Surviving Salary Slumps
60% of American teachers can't survive on their salary. When you do the math, that's 1.8 million teachers in the United States that do not make a living wage to support themselves and their families. That means that teachers are resigned to work a second or even a third job on top of teaching to make ends meet. Before we start to pick apart the reasons for why this scenario is unreasonable, let's look at a typical day in the life of a teacher. We'll start with my story.
Every morning I wake up, eat breakfast, and head into work at 7:00 AM to begin my morning planning. On a good day, it's just me and my thoughts. On a busy day, I am tackling grading and meetings well before the first bell has rung. At 7:30 AM students begin to bustle into my room for first period. Throughout the course of the day I teach 4 different math classes with all different planning needs back to back until lunch. My lunch hour is only 30 minutes long, and on a daily basis it is to be expected that between one and 6 students will be in my room receiving lunch time math support. Many days my lunch goes untouched until 2:30 PM, my planning period. After lunch, I teach 1 more class, for a grand total of 5 different preps each day. After my last class, I begin my hour of planning which usually involves more meetings, students coming and going to ask me questions, and occasionally time to start my grading. At 3:30 PM I am dismissed to go home for the day, but I can usually be found at my school working until about 4:30 PM each night. At this point I go home, cook supper for my family, hang out with them for an hour or so and then begin lesson planning and grading until bedtime. The next day I wake up and do it all over again. I work anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Art Education and a minor in mathematics. I make $35,000 before taxes and this is with additional pay from being a department chair, a technology site leader, and a mathletes team leader. I have been teaching for 5 years and the biggest raise I have received over that time period was a 2% raise due to cost of living increases. I get paid once a month, and though I budget well, I still am only able to live from month to month on my salary.
This type of lifestyle of self-sacrifice and hard work for the sake of hard work and little compensation is not easy to maintain. Teachers are expected to give their whole selves to their career, yet are ill-compensated for the time that they are putting into their numerous duties. After watching a video on Facebook detailing that many teachers work multiple jobs to make ends meet, I found myself asking how that was even possible. Looking back at my own story, I barely have enough time to be with my family at night let alone time carved out for a second job. How can a teacher be effective in the classroom when they are overworked beyond the demands of their first job? How can a teacher be expected to stay in this financially unsustainable career and dedicate their time to shaping young minds in great ways if they themselves are not being taken care of optimally? Our nation complains that we are at a loss for quality teachers, yet we fail to address the underlining reasons for why quality teachers are leaving the profession in pursuit of other, more sustainable employment. We need to begin to rethink how we should be compensating the beautiful people who are helping to shape the young minds of our future in order to encourage a more healthy environment for students and teachers alike.