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Andy Spears's avatar

Were you paid a stipend to supervise/mentor a student teacher? That, too, should be normalized. It's a ton of extra work, as you note - if you are really training/developing someone's teaching ability, you should be paid for that service. Likewise, I do think student teachers should be paid - are they "labor-saving?" Not exactly - but, they are performing a service for which anyone else (even a barely trained sub) would be paid. Education seems to find numerous ways to get things for free that other industries regularly pay for.

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Sean Mann's avatar

Great points! I think you could make another general argument, which is that for years we (as a society) have pushed the risk of training/education onto the individual from the employer. So many industries that don't actually need a college degree require one just so they can absolve themselves of the majority of on the job training which takes time and money. I think it would be better for everyone if more fields (including teaching) took on the responsibility and some of the risk of training their employees while also paying them. Obviously student-teachers are a slightly different situation since they are still in college, but the same should be said of internships. The company should take on the cost of training interns while paying them. In some cases the cost will outweigh the benefit (at least in the short term), but in some cases they may actually get more value from the intern than they are paying for, and in either case they are preparing a young person to potentially bring them more value in the future if they invest in them and hire them later.

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