Bye – Bye Bobby P
Just as I was basking in the glow of my Louisville Cardinal’s Orange Bowl win, the news from home is that coach Bobby Petrino is leaving. He has accepted a position with the Atlanta Falcons for a mere $24 million.
So what does this have to do with an educational blog you ask? Well, let’s think about it for a minute. A football coach is leaving a university where he has a 10 year contract for $25.5 million to coach football on the professional level for $24 million over 5 years. Hmmm….. I’ve been teaching for 14 years and have one Master’s degree and am working on a second, I’ll never get anywhere near either of those salaries. Am I saying he shouldn’t make that amount of money? Nope. I’m trying to emphasize that our society’s priorities are skewed.
Is coaching a game professional football more important than teaching our future generation? We can all agree on that. But, what do we do? We have a major educational crisis in our country that is not improving. We have a lack of qualified teachers, lack of adequate resources, student’s not preforming on grade level, tremendously high drop-out rate (remember, I’m in North Carolina which is one of the “leaders” in high school drop-out numbers), and low teacher pay. We can’t continue down this path if we are to be successful in the globalization of this shrinking world.
I know, some of you are going to say I am disgruntled over my low pay. No, that’s not the case at all. I love my profession (yes, I said profession and not job) and wouldn’t want to do anything else. Teaching is a calling. It’s definitely not a calling to become rich in terms of money, but can you really put a price tag on reaching just one child? Watching the light bulb go off when a student finally understands reducing fractions? The excited 7th grader who can’t wait for you to see his experiment and has to bring it to you so you can see more quickly? I can’t, but I sure wouldn’t mind if Bobby Petrino would adopt me to be water girl for a mere $1 million a year!
Until next time ~ Danita
