Opinion: Save the teachers while we can

Two months ago, my son’s English teacher quit.

She had actually quiet quit prior to that, in a way that was so alarming that my son Will was concerned about her and asked me to reach out. She would come to class and just sit silently. This was especially heartbreaking because at the beginning of the school year, she was full of promise and enthusiasm. Both Will and I were looking forward to a journey of learning with her.

This one instance is sad enough, but it’s not an isolated event. More than a half million teachers across the country have quit since the start of 2020. And in a National Education Association survey last year, more than half of all teachers said they were thinking about abandoning the profession. The percentage was even higher for teachers of color, who are under-represented already.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

This is terrible. That’s both my professional assessment, in my role as leader of an educational nonprofit, and my personal assessment, as the mother of a child directly affected by this. This is bad for kids, for parents and for the country. A nation unable to teach its children is not one that will thrive.

But it shouldn’t be a surprise, when we as a society consider how we treat, train and pay our teachers. It’s a vital and demanding profession that in most parts of the country is poorly compensated compared to other professions requiring similar training and expertise. Many of the best and the brightest find new opportunities outside of the classroom that bring more flexibility and pay.

But there are solutions.

The nonprofit I lead, Out Teach, focuses on building outdoor learning labs to improve elementary school science education. We’ve built 27 of them in Georgia, including two more this year. It’s student-oriented, but an important part of what we do is to train and support teachers using the labs we build. As a result, 91% of those teachers say they are more prepared to teach science, and 84% report increased job satisfaction.

That helps, but I know it’s not enough. When teachers go grocery shopping, they can’t pay with morale. Respect doesn’t pay the rent. Like it or not, in our society, the way we show appreciation to workers is with money. All the innovation and expertise and commitment that reside in public and private schools and the dozens of nonprofits working to improve education will be for naught as long as we don’t invest in the one resource that holds the attention of students all day long — the teachers.

The average elementary school teacher makes $68,000 a year in this country, and that figure is distorted by New York, California and Massachusetts, where teachers are paid more. For more than half of the states, the pay range is between $50,000 and $60,000.

Many school districts require a postgraduate degree to teach, continuing education and, of course, skill. In that context, it seems unjust that elementary school teachers make dramatically less than others who influence kids’ lives like pediatricians ($203,420), orthodontists ($216,320) or broadcast announcers and disc jockeys ($155,730), for example. Every job has value and requires some expertise, but are elementary school teachers educating the next generation really worth less than half of these and other professions?

Pay is important — and so is societal respect. The lack of respect for their education and dedication likely plays a role in why they’re underpaid, and often unable to afford being members of the communities they serve.

In my home state of Mississippi, the legislature last year raised the average pay by $5,140. That’s a laudable step forward, but it can’t be the only state and the only step. We need other legislatures, other city councils, to see that shortchanging teachers also shortchanges kids — and all of us who rely on an educated workforce.

The bill is due and it’s time to pay — or imagine our country without talented teachers as it slumps behind nations that value knowledge.