Our best and our brightest

For a couple of years I taught next to the best educator I have ever met.  There is nobody I know that motivates students better and pushes people to excel.  I often wondered what a school would be like if we had 100 people like him teaching.  Then I asked how do you we get great people to enter this profession?  Here is where me and him differ in opinion which always scares me.  He is rarely wrong.

I think it is time for education to become serious about the investment that they make in teachers.  When I look at our best and brightest very few want to enter this field where they are doomed to be lower middle class.  My friend's argument is that we can not have people entering this field just for the money.  I totally agree with him but I believe we need to pay teachers a large enough salary so that money is not an issue.  My thoughts were about 100,000 a year in Maryland for the average teacher.

If that was the salary I think we could start attracting our smartest and brightest students.  These are students   who have a passion for making a difference but are just realistic in the sense that they want to send their kids to college without worrying about how they are going to pay the bills.  I have asked my seniors the last couple of years how many are thinking about teaching?  Usually, one or two hands go up in an AP Economics class.  When I raise the wage to 100,000 we get half the class.  These are the type of kids that we need to change education.

Today I asked students to picture there best teacher.  Would they want more teachers like them or computers?  More teachers like them or elmos?  More teachers like them or wifi?  The answer is more great teachers.  We are so willing to invest in technology but not in our teachers.  Elmos do not care about kids people do ( I use all of the equipment above).

My final thought however, is there is an internal part about teaching that is priceless.  A couple of years ago a struggling student came for help.  We worked hard to overcome some obstacles and she went into the AP test more confident than any other test she had taken.  At the end of the semester she sent me a note which read.  'You taught me how to believe in people.  You believe in people that nobody else does, and one of them was me"  You can not put a price on that comment.  So maybe my buddy was right all along.  Your thoughts?