It's really a shame that a vast majority feel that teachers
work ONLY 8 months out of the year. That "summer vacation" that teachers get is spent on furthering their own educations (on their own dime), creating lesson plans, purchasing supplies(with their own money), adopting federal programs such as NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, training, training, and MORE training to keep up with ever changing technology and teaching methods.
Then if they're lucky, a week or two to recouperate from the past school year of dealing with spoiled rotten little cretins who have no respect for anyone, much less someone who has the uneviable task of trying to teach them to be productive members of society. Add to the mix crack babies, gangster wanna be's , guns, drugs, and violence, and then say that teachers are overpaid. I am not a teacher, nor have I ever been, but I have had the pleasure of working side by side with them for 25 years.
Greatly under-appreciated and grossly underpaid, for doing what society appears to be unable to do-SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH KIDS. Just ask yourself, how long could you do what they do?