10 Reasons to be Thankful for Working in Education

When it comes to being a teacher, there are so many things to be thankful for. To get you started on your own journey to gratitude, here are 10 things that local educators sent in that they appreciate in this field:

1. The students!  They make the lesson planning, activity prep, and long days worth it.

2. Seeing students’ growth and being able to be a constant person in their life every day no matter what happens outside of school.

3. Students who come to school and put in effort in their classes, are respectful, and kind towards others make teaching worth it.

4. Supportive department members.

5. The lasting, meaningful relationships made with students. 

6. Seeing the glow that students have when they 'get it' after they’ve been struggling.

7. Making an impact on the children and families within a specific community. Being able to host a classroom where students are safe, valued, noticed, and loved unconditionally is something to never take for granted.

8. The opportunity to encourage critical thinking and work to make informed young citizens.

9. Always learning something new with technology.

10. Summer Break & Holidays! It’s always great to spend personal time with loved ones, and educators are unique in that they have a summer break.

There you have it! 10 amazing things to appreciate as a teacher. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and were able to spend quality time with friends and family!

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The Need for Change in Education

Education. It’s costly, it is grossly underfunded, and there are inconsistencies and inequalities within the system. As much as we try to move forward and improve education, it almost feels like the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

Let’s begin with the cost of education. Most of us know the burden of student loans, and the strain we go through to apply for financial aid, scholarships, grants, etc. We do all of this work knowing that a huge debt is looming in the background as we enjoy our college years. How can we fully focus on the experience when we know the harsh reality waiting on the other side of graduation?

With other great career options available through trade school or even through social media influencing, more and more students are turning away from furthering their education in a University setting or other school system. Everyone should have the opportunity and accessibility to pursue their passion, no matter the field of interest.

Funding Public K-12 Education in America

The Century Foundation (TCF) published a study led by school finance expert Bruce Baker in 2020 that examined funding gaps in the U.S. public school system. According to this study, the U.S. is underfunding public schools by nearly $150 billion annually. This limits the amount of resources needed in each classroom, which then hinders student success. We cannot keep underinvesting in future generations.

The U.S. is underfunding public schools by nearly $150 billion annually.

This inequality in funding came from budget cuts that followed the Recession in 2007, leading about half of the U.S. states to spend less on education, creating funding gaps. This hit lower-income communities (mainly in the southeast and southwest states) harder than most, causing a ton of teacher layoffs, increased class sizes, and a reduction in school programs. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could do my best work in an overpopulated classroom with no opportunity for one-on-one time with the teacher to help me grasp a topic I have been struggling to understand.

Inconsistency & Inequality

When lower-income communities are underfunded, this gives students in middle- to upper-class neighborhoods a better chance to reach graduation. This is incredibly unfair to millions - yes, millions - of students across the country. Your background and your home life should not determine your path.

Schools with less than 50% minority enrollment are less likely to have funding gaps, while other schools are twice as likely to have a funding gap if more than half of their students are Black or Latinx. What can be done to decrease funding gaps all over? What is it going to take to convince local governments to provide the support these schools and students need?

A New Tomorrow

At Leaped, we want everyone to have access to the subjects they are interested in without worrying about the debt that lies ahead. Pursuing your education and what you are passionate about should not be unattainable. Leaped will build communities of like-minded people who care about helping each other succeed, and it will happen without you having to dump thousands of dollars into the process.

This platform will offer education on a variety of topics from all types of educators, so that you have a plethora of options to choose from. It will require communication and engagement, so that students are getting the most out of their time learning. It will offer flexibility so that you can teach or learn on a schedule that works for you. 

Most importantly, Leaped is a platform that will give educators the support they need and deserve, while giving students a place to learn without financial worry.

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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. 

A Conversation with Dr. Williams — Middle School Principal

Dr. Williams has held a variety of roles in the education world over the years. He has been named Teacher of the Year (2007) and been recognized for many other accomplishments throughout his career. Get to know Dr. Michael Williams, Principal of Harold E. Winkler Middle School, here.

Tell me a little bit about yourself: 

I have been a middle school principal since 2015.  Around 1250 students attend my school and I supervise around 125 faculty and staff members.  Prior to my current role I was an assistant principal (2 years), an instructional specialist for secondary schools (2 years), a high school social studies teacher (2 years), and a middle school social studies teacher (12 years).  I was also a basketball coach at the middle and high school levels. 

 What is your ‘why’?

Each day, I set out with the purpose of making people’s lives better.  I think people and organizations should have a purpose, and this vision and mission must be directly aligned to that purpose.  The purpose should drive everything we do.  On a personal level, I strive to find ways to make sure everyone around me is successful and finds joy through that success.  Organizationally, we strive to empower teachers to do the same for students.  We have built a culture of growing and learning that leads to better lives. 

 What is the best part of your role, and why?

