Teaching In America: The Impossible Dream

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http://www.alternet.org/story/25484/

 

Teaching In America: The Impossible Dream

 

By Zack Pelta-Heller, AlterNet. Posted September 15, 2005.

 

 

Many public school teachers today must work two jobs to survive, and

can't afford to buy homes or raise families. A new book asks why we

treat our teachers so poorly.

 

The new book Teachers Have It Easy, which collects roughly 200

interviews with educators from around the country, couldn't have a

more ironic title. Co-written by former teachers Daniel Moulthrop and

Nínive Clements Calegari, and author Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work

of Staggering Genius), the book highlights the bleak reality that not

only are America's teachers grossly underpaid, but that teaching is

simply not a sustainable profession it its current form.

 

Through compelling accounts, Teachers Have It Easy dispels one of the

biggest myths about teaching in public schools -- that the paltry

salaries educators receive are adequate compensation for summer

vacations and " shorter work days. " Instead, the book paints a

Dickensian picture of our educational system, in which teachers

routinely work 10-12 hour days that don't end when the dismissal bell

rings.

 

The idea for the book arose from conversations between Eggers and

Calegari, co-founders of the non-profit 826 Valencia, which offers

tutoring and writing workshops for youth. (A new center, 826NYC,

recently opened in Brooklyn.)

 

" The idea was Dave's to begin with, " Moulthrop told me. " When he was

in his twenties, he had friends, including his sister, who were

teachers and loved their work. For them it was the best job on the

planet. A few years later, they all quit because of the money. It was

just a travesty. "

 

Eggers' friends were not the only ones who discovered how impossible

it can be to eke out a living as an educator. A recent study by the

University of Pennsylvania, as noted in the book, found that 46

percent of teachers leave within their first five years. Such high

turnover and instability undoubtedly wreaks havoc on public schools

and their respective communities, in which teachers play a vital role.

 

" If teachers are just leaving at the peak of their game, " Moulthrop

says, " their students were ill-served by the system. "

 

While Moulthrop is a noted journalist, and Eggers' reputation is well

known in the literary world, Teachers Have It Easy succeeds because it

allows the underpaid, unappreciated teachers to speak for themselves.

 

Take Jonathan Dearman, who was the only African American teacher at

San Francisco's Leadership High School, a public charter school.

Dearman, like so many public school teachers, was beloved

because he devoted everything to a job he loved. He often worked 70-

to 80-hour weeks because it was " the only way he could come close to

feeling successful. " In addition to teaching, Dearman set up an

informal support club for minority students, in some cases becoming a

surrogate parent.

 

" There was a teacher who was integral to the culture of school and the

community, " Moulthrop said of Dearman. " He set absolutely the highest

standards ... kids failed his class and yet they still did all of the

work all year long. "

 

After five years as a teacher, however, Dearman, who has a master's

degree in education, was making just over $40,000 a year. As is often

the case with public school teachers, Dearman neglected his wife and

kids to raise other people's children. He also accrued $15,000 in

credit card debt, most of which was spent on supplies for the

classroom. At times, Dearman even sacrificed his own health because

his world revolved around his students. Once he forgot his daily

insulin injection and ended up spending a night in the hospital.

Still, he made it to school the next morning in time to teach all day.

 

Now a realtor, Dearman makes about $80,000 -- double the annual salary

he earned as a teacher -- in only two months. Yet it was his newfound

liberty that Dearman recalled as being the major upside to leaving the

field of education. " That was one of the first things I realized when

I got out of teaching, " he said. " I can leave when I want to. I can go

to the bathroom when I want, I can go get a cup of tea when I want,

and I can eat when I want. I couldn't do that when I was a teacher. "

 

As Teachers Have It Easy points out, about 20 percent of public school

teachers have to take a second job because they want to continue

teaching at all costs. Rachel Cross, who teaches history and algebra

at Oneida Middle School in Oneida, Tenn., had to clean houses for a

year when tutoring and teaching summer school didn't offer enough

supplemental income. As a single mother, she frequently brought her

son along. " I have cried several times, " Cross confessed, " and it's

like, you're on your knees [cleaning] this toilet, and you're almost

praying, praying that it'll get better, that you won't have to do this

forever. But at the same time, you've got to be thankful, because

this'll be an extra $30. It's a tank of gas, or it may be part of your

co-pay if your child gets sick. "

 

After a while, the exhausting hours and second jobs, coupled with the

added headache of taking more courses at night in order to reach a

higher salary level, take their toll on our teachers. The book

explains that another major reason so many teachers leave the

profession early on is to marry and start families. With the cost of

raising a child approximately $10,000 per year, a teacher's pathetic

salary simply will not do.

 

Teachers Have It Easy also explores the effects that the high turnover

of teachers has on students. The book contends that the majority of

the seven million Americans who are either in prison or are on parole

had problems that can be traced back to their educational experience.

 

To back that assertion, the authors cite the Perry Preschool Study, in

which 58 impoverished children from Michigan who were deemed likely to

fail in school were given the opportunity to attend a high-quality

preschool with the best educators before matriculating to Perry

Elementary, a local school. The study also tracked another 65 students

who did not attend preschool before entering Perry. Not surprisingly,

a larger percentage of the students who attended the top-quality

preschool performed better in standardized tests, graduated from high

school, and went on to lucrative careers.

 

" If you take the Perry example and just did it in elementary schools, "

Moulthrop exclaims, " let's say you couldn't afford to do it

everywhere, but just in elementary schools ... my god, who knows what

could happen! "

 

With a direct link between the school drop-out rate and the number of

individuals who end up in the penal system, it would behoove society

to pay teachers more money in order to lure the best educators and

ensure that more students go on to become positive contributors to

society.

 

There are other issues that continue to plague public schools besides

low teacher pay. Overcrowded classrooms, a critical shortage of

resources and a pervasive lack of respect for teachers from both

students and parents are just a few of the problems that make teaching

in public schools so difficult. Moulthrop feels, however, that those

issues are hard to separate from the desperate need for higher salaries.

 

" The quality of chalkboards, where the bathrooms are, where the desks

are, all of that is profoundly important, " he says. " We decided to

focus on teacher pay, though, because it's a clear example of the

deficiencies in our educational policy. If payroll is where you're

going to be spending the lion's share of the education budget, you

really want to be attracting the top people to the profession. "

 

Calegari, who taught for over a decade in three different public

schools around the country, firmly shares Moulthrop's sentiment. " We

can't base our democracy on altruism alone, " she says. " People need to

be paid for their awesome work. "

 

To that end, the book cites examples of salary reforms in several

school districts. Younger teachers in particular seem more willing to

be paid for the work they do in the classroom, as opposed to the

current salary structure that is based on the number of years in the

school system or the number of credits a teacher has earned beyond a

degree.

 

The authors of Teachers Have It Easy all believe teachers are true

heroes. Along with Calegari and Eggers, Moulthrop hopes that the book

will raise awareness about just how difficult it is to be an

overworked, underpaid teacher.

 

Zack Pelta-Heller, a graduate student at The New School, taught school

for two years in Manhattan. His mother taught in the Philadelphia

public school system for over 35 years.