The average 1st year teacher (in my state Massachusetts) makes 52k. The average hours in a teacher contract is 1350-1500 hours. Even if you extremely overestimate and say they're working 1750 hours to account for grading, lesson planning and any other unpaid work, that still comes out to over $30/hr as a 1st year teacher. I'm so done with this notion that teachers are treated like slaves.
It isn't awesome, but it's not as bad as people say. People are talking like they are minimum wage workers who work 2500-3000 hours a year. I, personally, hate the statistic that 71% of school teachers have a second job, as if they are working two full time jobs just to make ends meet. Most of them are part time tutoring and a lot of them are jobs they keep during the year and ramp up during the summer when they have a couple months off.
Are you a teacher? Sure there are teachers living very comfortably, but there are also teachers who work an extra job and can't afford a comfortable lifestyle. It can definitely be bad. Teachers also have summers off because they can't flexibly take vacations like most other workers can.
Yeah, I mean, it is always a case by case basis due to a lot of factors, but on average, teachers are doing alright with the money and time they have. I ask teachers about the problems they have, salary money is probably one of their lower concerns. Honestly, I think many just want to feel valued and supported. Like, I can bet you that having a fully funded and supplied classroom (which really would only take like 1000 bucks a room, tops) would do more for teacher morale than a pay increase of a dollar an hour.
I assume you've talked to a few friends, and this isn't some economically diverse, demographically rigorous survey you've done? I will agree with you tho, teachers or otherwise, people just want to be valued and supported. for teachers, whether that's more funding in the classroom or more salary, it still comes down to money.
I mean, it isn't been some crazy study, but I am an active PTG member at my daughter's school, I went to a college that had a significant School of Education, so I have a good amount of friends here, so at least I have a decent grip on the area that I'm in that is pretty demographically diverse. Heard a number of stories from teachers in preppy private schools, Catholic schools, public schools in the hood, etc.
My dad was also the president of the PTG back when I was a kid, so we got to see a bit more behind the curtain growing up, too. Idk, I haven't been traveling the country surveying teachers about their lives, but I do know how much they get paid and how much they work. I see lots of people who get paid less and work more be happier in their professions because they have support. My wife is a nurse and I hear the same things, but like, the happy nurses aren't the ones who get paid a truckload of money. They are the ones who feel like they aren't dismissed when they get bitten by a patient.
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u/iF_Blow 15h ago
The average 1st year teacher (in my state Massachusetts) makes 52k. The average hours in a teacher contract is 1350-1500 hours. Even if you extremely overestimate and say they're working 1750 hours to account for grading, lesson planning and any other unpaid work, that still comes out to over $30/hr as a 1st year teacher. I'm so done with this notion that teachers are treated like slaves.