Free Travel For Teachers From Hilton
I saw something from Hilton today that intrigued me. It’s not for everyone, in fact it’s targeted just towards teachers. But, since my wife has been a teacher for a decade it struck my eye.
They’re giving 15 teachers a trip to anywhere they desire along with $2500 spending cash.
If you’re a teacher, all you need to do is prepare an essay about where you want to go and why. They’re also giving away some scholarships and Hilton gift cards.
Teachers don’t get nearly enough credit for the jobs they do. Lots of thankless days, for the most part under paid. Someone taking the time to recognize their efforts gets a gold star in my book.
“Teachers don’t get nearly enough credit for the jobs they do. Lots of thankless days, for the most part under paid.”
It’s not obvious that teachers are actually underpaid, by any objective metric.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Elementary and Secondary school teachers earn an average wage of $38.39 per hour — and that figure excludes the value of generous benefits. That’s 31% higher than the average hourly wage of an accountant and 67% higher than a paralegal. (The BLS data accounts for work done by teachers at home to prepare lesson plans, grade, etc.)
Public school teacher pensions, retiree health care and vacation time are a lot more generous than the private sector. Average benefits packages are worth about twice private sector levels. The average teacher makes ~ $55,000 in annual salary AND ANOTHER $55,000 in present and future benefits.
Teachers who leave for other jobs take a paycut. The market values their skills at a lower price than they receive as teachers. That’s one reason why teachers don’t leave (attrition after the first few years is very low). Teacher behavior suggests they don’t actually believe they’re underpaid relative to their alternatives.
Sadly this is one of those “vote for me” voting sweepstakes contests, where the quality of the entry doesn’t get you into the judging round, but who can get the most people to vote for them. Unless you want to play the game of “everybody vote for me every day with all the email addresses you can think of”, you will never be one of the winners. As a teacher, I’d be interested in a true contest based on quality of entry, but not this.
srdshelly, you’re right that there is a “vote” element here, along with the panel of judges. Unclear how much each will play in determining the final winners.
@Gary Leff, of course teachers who leave for other jobs would logically take a pay cut. They would thus be leaving jobs for which they put in years of preparation and meet specific qualifications in order to take a position that is not specific to their training and experience. I do think more teachers should travel more, and I thank you for your website, which is full of ideas that make it feasible for teachers like me to travel. I’m off to Europe for spring break on United miles!
(And to be clear, I am not saying there aren’t underpaid teachers — underpaid relative to the value they create, underpaid relative to what they would earn doing other things — just that on the whole the general class of Elementary and Secondary school teachers aren’t underpaid by any reasonable metric of comparison.)
Gary, I’m absolutely biased on the subject, but the hourly rates you quote come nowhere near the hourly rate my wife earned as a teacher in a county that pays their teachers higher than the average salary for teachers. Even if I just take the number of hours that school is actually in session her hourly rate never approached the BLS average even though she possessed a Masters degree and was at the higher end of the pay scale in the county. We’re I to fold in any amount of hours for lesson prep, mandatory training not included in the base hours BLS calculates and parent conferences, the hourly rate plummets to something that’s embarrassing. But, like I said, I’m very biased.