Teaching Today - Is It Worth It?

Lesson planning, mentoring, teaching, grading, etc. These are just a few of the things our educators do on a daily basis.

Educators are 100% underpaid and overworked. In a perfect world, they would be paid more for all of the hard work they put in day in and day out. 

Some teachers work two or more hours each day after the school day ends because they no longer have a planning period that they need. It’s no longer a 40-hour work week when you’re spending upwards of 60 hours on a job that gives little back to you. 

Most teachers use their personal time and money to put together a classroom that meets their students’ needs. They use time at home to prepare for their next class, and they use their income to obtain the necessary materials for their classroom and the curriculum.

Why? It’s time for this to end.

To answer the prompt for this post - yes, teaching is worth it, but more and more teachers are starting to ask themselves this question each day. 

The national average teacher salary for public elementary & secondary school was $63,645 for the 2019-2020 school year, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

Here is some hard truth: people do not want to become teachers when they see the pay. This means there are less students pursuing higher education for teaching, which leads to less individuals seeking jobs in education, and so on. The number of fresh graduates available to fill the demand for teachers is decreasing as times goes on. If educators start to get paid more, more people will want to enter the profession.

“Teachers are 3x more likely to get another job than other U.S. workers.”

In many states today, you could get a job at a popular fast food restaurant and make more money starting out than you would as an educator. How crazy is that?!

What’s even crazier is that teachers are having to get second jobs to supplement their income. According to a 2019 National Education Association article, teachers are three times more likely to get another job than other U.S. workers. 

Some do this during the school year, working on weekends or weeknights, while others aim to take on summer jobs during their “break,” just to make ends meet. Some might even take on a third job.

The amount of work educators do and the impact they have is ultimately undermined by the financial stress caused outside of the classroom, as well as the lack of students’ motivation and  commitment toward their grades. Educators are pushing themselves further than ever before and deserve to see a raise in pay.

A higher pay for teachers can even result in better student performance. A study done in 2000 shows that a better investment in education for teachers and students leads to lower dropout rates, higher wages, and an increase in student achievement. 

The correlation here could be a result of many things, whether that is better quality of teachers or more general, adult support for students. Either way, let’s pay our teachers more.

If scholars have been crunching numbers on this for two decades, what is the hold up? The Red for Ed movement has been gaining momentum and has been particularly huge in North Carolina, where members “now hold key positions in state level institutions… with wider reach and greater influence,” according to their website.

As progress continues to be made, there is still a long road ahead. Schools have vacancies for teaching positions, current teachers are on the hunt for non-education jobs, and this profession that individuals once loved is slowly becoming less desirable. 

Everyone remembers their favorite teacher and the impact they have had on their lives. That’s just one aspect of what makes this such a rewarding career. However, a change needs to be made in order to encourage more students to take this path.

All it takes is a simple solution: investing more money in education and educators.