Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM
with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children
X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your
kids!)

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

I wish I wrote this but I didn’t. This was sent to me by one of the teachers in my school. It sure does put things into perspective…What you guys think?

*Disclaimer* I’m a teacher.

How many of us asks what our children’s beliefs are? Do we as parents assume that since we have raised these wonderful people that they too have the same beliefs and values as we do? If we take a moment and ask our children what they believe in, will their answers live up to our parental expectations or will it send our well choreograph world spinning out of control and put our parenting skills to the ultimate test.

I don’t know what came over me but on our way home from school, as I made a left turn on Pratt and Kedzie, I ask my daugther Nikki if she believes in God. Naturally, I was ready to accept the obvious answer, “Yes Daddy, I believe in God.”

Nikki rarely surprises me because I know her like the back of my hand. But her answer caught me so off guard that I almost stop the car to say, “Are you for real?”

So going back to the question, “Nikki, do you believe in God?”

She looked at me, paused for a couple of seconds, smiled and said, “I don’t know yet if I believe in God.”

How could this be? This child of mine who is raised around Christianity. A child who hears every year that the reason we celebrate Christmas is to celebrate Jesus’ birth, the son and lamb of God. This is the child who received the sacrament of confirmation just recently. The same child who is taught to pray to God before going to sleep and before eating.

After my initial shock wore off a little bit, I asked if she knows that “Daddy and Mama believe in God.” She smiled and said, “Yes”.

Normally I would start explaining why she should believe in God, why both of her parents believe in God, why her grandparents believe in God, why her aunts and uncles believe in God, and so on and so forth. But at that moment the only thing I can muster was a question.

“Why don’t you believe in God,” I asked as I try very hard not to look at her so that she won’t see through my puzzlement.

Being typical Nikki, she deliberately answered my question. ”You see Daddy, there are a lot of things that we don’t know yet and a lot of things we cannot explain and God is one of them.”

WOW!

While in awe of her response, I realized that she gave me an opening. This was my perfect opportunity to explain to her about faith and belief. But I didn’t. I just said, ”ok” and I let it go. Nikki spent the last 45 minutes of the drive listening to the radio and I spent it thinking why she doesn’t ”believe in God, yet.”

My searched for explanation led to my conclusion that this was my own doing. My wife and I try to raise our children to be good, honest, and fair. Most importantly, we try to raise them to be independent thinkers, to search for answers for things that they don’t understand, and to question anything that seem illogical. And because of this her answer should’ve never have surprised me.

In time and on her own time, she will find God and once this happened I am quite certain that the realtionship she will established with God will be more meaningful. After all, she is her daddy’s daughter.   

I often think about what I would do or say if one of my daughters tell me that she’s having an abortion. Unlike many people who are sure where they stand in this issue, I am conflicted. I guess the parenting magazines or parenting guides left out this topic.

I believe that abortion is morally wrong, but I also believe in my daughters’ rights to make their own decisions when it comes to their life and body. So does this mean that I am against abortion or for it?

I guess the first thing I am going to do when confronted with this issue is to convince my daughter not to do it. I would show and explain to her the sanctity of life. I would provide her with alternative options. I would tell her that her mother and I will raise the baby.

I will keep talking with her but ultimately the decision is up to her. And since she is my daughter, whatever her decision may be, I have to support it.

I envy people who are absolute in their belief and stance about this topic. I envy the pro-life supporters who know for sure that abortion should be made illegal. I envy the pro-choice advocates, who without a doubt, believe that the choice should be left to the woman and not the government.

I wish I could make such a clear stance like these people. However, for me, when the issue becomes more than a political stance and more of a personal issue, choosing either pro-choice or pro-life becomes difficult . It can be argued that as a parent,  if I have done a good job in raising my children with the “proper values” then I won’t have to worry about having a conversation like this with either of my daugthers.

Point well taken, however, even with “good parenting,”  our children will eventually grow up and develop their own ideals, morals, and values. This is specially true in our society where self-expression and free-thought is celebrated and encouraged.

I pray that I will never have this conversation with my daughter. But if it does happened, I hope that I would have the wisdom to guide her so that she can do what’s best for her and her values and not what’s best for me and my values.

I guess this is the price we pay for living in a free and complex society. With an advance society, issues like abortion make the daily battle of telling your teenagers to clean their rooms, take out the garbage and close the fridge seem insignificant.

One of my children define hope as “opening the fridge knowing that what you are looking for will not be there but you do it anyway hoping that it will be there.”

This statement was uttered during breakfast and it made everyone laugh because the statement captured the very essence of my children’s relationship with the fridge. I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this. One of your teenage kids goes to the kitchen, opens the fridge and stare for a minute then closes it. The same child comes back 20 minutes later and does the same thing again. And this ritual is repeated by all the children in the house over and over again. The content of the fridge doesn’t really matter because sometimes they just open it for the sake of opening it.

As a parent or a parent of teenagers, you begin to ask yourself where you went wrong…You call your own parents for advice but instead of giving you an advice they laugh and say “thank you God, there’s justice after all…” You then flashback to your own youth and realize that you too use to do the same exact thing.

This scene has been played out all over America in real life and on t.v., like the Cosby Show. So is this teenage fascination over the fridge purely American or does it also happened in other countries? Is there a cure or a solution for it or do we just have to wait it out until our children move out?

I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if my children open the fridge constantly as long as my energy bill stays the same, but it doesn’t. I thought of putting a lock on the fridge but I know it wouldn’t work becuase they will keep bugging me to open the fridge for them. I also considered taking a picture of what’s inside and posting it on the fridge but this would take too much work for me.

So you see no matter what I do, I am doomed. Maybe if someone builds a fridge with a glass window then my problem would be solved. But until that day comes, I will just be resigned to hearing my fridge door slamm and seeing my energy bill rise.

How do you teach your children to be honest when you live in a society where cheaters are rewarded and are called role models? This is what exactly happened last week during the MLB Steriods Congressional Hearing. Representative Waxman called Andy Pettite a role model on and off the field because while Roger Clemens vehemently denies using steriods, Pettite admitted using it.

Now here comes the difficult part. Many of my student athletes said that using steriods and getting caught is worth the risk when you are talking about the difference between fame and anonymity and between greatness and mediocrity.

Here’s the even scarier part, some of the students I have spoken to said that even if Clemens or Bonds go to jail for lying under oath, they have already made their money and that when they get out of jail after a few years, they will still be rich.

So how can you compete against this logic? Our children see that our society rewards people who cheat or have cheated. As a parent, how can you shield your children from all the dishonesty that permeates our society? How do you tell them to ignore the riches that comes with lying and cheating and follow what is right and honorable?

As a father of five, I have constantly struggled with these questions. The only thing that a parent can do is to be the example of honesty and integrity. Hopefully, our children will learn from our actions and that they too will serve as an example for their own children.

While athletes and entertainers have a lot influence over our children, we have a greater impact on their lives because we are the ones who are constantly with our children. Through constant reminders and regular conversation, we can instill in our children the proper values that they should adhere to and should have.

This is not to say that we should leave the athletes and entertainers alone. These multi-millionaire should be held accountable for their actions. But as we all know, it’s difficult to control other people’s behavior. So the best thing to do is to be the role model and hero for our children. They may not realize it while their young but eventually when they get older, they will see that their true hero is you and not some multi-millionaire who cheated his way through fame and fortune.