Gil,

You are absolutely correct about teacher motivation. If a teacher is
fortunate enough to teach in a classroom with modestly appropriate equipment
and textbooks, and if students are not are not in the throes of delirium
tremens or acting out violently because their ipods and cell-phones are out
of reach, then no amount of salary or benefit cuts will induce the female
teacher to leave the classroom. Men will leave (and have left in droves)
because in many non-union communities, teacher pay is still not adequate to
support a family.

That being said, my teacher role model was my godmother. She lived a
comfortable independent life to the age of 97 - on her PA teachers' pension.
The key: she lived in her inherited rural home, heated with coal dug out of
the ground a few miles away.

But, urban living is much more expensive, and urban tax burdens for senior
citizens are criminally high. Teacher pensions definitely contribute to the
problem. I think teachers would help themselves if they considered the
needs of all retired senior citizens in their community - not just the
teachers. What good is a fat pension if you have to spend more than half of
it on property taxes to meet your school district's pension burden?

(My grandmother used to say the same thing about newfangled IRAs during the
days of inflation-stagflation whatever: "What good is a half-million in an
IRA when a cup of coffee costs $100,000? Of course, my generation of
non-pensioned boomers bought the IRAs only to lament their loss in value
during this last economic downturn. )

But back to your main point and mine: teaching has its own rewards ~ so long
as you work in an environment where teaching is truly possible.

Best wishes,

Dr. Marie deYoung