I love hiring the right people and spending time dreaming with them.  I’ve found that my most important role is to hire well, give the right support at the right time, be a cheerleader, and make sure people have what they need to do great work.  I firmly believe great teachers are always going to do great things for students.  And those great teachers are looking for a place where they are empowered, not managed.  I also love the idea of dreaming: we are constantly in a state of “plussing” where we look for what we can do next to make life better for people.  It’s fun to get smart people in the room and empower them to dream! 

 Do you have any advice for teachers or administrators?

This profession is phenomenal when we keep our focus on the long game.  Every profession has moments of frustration, but we have to be careful not to measure our happiness based on the moment.  We can rarely use the moment to define our success.  Instead, we have to get enough time behind us to look back at ALL of the positive work we did.  We also have to be intentional to look for the positive things in our lives. 

 What do you think makes a classroom successful? How have you encouraged students to do their best work?

I believe two things make a classroom successful: strong community and academic rigor.  In our building, we phrase this differently; we talk about love and rigor.  I think great teaching can look like lots of different things, but in all great classrooms, teachers build strong community where students know they are loved and they belong AND they work students really hard.  When teachers can balance these two things, magic happens. 

I also think a lot about engagement for students.  I define this as the spot where what students are willing to do overlaps with what they must learn.  I believe we have to consider students to be volunteers rather than employees, which requires us to think differently about how we motivate them beyond just giving a grade. 

Compare coaching and teaching: how did doing both impact you in your career?

They match.  Great coaching IS great teaching.  Each of the professions requires us to use backwards design to build action steps toward the goals we want students and players to reach.  Coaching isn’t just coming up with a scheme; instead, it is rooted in building players’ skills so they build automaticity and can approximate their own decisions.  In the long game, teaching is exactly the same.  We are helping students build a skill set they can use to live independently. 

 How did you adapt to a virtual school year this past year?

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I am a deeply hands-on leader and I felt completely disconnected from the work.  To adapt, I had to worry less about how teachers were teaching and spend most of my time supporting teachers’ social-emotional-mental well being, and doing my best to make sure students were engaged.  I’m not a big fan of staff meetings, but we started scheduling them twice a week to listen and respond, and I spent a ton of time checking in on kids and families. 

A History of Teaching With Brian King

Veteran teachers have been dealt a wild hand over the past year and a half, having to adapt to new things along the way. This week, I talked to Brian King, a North Carolina educator who has been doing this for more than half of his life.

What do you teach, where do you teach, and how long have you been teaching? 

I teach American History and AP US History at Central Cabarrus High School in Concord, North Carolina. This is my 24th year.

What is your ‘why’?

This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I teach because I like being a positive influence on students’ lives and I love history. I hope to make students love history as well. I think a lot of students don’t like history or find it boring and I try to change that.

What is your favorite thing to teach, and why? 

I really enjoy teaching the Civil War - the things leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself. Although the Civil War happened a long time ago, a lot of the things that are important today can be traced back to the Civil War. Whether it’s the lasting impact of slavery, or how after the Civil War, leaders did not successfully deal with the issues that former slaves faced, leading to the Civil Rights Movement later in the 50s and 60s. I also think this topic leads to a good debate about what freedom means.

Do you have any advice for other teachers?

I think the best advice that I always got is to really make sure that you know your content. Everything else will come later, just know your content. The kids will know whether or not you know what you’re talking about so you just need to be prepared. I also think it's important in your first year of teaching to focus on teaching. I was a soccer and basketball coach, and I was told not to coach my first year of teaching so that I could really focus on my classroom instead of getting distracted by extracurriculars. One of the best things that I ever did was wait to start coaching until after my first year.

What do you think makes a classroom successful? How do you encourage students to do their best work?

What makes a classroom successful is to try and make it as fun as you can, and to also make sure the work that you give your students is meaningful and not just busywork. The students need to know that what you’re assigning is important and valid; you are giving them work to help them learn what they need to know.

How did you adapt to teaching virtually this past year?

Before virtual education, I didn’t use Canvas or other online tools very much. Teaching virtually has kind of forced me to get more familiar with technology and now that we are back in school physically, I still use the technology because I’ve enjoyed incorporating it into teaching.

What Is It Like To Be a Fitness Instructor?

This week, I asked my dear friend and one of my favorite CycleBar instructors, Cassidy Putney, to answer some questions about her life and work in the fitness industry. 

Here is how our conversation went:

How did you get started teaching fitness classes?

I was living in California at the time and was super unhappy, unhealthy, and I was overweight. I started cycling and immediately saw results in my physical and mental wellbeing. About a year later, I decided I wanted to be an instructor myself and started to train and learn as much as I could. I got certified to teach group fitness and then when I relocated to Buffalo, NY, I auditioned to be an instructor at Revolution Buffalo, and the rest is history! 

Are you a full-time fitness instructor? If not, what else do you do?

