teaching because of its self-rewarding nature. However, Tim, with new insight this time, turned us on to the glamorous life of a PE teacher.
It broke down like this:
A PE teacher earns the exact same wages as any other high school teacher, so for a teacher in the LAUSD District, they’ll start at around $40,000. After taking the prerequisite classes and meeting the experience needed, their salary will max out at around $60,000. Nothing too special yet.
However, from our experience of PE classes in high school, a PE teacher does not have the same amount of work as other teachers. The first and last 10 minutes of a class period are used for dressing. There is no homework for a PE class that needs to be graded at home. There are no exams that need to be prepared ahead of time or taken home to be graded. The lesson plan for a whole year could be done in one night. Plus, instead of dressing up, they actually dress down for their job.
Given this, a PE teacher’s class period is only about 30-40 minutes of actual teaching. Teachers are required to teach at least three class periods, so that comes out to 120 minutes, or 2 hours of actual work a day. Let’s not forget that teaching is the only profession that gets spring break, winter break, every national holiday imaginable, and three months off in the summer.
Here are the numbers: 2 hours of work a day. 10 hours of work a week. 40 weeks in a school year. $60,000 at the peak of the career.
That’s right. Your high school PE teacher, the one that you and your friends laughed at and probably called Coach Hardass, made $150 an hour. That’s one sweet job.
Now I’ll be getting a flood of e-mails from PE teachers, because you know, they are the primary audience of my blog, crying blasphemy and saying they work hard at their job. Or what would be even cooler is if they threatened me for revealing their secret and promising I would always be picked last for any team game I ever tried to play for the rest of my life.
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Hey, and if you still want some MORE free time you can always call in sick since you get lots of sick days as a teacher. Oh, and they are the only teachers that can skip out on “professional development” days.
You knew I would have to add to this post. If you go here:
http://certificated.lausd.k12.ca.us/Research/documents/TTable2005-2006_000.pdf
YOu can see the pay chart…Basically you max out at 69,000….With 10 years and all the units.
That’s an extra $12.50 an hour.
I forgot you can pick up on the hot underaged high school girls too!
Keep in mind, though–these days PE is no longer a requirement. That means the kids who actually opt for PE (instead of trying to cram in all the college prep classes) tend mostly to be the pain-in-the-ass kids. You gotta deduct points for having to deal with that every day.
Like telling kids to go run laps for 20 minutes is hard to deal with.
Really? PE’s not required anymore? That’s kinda messed up. Those little kids need exercise.
Hence all the little butterballs cropping up–we now have the youngest chronically overweight peeps in the world…..
PE is a requrement up to a certain grade level.
PE should be required from the beginning of grade school to the age of 55.
we’re a fat people.