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Friday, March 29, 2013

The Educated Reporter: Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers

The Educated Reporter: Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers:


Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers




Teachers rank second only to physicians when it comes to reporting the sense of "well-being" they derive from their chosen profession, a new Gallup Poll has found.

The poll asked more than 170,000 people, more than 9,000 of whom were teachers, to create a "Well-Being Index," based on answers to questions about their physical, emotional and fiscal health.
 
So how does the new poll stack up against the recent headlines proclaiming that teacher job satisfaction had fallen to a 25-year low in the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher? As New York Times education reporterMotoko Rich noted, the findings really aren't that far apart. 

While the percentage of teachers in the Metlife survey who were "very satisfied" dropped to 39 percent from 62 percent in 2008, there were still 43 percent of teachers who described themselves as 'somewhat satisfied." The