Teacher Salaries

 One of the most controversial topics in education today, is teacher salaries. It is very obvious and well known that teachers are severely underpaid for their work. Teachers have one of the most important jobs, if not the most important jobs in society.

Woman holding a sign in protest stating a teachers
starting salary is $37,000 and after 30 years it 
only increased to $60,000.

They are educating our youth and without teachers, we all would be nothing. We wouldn't have lawyers, doctors, or any other job, if it weren't for educators. Knowing that, why are we still not paying Americas educators enough? For example, Tennessee educator salaries are averaging around $50,000, aligning with America's average as a whole. Those averages are after they have been teaching a while, starting out, teachers barely make a livable salary. For as much as teachers do, one would think their pay would reflect that. It has led to teachers leaving their profession as they feel they are not being respected for what they do. 

As a college student entering the teaching profession, this is a problem that is concerning. My career should pay me enough to only have to work one job, but that is not the case for many teachers. Most educators I know work one, even two, jobs outside of teaching just to be able to support themselves and their families. As a comparison, I babysit/nanny in my free time, charging 10 dollars an hour per kid roughly. Let's make the comparison in the classroom. $10 per kid, per hour, 5 days a week, per month. A teacher has roughly 20 students in her class. 10 multiplied by 20 is 200 dollars an hour. Multiply that by 7 hours, is $1,400 a day. There are 180 days in a school year, so that comes out to $252,000. Now, I am not saying that teachers need to be paid that much exactly, but for as much of their time and effort educators put into their jobs, they deserve more. Educators work long hours, even outside of their contracted hours, that they don't receive compensation for. They bring home papers, create things at home, etc, and that all goes unnoticed. As a nation, I think we need to step back and reevaluate our education system and how much we are valuing and respecting our educators, as they are our foundation of our society.