insurance life met settlement supplemental

People

Talk Back! »

Hermann Hoffman found his way into the ink after a student nominated him for “Superhero Teacher of the Year.” Rachel Benigno’s essay about Hoffmann’s classroom dedication and his work with the environment club and girls basketball team at Beck Middle School beat out 4,000 other entries in the Teachers Count/Office Max competition. Four other NEA members were finalists for superhero status: Mario Guerrero, Kathryn Pariseau, and Tony Pavlovich of California, and Karen Yingling of Ohio. In the comic, they battle Dr. Doom as he and his Doombots try to sap students’ minds. (To read the comic online, see

Like Hoffmann, Adams made it into print as the result of a contest. At the urging of his father, when The Oregonian asked for new comic submissions, Adams sent in the handful of strips he’d drawn. Until then, his only audience had been his peers in the staff lounge. When the newspaper’s editors asked readers to vote for comic strips to be added to the paper, 25 percent of the vote went to Adams’ Apples—enough to vault it into second place, behind a formidable opponent: classic Peanuts strips.

In his classroom, Adams has students create their own cartoons. The public success of Adams’ Apples has been a boost, and he hopes to see the strip syndicated in the upcoming year.

Seeing much of their own careers is what resonates with readers of John Woods’ comic strips Schoolies and Mr. Woodhead and his monthly humor newsletter Learning Laffs. A recent issue of the newsletter—which chronicles the fictional Fuddle River School District—featured a list of approved esoteric educational jargon, including “assessmentalizing” and “whatsoeverables” and such banned terms as “learning” and “teaching.”

“Most of the humor is for teachers,” he says, “not for students or for parents.” Woods—a social studies curriculum specialist in Minneapolis—refers to the comic strips as therapy. “Humor is so important, especially when you’re doing work that’s really important,” he says. “You have to find things to laugh at. You have to find the silliness, just for mental health.”

—NATALIE McGILL

Got a Tip?

Do you have an interesting story idea? Contact section editor Cynthia Kopkowski at

Cover Story

New Money Moves

From pay to pensions, the game’s getting tougher. Here’s how educators are fighting to preserve benefits and win professional pay.

You take care of the kids, but who takes care of you? The people who prepare the next generation of Americans for the challenges of 21st century living—that’s you—are falling behind. Professionals in many other fields are benefiting from America’s economic growth, but teachers and education support professionals (ESPs) are treading water at best.

Improving compensation for educators is one of NEA’s top priorities. NEA has set a national goal of achieving starting pay of at least a living wage for all ESPs and $40,000 a year for teachers. But there are other games afoot. Some states or districts want to offer pay raises only to a minority of teachers, using “alternative compensation” plans that pit educators against each other, undermining collaborative efforts and quality teaching. Others are proposing changes in health insurance and retirement benefits that would threaten the living standards and security of