https://padlet.com/totaljohnson/writenow What's on your mind? en-us 2017-06-24 08:08:43 UTC 2017-07-19 15:23:00 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Simplehouse.png totaljohnson https://padlet.com/totaljohnson/writenow/wish/179051337 Taylor Mali, a teacher and "slam poet" once wrote a wonderful, hilarious, and deeply honest poem entitled What Teachers Make. The point of the poem is that teachers can't be judged by how much (or little) money they make, but by the countless ways that they change the world through their teaching. So much more goes into teaching than just what adults tend to remember from their childhoods. You are the person you are today because of how your were taught...and that can be a good or a bad thing. 




When people think of teachers being underpaid, there are two groups of underpaid... public school underpaid ($35,000 - $50,000 a year for 30 or more students, IEP meetings, intervention planning, prep and grading that cannot be done in the daily prep time set aside for teachers) and then there is parochial school underpaid (not everywhere in the country but especially in the Midwest... $20,000 - $30,000 a year for anywhere from 3 to 30 students, and having no prep time during the day, having to clean your own classroom, having to help special needs kids who don't have spec ed help because there isn't someone on staff or the resources through the public schools are limited...). I am not exaggerating when I say that I taught from 8:30 - 12:00 with no break, then had lunch supervision duty from 12:00 - 12:30 , recess duty from 12:30 - 1:00 and taught from 1:00 - 3:30... two or three times a week, I would have a break from 1:30 - 2:00 and/or 2:00 - 2:30 if my kids had art class or I didn't have 2:00 recess duty. I was also the student council staff leader, did the scoreboard at the basketball games, and helped with the concession stand. OK, that sounds a bit like small town America life too. Ha! My pay for all of that work (which, granted the prep is largely the same whether I have 1 student or 30 students but the grading is much faster with fewer students), along with over 15 years of experience and a master's degree was $28,000/year.

Part of punching fear in the face, for me, is opening myself up to the idea of teaching in the public schools. I've taught in our public school's summer school program for the past 3 summers, but those are fun classes and the kids want to be there. I have nothing against public schools because I grew up going to public schools my whole life until college and they were absolutely amazing. I am the person and the teacher I am today because of the Bloomington public school system. With more pay and benefits, though, comes more stress and less freedom to directly impact the curriculum choices and resources used in my classroom.

I tell my husband, "Maybe I'm done teaching. I need to do something else." In reality, this is who I am and it's what I'm good at so I know that going to corporate America (tried that once, worst six months of my life!) is not an option. I'm amazed at how each day that passes, I get more stressed about what I'll be doing for "next year" (August - June for a teacher's life) and now doors for potential teaching jobs in both private and public schools are opening. Why do I still feel like I may not have a full time teaching job for next year? Why does that thought bother me so much? Because my "side hustle" (I just found out that's a real term now) of delivering pizzas on the weekends for the last 9 months to pay for my oldest daughter's orthodontia and my freelance writing job hasn't provided me the income we need to replace even the meager $28,000/year.

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