Teachers’ Rewards: Better Pay

Your Sept. 9 editorial “Who Will Teach?” ends with the lingering question, “Anyone up to the challenge?” Well, I am. I am a second-year student at Cal State Northridge and am working toward a degree in political science as well as my teaching credential. I am following in my father’s footsteps. My dad has had many jobs in his life of 55 years; none of them have made him as happy as teaching for the LAUSD.

Maybe doctors do have more prestige, more money and better lives, but no one gets more respect from me than teachers do. They are the ones who have molded me into the hard-working, underpaid and underappreciated person that I am today--and will be when I return to my high school to teach!

Elizabeth Severtson

Northridge

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The PBS documentary “The First Year,” which traces the disillusioning classroom experiences of five new urban teachers as they attempt to teach unruly, impoverished and neglected students in schools without permanent classrooms, offices and/or textbooks, concludes with the question: “Who will teach our children?”

The answer is simple. Eventually no one. Not even the most idealistic young person will enter a profession that the politicians have turned into the national scapegoat for our collective refusal to address the real problems behind academic failure.

Dennis M. Clausen

Escondido

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The chicken-or-the-egg quandary of The Times, pleading “Who Will Teach?” and decrying a “Brainpower Outage” in the engineering-science work force, in consecutive editorials on Sept. 9, is that the most acute teacher shortages are in math and science and that the precious few candidates for these positions are swept away by the private sector.

I recall from my 1979 first year of emergency-credentialed math teaching in the LAUSD being offered a $10,650 contract if, and only if, I concurrently enrolled in a $4,000 per annum USC teacher education program.

I also recall reading in The Times that same year that the dozen colleges and universities in the L.A. area were credentialing a handful of math teachers in the face of an immediate need of 400. So, shouldn’t we first fund not algebra instructional academies but more competitive salaries for competent math and science teachers to teach in the academies?

Bill Hoffine

San Diego

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Re “Why I Teach: the Kid Connection,” Voices, Sept. 8: Oh, how I agree with Eddie Fiszer! After four decades in education I still consider it a privilege and a calling. However, I worry that such an article will encourage the general public to believe that educators only need the affection of children as a living wage. Our children deserve the best, the brightest, the most talented people to educate them. And the best, the brightest and the most talented deserve a salary commensurate with other professions that value such gifts.

Elaine S. Wiener

Villa Park, Calif.