I am having a hard time believing that I even just wrote that in my title. I am a member of another message board and there is a debate going on about school, the debate turned a bit ugly (this is my opinion) when some of the members stated they were tired of teachers complaining about being underpaid.
The poster went on to say that she found some information that the average teacher pay in her state was $42,000 a year. She said after knowing that and knowing how much she makes making minimum wage to support her family, she is tired of teacher’s boo-hooing that they don’t make enough.
I, of course, had to respond to that because I sincerely believe that teachers are grossly underpaid, and I will be more than happy to share why. First off, when a woman was upset that she was making minimum wage while teachers made more and complained, teachers don’t make minimum wage for a reason. Who would go to college and get a degree only to work in a field that paid minimum wage? As it is now, the teaching field is losing teachers to higher-paying careers, so I can imagine if teachers were paid even less what would happen.
Second, in my experience, after teaching ten years, I resigned. At the time of my resignation, I was making 16,000 dollars a year, part-time. Many may not think that is bad money, and I honestly never complained, but think about it this way: If I were teaching full time, I would have been earning around 32,000 dollars a year. Did I mention that I had been working on my master’s and I had 19 hours of graduate credits, which increases your pay scale when teaching? So, with a college degree, 19 graduate hours and ten years of experience, I was making 32,000 dollars a year. Does that seem like I was overpaid? I sincerely hope no one says yes.
Let me break it down even more. Yes, I got summers off, but I was paid 12 months out of the year. During the summer, I went to graduate school, which was paid by me, with no reimbursement from my school district. My friend, who is a nurse, makes around 60,000 dollars a year and was shocked when I told her what I was making after ten years of teaching. She has been in nursing as long as I have been in teaching. I have more education than she does, only because I was working on my masters and she didn’t. She gets her continuing education paid for, I do not. Matter of fact, I must renew my teaching license and I need to take two more classes to do so. Another 600 dollars or so towards schooling for me.
My friend calculated that with as much vacation as she gets in her current nursing job, she gets pretty close to one and a half months off, similar to my having summers off when I was teaching. Yet, she makes $30,000 more a year than I did.
Add to the fact that I often purchased school supplies, field trips, paid overdue library fees and bought rewards for my students out of my own pocket. Does it seem like teachers are overpaid when knowing all of this?
My frustration stems from people not seeing just how important of a job teaching is. No other career field allows you to touch the future like teaching does. For someone to say that teachers are paid too much and should stop complaining about it, obviously doesn’t see what an important job teaching is. That saddens me.