{"id":9109,"date":"2012-07-24T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T11:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9109"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","slug":"july-newspaper-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9109","title":{"rendered":"July Newspaper Article"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here’s what I wrote for the local newspaper this month about the temptation teacher’s often feel to gripe about their pay levels:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

My gut tightens a bit each time I hear a politician pander\nto teachers, telling us how very important our jobs are and how we deserve\nbetter pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Now don\u2019t misunderstand; I would gladly accept a raise in\nsalary.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t feel entitled to\none.<\/p>\n\n\n

This attitude, admittedly rare among teachers, was\nundoubtedly shaped by my upbringing and lessons I learned from my parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

As a young man, my father was employed by Woolworth\u2019s.\u00a0 By the time I was born, dad had struck out on\nhis own with a \u201cFive and Dime\u201d department store.\u00a0\u00a0 Dad and mom worked side by side to make a\nsuccess out of that enterprise.\u00a0 Among\nthe numerous challenges over the years were shoplifters, an occasional crooked\nemployee, persnickety customers, poor parking, competition, long hours on weekdays,\nweekends and holidays, and making payroll week after week, even during times of\nrecession.\u00a0 Through it all, dad\u2019s main\ncomplaint seemed to be that all those hours standing on the store\u2019s concrete\nfloor left his feet with a perpetual ache.<\/p>\n\n\n

Nowadays I know that dad had many restless nights, anxious\nover financial matters of all sorts, but he never let on to us kids at the\ntime.\u00a0 We felt fortunate to get a solid\nweek\u2019s worth of vacation time in the summer and, during years when we could\nafford to travel, we used that precious week to visit Dad\u2019s relatives in South\nDakota.<\/p>\n\n\n

Mom and dad built the quintessential small business, morphed\nultimately into a hardware store, through many years of hard work.\u00a0 Over those years they provided numerous jobs\nin our community, trained dozens of teenagers in the importance of a solid work\nethic, and extended to their customers free advice on everything from how to\ninstall a hot water heater to what color of paint to choose for a house.<\/p>\n\n\n

They never ended up with a mansion or a fancy car, though\nthey deserved at least as much.<\/p>\n\n\n

One memory stands out in my mind:\u00a0 how flabbergasted my dad was after a conversation\nwith a local public school teacher.\u00a0 Keep\nin mind, this was thirty years ago.\u00a0 The\nman in question and his wife were both excellent teachers and roughly the same\nage as my parents. On that particular day, the teacher turned the conversation\ninto an extended gripe about the smallness of teachers\u2019 salaries.<\/p>\n\n\n

When he found my father demonstrating insufficient sympathy\nto the sad plight of public school teachers and their pay, this man eventually blustered,\n\u201cMy wife and I each make only $25,000 a year.\u00a0\nHow would your family like to try to survive on $50,000?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Dad\u2019s reply: \u201cMy wife and I would love to be making that much\nmoney.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

That statement successfully ended the government employee\u2019s\ncomplaint to that particular taxpayer and it\u2019s what holds my tongue whenever I\nfind myself tempted to grumble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s what I wrote for the local newspaper this month about the temptation teacher’s often feel to gripe about their pay levels: My gut tightens a bit each time I hear a politician pander to teachers, telling us how very important our jobs are and how we deserve better pay.\u00a0 Now don\u2019t misunderstand; I would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9110,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109\/revisions\/9110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}