In addition to fitness, I work full-time in the sustainability field. I am the co-founder and owner of Impact Earth, which is a zero-waste lifestyle and compost hauling company based in Rochester, New York. I am also the founder and CEO of GreenHows Consulting, which is based here in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

You can follow these two businesses on Instagram @impactearth_composting & @greenhows_.

What is your favorite part of teaching and why?

Personally, I am addicted to the feeling of being up on the podium in a cycling class. I love the adrenaline rush and how my playlist can be so personal to me but also so relatable and potentially personal for others in the room. However, I find it most rewarding when my clients find their own journey and really progress in the many ways they can inside and outside our studio. I love being able to make an impact in someone’s life.

What do you think makes an effective fitness instructor?

An effective instructor is there not for themselves, but rather to help lift others up. Someone that takes the time and chooses to program their workout in a way that is accessible, challenging, and provides both extra options and modifications. I truly believe that if you put in the effort to get to know your clients, and create programs that are targeted for each and every person in the room, you can’t go wrong! I always try to bring diversity of music, especially, into my cycling classes with the hope that at least one song in every class is appealing to every single rider. I also think it’s important for an instructor to go from good to great - they need to constantly keep learning, receiving feedback, and finding new ways to coach.

What is your “why”?

I became a fitness instructor because fitness in my early 20s really changed my life and my lifestyle. And at the time, I didn’t feel that there was the correct representation of different types of bodies and different types of people up on the podium at cycling studios.

What are your other goals? Do you want to expand your teaching into other areas of fitness?

I am currently training to be a coach at ISI Elite Training where I will lead group fitness classes. I am also currently studying for my CPT and would love to get into personal, one-on-one training.

Do you have any advice for anyone that wants to get into teaching fitness?

Ask your favorite instructor about their journey! Let them know you’re interested in teaching, and they will most likely point you in the right direction. However, they will most likely 100% freak out with excitement and demand that they will help you get there!

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Thank you, Cassidy! You can follow along Cassidy’s instructor journey by following her @cassidyrayyne on Instagram, or if you are local in NC, you can take her classes at CycleBar - Matthews! 

8 Ways to Encourage Student Success in the Classroom

You probably already have tons of engaging activities in your teaching repertoire, from educational games to dynamic study guides. However, it takes more than a few activities to help your students be the best, most successful version of themselves.

So, How Can Teachers Help Students be Successful?

Here are eight ways that you can promote your students’ success:

Be Clear and Transparent

Be upfront about what you expect from your students and what will be covered over the course of the class. Keep everyone in the loop about any changes or updates in the curriculum as you move forward. With everyone on the same page, there won’t be too many surprises, and you can guarantee that nobody is left behind.

Let Your Students Set the Pace of the Class

Before you really dive into your curriculum, start off with a quiz to figure out where your students are at with the material. Does anything need to be focused on more? Could you spend less time on a certain topic? Once you gauge their knowledge a little bit, you’ll be able to teach them more effectively.

Be Accessible

Emailing, tutoring after school, and even using lunch times are all ways for students to reach you outside of class. When you make yourself more available to students, you are showing them that you truly care about their learning. If you do open your email inbox or offer tutoring to them, be sure to reply in a timely manner or stay consistent with your tutor schedule. They want to know that you are true to your word!

Show a Genuine Interest in the Students

This point goes along with the previous one, because increasing your availability shows them how much you care about their efforts. They might be stubborn sometimes and not always realize it, but their confidence will continue to rise when they notice that you will not give up on them. 

Incorporate Engaging Learning Activities

Yes, play the games! Assign fun projects where students can create a comic strip about an important event. Play your own version of ‘Jeopardy’ with class material. Get creative when you engage the students with different activities to stimulate their minds. High School English Teacher Chelsea Herron knows how important engagement is.

“There definitely needs to be an emphasis on student engagement. From my experience, I think that comes from being up to date on the latest trends or technology and making them relevant and worthwhile for the students.”

Watch and see how excited they get about something that would otherwise be labeled boring or mundane.

Give Your Students Feedback

Tell them why they got the math problem wrong. Explain it to them. Tell them what they can do to improve their writing skills, or how they can study more efficiently. Help your students by constantly pushing them to do their best with their work.

Make Everything Meaningful

All of your content should be related and mean something; Projects, quizzes, tests, and activities should align with what your students need to know to pass the class. As long as they are absorbing relevant information throughout the course, you’re doing your job.

Set High Expectations

Let your students know that you expect them to ace your class! Tell them that you want them to succeed, and that you will do everything in your power to make sure that happens. Tell them that you are in their corner. You are rooting for them!

And, last but not least, here is a bonus idea: have FUN!

Show your class that you have a sense of humor by having fun while you teach. If you’re giving students the tools to succeed, and maybe some occasional tough love, you will gain their respect and watch them do great things.

How will you promote success in your classroom? Let us know - leave a comment, or message us on Instagram @leapedlive. We would love to hear your ideas!