The American Teacher by Al Abbazia (2020), https://artofabbazia.com/collections/americana/products/the-american-teacher
The American Teacher by Al Abbazia (2020), https://artofabbazia.com/collections/americana/products/the-american-teacher

I don’t think anyone is confused about whether public school teachers as a group are underpaid. In the early days of the pandemic, when parents had to take over daily supervision duties of their own children, social media was flooded with post after post from exhausted parents confessing that they don’t know how teachers do it. Funny how those posts eventually turned to demands from parents that teachers return to campus ASAP, regardless of whatever risk to their health this might present. I know it wasn’t the same everywhere, but I was shocked at the number of teachers that I saw quit teaching right in the middle of the school year during the two and a half years following our return to campus. This in turn made things even worse because there weren’t enough substitute teachers to fill the vacancies. So, we’re all in agreement that teaching isn’t for everyone and teachers tend to be underpaid for the work that they do. 

It should be all the more unacceptable that individual teachers or groups of teachers feel the need to resort to charity fund-raising so that they have enough basic supplies for their classrooms. I mean, we’re somehow okay with teachers spending their own personal funds on their classrooms (and legislation has been created to limit how much teachers can claim on their income tax!). I know I foolishly spent personal funds my last year teaching on props and backgrounds that I wanted to use with my media students and then admin took the class away from me. Ugh. It’s just a habit to always be thinking about how to improve things and I wasn’t entrepreneurial enough to work the system to get some of the things I needed. That’s on me. But it was a habit that developed over time, because in my not-so-smart mind I found it easier to just pick up things at Home Depot or Michael’s as I was brainstorming, instead of trying to plead with my administration1.  But in the 15-years when I worked for the phone company I never thought that I needed to spend any of my personal funds for better test-equipment or safety clothing. I’m pretty sure that there were regulations against using personal equipment on company equipment. But somehow we expect teachers to fund their own classrooms. 

Government Funded Classroom versus (My) Teacher Funded Classroom, posted by Jenna Chipps (2018-05-06), https://twitter.com/mrsjennachipps/status/993181665009729539.
Government Funded Classroom versus (My) Teacher Funded Classroom, posted by Jenna Chipps (2018-05-06), https://twitter.com/mrsjennachipps/status/993181665009729539.

This whole issue came to mind because my friend, the ever subtle Dr. Gary Stager posted an article, NO! I Will Not Buy Your Damned School Supplies! He’s right, of course. The success and welfare of the next generation and our culture is built on the 13-years that every child spends in our classrooms. We as a society need to step-up and understand that our values are on display when we put more into a college coach’s salary or sports stadium than into the education of our children. Stager was adamant, we teachers, as much as we’re coming from a good hearted “giving place,” we aren’t helping ourselves when we let our school boards and communities underpay and under-fund us. It under cuts the fact that we are the highly trained professionals who spend more time, energy and heart working with our students than anyone else who feels that they have a right to evaluate the job that we do. Again, we’re all in agreement that teaching isn’t for everyone and that teachers tend to be underpaid for the work that they do. Let’s end this essay with a reminder from John Green on why everyone benefits because of tax-funded public education: 

Sources:

  1. SIDE NOTE:The person in charge of my school’s Magnet funding worked hard to get anything that I asked for, so some of the problem was that I didn’t know what to ask for and things tended to move too slowly to be useful[↩]