Teacher Stipends

[mathking]

I started a new thread on this because the other thread I found directly dealing with this didn't have quite the same tone as this one. There seems to be a lot of negative feeling associated with stipends for teachers who mentor FIRST teams. Full disclosure: I will get $800 this year. It took five years to get a stipend. As someone else said in one of the other threads, this does make it easier to justify it to my wife. Particularly because it largely offsets what I shell out of my own money for stuff we need, and the donations we have made to help students who can't afford the travel costs. With enough left over to (hopefully) buy a little gift for my wife and kids.

My first thought is that teams should be happy when they get a stipend. It means the school district at least thinks the team is important enough to make it official. My other thought is that having a paid position is good for teachers, because we assume more legal responsibility than most mentors. Because ours is a school team, I am not only responsible for my own actions, but for the safety of all the students. This means if something bad happens, I am responsible. My career is on the line. This is particularly true when there are a lot of other adults working with a lot of kids. Let me be clear, our mentors are awesome and I am sure none of them would ever do anything they thought could harm one of our kids. But the fact remains that it's my career on the line. And it only takes one incident.