On this Labor Day, I offer this to my fellow teachers and those who believe in public education:
I humbly suggest that given the teacher shortages that school districts are experiencing nationwide, we must recognize that our value to our school districts and society has never been higher.
People have long claimed that teachers change the world. They assert that education is the backbone of our country. Then, they fail to demonstrate this belief in any meaningful way.
They fail to provide the bare essentials for a classroom, for example, requiring teachers to use their own money to purchase supplies for their students.
In fact, it’s become quite popular these days to use social media to offer to help teachers pay for the needs of their classroom. This is exceptionally generous but also absolutely insane. Teachers should not depend upon the kindness of others to do their job. Americans are not offering to purchase legal pads for attorneys, stethoscopes for doctors, adding machines for accountants, drafting tables for architects, or pocket protectors for computer programmers.
Why are we tacitly acknowledging that teachers are using their own money to purchase classroom supplies but not trying desperately to fix a broken system?
Elysha was purchasing supplies for her classroom last year when someone in line heard she was a teacher and offered to pay for her purchases. It was an act of kindness that brought tears to her eyes, but rather than hoping to bump into a teacher in line at Staples and help out a bit, how about this instead:
Demand that your local schools be funded to a level that meets the needs of every student. Vote for candidates who promise to do these things. Fight like hell to support professionals educating the next generation of Americans. Treat teachers like the highly educated, highly trained, critically important professionals that they are.
No other professional must purchase the basic supplies needed to complete their job. It’s a disgrace, and it’s been going on for decades.
Today, teachers face many new challenges:
- The politicization of our profession.
- A lack of adequate staffing
- Threats of violence
- Increased levels of student dysregulation
- Challenges related to students’ access to technology
- Increased levels of mental health challenges among students
- Asinine book bans
- School shootings
In addition, teacher pay is lagging at astronomical levels. The UAW recently received a 25% salary increase over the next four years, but given that inflation over the past four years has been 18% and wages amongst all Americans have increased 22% over that same time, a 25% increase is reasonable.
By contrast, most teachers receive annual wage increases of less than 3%, meaning that over the last four years, their salaries have substantially decreased relative to inflation and wage growth across the country.
A 3% increase in wages is insulting.
As a result, teacher shortages are real. Vacancies have never been higher. Administrators are struggling to fill classrooms with highly trained professionals. Staffing shortages exist nationwide.
With this in mind, my fellow teachers, I suggest that we demand to be treated like the highly educated, highly skilled professionals we are. When you have leverage, use it. Right now, teachers have an enormous amount of leverage.
For example:
If you’re spending your own money on classroom or student supplies, stop. It should shame and humiliate a school board and administrators to know this is happening in their school district. They should do everything possible to end this practice and ensure teachers have the materials to teach their students.
If your school or district has arbitrarily expanded your workload to meet staffing shortages, absent any form of compensation, push back hard on this decision. Professionals are not required to work longer hours without additional compensation.
If you work for an administrator who doesn’t allow you to leave the school during your lunch break to pick up food, run an errand, stop at home to kiss your child, or do anything else on your time, challenge this asinine absurdity. Professionals are permitted to use their free time however they see fit. If you work for one of these administrators, you work for an infantilizing fool who doesn’t understand the basic principles of management and professionalism.
Push back hard. Demand that your time is recognized as your time.
Or how about this one:
Your administrator gives you the last two hours of professional development to work on report cards or paperwork but forbids you from leaving the building to do this work at home. Even though completing this work only requires a laptop and a connection to the internet and can be done anywhere on the planet (and will most assuredly be done at home on your own time as well), the two hours of professional development given to complete this task during the work day must be completed within the walls of the school.
This is asinine. Professionals are not treated like this. It should not matter where you complete this kind of work. Having worked with many clients in almost every possible business sector, I can assure you that when work can be done remotely, people are permitted to work wherever they want.
The primary reason teachers leave the profession?
Dissatisfaction
The reasons cited for this dissatisfaction?
Unsafe working environments. Micromanagement. A lack of administrative support. Not being treated like a professional.
I’m lucky. I have worked for (and currently work for) administrators who avoid most of these pitfalls. For most of my career, I have been treated as a professional, and when I was not, I could demand that policies be changed with a fair amount of success. I’m not always pleased with the way my school district is run, but most of the people to whom I report have treated me like the highly trained professional that I am.
This is not the case for many of my fellow teachers. The infantilization and degradation of the teaching profession are real. Untrained, unskilled, and uninformed administrators routinely chase outstanding teachers from the profession because they are unable to support and manage their people effectively.
But today, teachers have leverage. Our skills are in demand. Schools nationwide place thousands of untrained adults in classrooms because they cannot find teachers and staff to fill open positions.
If you’re working in a school that does not treat teachers like professionals, the time has come to let your thoughts be heard.
Teachers deserve better.
They have always deserved better.
We may now be in a position to demand better.
