...is in really poor shape, and in comparison to the rest of the country, Washington ranks near the bottom for teacher pay, oddly enough.

I worked my ass off this last 6 months, soaking up every hour the company had to offer including weekends. I wrote an entire course for credit and taught it. I also gained a number of repeat students and referrals to a ton of new students. Not to mention I am the only teacher in my center who can actually teach advanced physics, chemistry, and math above an algebra level, including analytical geometry (a problematic class in this school district). I talk for 5 hours straight and deal with teenagers and young 20-something or others. I get no breaks, because how can you give a lunch break if they only have 1-2 hours left after the 4 hours of work?

Let me break it down. 3 students an hour, each paying $50 / hr, netting the company $150 per hour. I only get somewhere between 20-25 hours a week, and this is maxing out my hours since they only have 24 hours of advertised classes per week.

I see $16 of it, which is 10.67% of the amount I rake in. I ask for a raise.

They offer me a $0.50 pay raise, which is a whopping 1/3 of a percent more of the $150 I rake in.

I ask for $17.50, equating to $30 more per week, or roughly a $120 increase per month. I made $19 an hour at Berkeley (as a student too) AND the last tutoring center I worked.

My boss gets all huffy and starts to make up these excuses for why she pays all her other teachers the same (SHIT). Asking for $1.50 more when I am earning her $150 an hour (a whopping 1% raise) seems reasonable to me. Apparently, I am not being very fair, according to my hiring boss.

No wonder I want to kill things when I get home from work.