Teacher Stipends

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

Um, actually, I don't think there's much of a negative with teachers getting a stipend; after all, it's at least as much work as, say, a track coach - and does anybody complain about coaches getting a stipend?

There are a few threads here on CD, search on the keyword "stipend" to see what I mean, and only the one you cite in your message has much of a negative feel about it - and from what I read, it's because the team can manage to get to 5 (!) events in 2008, but one of their team is moaning that they need to use their budget to actually buy robot parts, and even pay for part of their travel. Horrors! My goodness, they even pay their mentors!

$800 is not enough of a stipend, it should be double to triple that, but I do need to be mindful of the relative cost of living throughout the country. Here in Northern NJ, $800 won't get you 1 room studio for a month in the poor part of the county.

For the record: I do not begrudge you your stipend. I would even speak publicly that it is too little. I'm a mentor, I drop several hundred dollars a year on the team, and I'd be highly insulted if they offered to pay me (unless it was 6 figures ). I mentor FRC because of the personal satisfaction I get in return.

Don

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I certainly didn't mean to imply that most of the posters were giving a negative implication. I know that most of the posts were positive about teacher stipends. I found 47 threads yesterday with at least one post about stipends, and most of the comments were positive. But there was an undertone in several of them about paid mentors being inferior. It was nagging at me a lot. Probably should have just let it go, but I didn't. Oh well.

While I am in whole hearted agreement that if coaches get paid, the robotics advisor (I do look at myself as a coach even if my title is club advisor) should be paid, my biggest reason for advocating the stipend is that I won't be doing this forever, at least at this level of commitment. I don't have any plans to step down yet, but some day I will. (And if my kids end up doing robotics, our neighborhood school has Team 963, so I might well become a volunteer for them, who knows.) The stipend makes it part of the school budget, so there will be a push to fill my position when I leave. My biggest fear with regard the future of the program is that it will die when I leave because no teacher will step up to do it.

While $800 is kind of low as a stipend, it is not that much less than I make as a cross-country coach. Though I spend a lot more money on robotics than I do on CC.