Same here in Ontario. They're doing rotating strikes because the government wants to give them a pay freeze for one year and get stop them banking sick days. Senior teachers were pulling in $80k about a decade ago. Probably closer to $90-$100k today.
I have very little respect for teaching as a profession. A lot of them are only in it for the money and care very little about the kids. I struggled with certain subjects growing up but could never get help. When my parents got upset at the school, my teachers tried to claim I had ADHD. I got tested and the psychologist found nothing wrong with me. Parents put me in another school and my grades went up dramatically. Then I ran into trouble again in middle school. One thing I walked away from school was kids asking for help always seemed to be inconveniencing the teacher. Needles to say it wasn't a very nurturing education environment. They didn't care if you did well or not. I struggled with math for years. I didn't even learn how to write a proper essay until Grade 12, because nobody showed me. Teachers used to say my writing was poor. Most of them really wanted to believe there was something wrong with me. I did have this one teacher who did take the time to show me. When I went to university, writing was one of my best skills. Rarely got below 80% on my term papers. Probably would have got higher had I not had a tendency to procrastinate. University was a far better environment and it was one of my TAs who inspired me to become a journalist. Had I listened to my teachers in public school, I'd probably be pumping gas for a living.
A co-worker of mine had a similar story. She struggled through school for years. It got so bad that her parents transferred her to a private school, based on the Waldorf program. She told me she was genuinely shocked to see students hugging their teacher. Mind you Waldorf is a very crunchy granola place. But she had always viewed teachers as the enemy. Most students did. To them they weren't a instrument of learning and nurturing. Her time at Waldorf inspired her to become a teacher herself, and she went into the public system only to encounter the same roadblocks. Teachers who smack-talk students behind their backs and generally have no pride in their work. This was even in another province.
So it's no wonder kids today are barely literate when they get to college. If they fired half the teachers, there'd still be far too many bad ones. If they cut their salaries in half, they'd still be making too much for the kind of job they do. Public education is systemically broken. It's no wonder so many kids are on the wrong path.
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