North Carolina public school teachers are not treated like
professionals. If I had to explain the biggest difference between my old job
and my new job, I could explain it succinctly with that sentence. In North
Carolina, I was not treated like a professional. I was not treated like someone
who had a degree and a career status license in my subject matter. Teachers are
treated more like whining indentured servants (the younger teachers more
literally since they are paying back their student loans) and are then told to
be thankful that they even have a job in such a bad economy.
North Carolina does not pay their teachers a professional
salary. In fact, North Carolina teachers are the fourth lowest paid teachers
nationally. Money was the most tangible reason that I quit my job. I’ve heard my entire life that you should
never leave a job because of money, but I don’t understand how that’s possible
for many teachers, especially with five years of experience or less. Many
younger teachers are trying to pay off their student loans; thanks to the state
budgets, those loans are also much larger because the cost of a college
education at a North Carolina University has practically doubled over the last
ten years. Many of these younger teachers are also single and do not have a
spouse to share living expenses with. If I had not left the NC public schools
last year, I would currently be facing my seventh year of teaching while still
receiving a second year teacher’s salary; in the county where I taught, I never
cleared $30,000 a year and based on the longevity of the salary freezes, I
never would. During my last year of teaching, I ended up moving back in with my
mother. She was an excellent roommate and I am so thankful that she agreed to
live with me again (even though I am an eccentric monster who doesn’t know how
to close a cabinet door or a drawer, and leaves wet towels on every surface I
can find). Despite how wonderful parents may be, no professional five years
into their career wants to be forced back into the nest. I certainly did not go
to college and choose what I thought would be a financially stable career—not lucrative
(I’m not stupid), but stable—in order to move back home the year after I
received my career status teaching license. But after four years of salary
freezes, a spike in the cost of practically everything from utilities to
groceries to gas to co-pays (you know, all the luxuries I squandered my
paycheck on) I was left in the red at the end of almost every month. Nothing
screams professionalism like not being able to buy groceries.
North Carolina teachers are also unable to supplement their
unprofessional salaries through other avenues as easily as they could in the
past. Teachers are still able to get some supplements to their income through
other avenues, but now the state has and is making those paths less traversable.
North Carolina offers teachers the opportunity to apply for National Board
Certification and receive a 12% salary increase. It is a very arduous and time
consuming process and many teachers are not successful on their first attempt. Until
2 years ago, the state paid the $2,500 application fee for teachers on their
first attempt. Now teachers have to pay the $2,500 fee in order to apply. I
know very few teachers with $2,500 dollars in the bank. And because of reports like this, which represent the thinking of many legislators across the state,
I wonder if National Board Certification will continue to be a way for teachers
to receive a raise. How many more budgets will National Board pay survive? A master’s
degree is another avenue for NC teachers to receive a pay raise. However, there
have been talks in the Senate about no longer allowing teachers to receive a
raise if they obtain a master’s degree. An advanced degree in either education
or a teacher’s subject area would make him or her more of an asset to the staff
and more knowledgeable in the classroom. If the state eliminates the pay-raise
teachers receive for their masters, fewer teachers will seek these advanced
degrees. The pay-raise is oftentimes necessary to repay student loans incurred
while obtaining a master’s degree. Having fewer teachers with advanced degrees
will only hurt the schools and students in the long run. The state is making it
harder and harder for North Carolina teachers to achieve any benefits—or at
least semblance—of upward mobility within their career track, thus decreasing
professionalism for teachers.
Probably the most obvious proof that NC teachers aren’t
treated as professionals is the state legislators’ approach to professional
development funds. Professional development is no longer a priority at the
state level and the state has been eliminating it from the budget since 2009.
As a result, and after many teachers complained about having to pay for their
own professional development out-of-pocket, NC teachers are only required to
complete 7.5 CEUs instead of the original 15. Without the state money, many
counties have been forced into DYI, in-house professional development. Because
of a lack of funding, NC teachers are attending less quality professional
development, and they are only required to attend half as much. Does the state
only expect teachers to be half as professionally developed as they were in the
past? With fewer teachers being able to receive an advanced degree because of
their financial situations, professional development has never been more
important.
North Carolina teachers are also set-up for failure on a
daily basis by their circumstances. I do not think that state legislators
purposely and deliberately set teachers up for failure. I don’t imagine them
sitting around the capital building practicing a menacing laugh while they rub
their hands together, scheming. Since most legislators are not, never were, and
never will be educators, I don’t think they realize what their budget cuts
translate to on a daily basis for teachers. Here’s a word problem to
demonstrate what I’m talking about:
Mrs. Smith has 32 students in her 10th grade
English class. She has 30 English textbooks in her class set and 31 desks. How
many of Mrs. Smith’s students will perform at or above grade level by the end
of the 90 day
semester?
I wish this scenario was an exaggeration. It’s not. It is
the reality that many NC educators face on a daily basis: class sizes that
exceed the capacity of the room and the book numbers that were ordered almost a
decade ago. Actually, this scenario
doesn’t include many of the other variables that teachers face on a daily
basis. Out of Mrs. Smith’s 32 students, I forgot to mention that six of them
are reading below a 5th grade level and need Mrs. Smith to help them
recover five grades of reading (because they just couldn’t be left
behind). And out of those 90 days, Mrs.
Smith will eventually lose 5 of them to field testing, state tests, professional
development, assemblies, and student services presentations. NC teachers are
asked to do the nearly impossible on a daily basis and are then made to feel
completely inadequate by students, parents, the media, jerks that tape classes
and put them on youtube, and documentarians like David Guggenheim if they don’t
succeed. If teachers were viewed as professionals, state legislators would
ensure that everyone had at least the essential tools (like books and desks) to
offer all of their students the same opportunities. If teacher’s were treated
like professionals, they would have the power to request smaller class sizes,
new textbooks, and time-worthy professional development without being seen as a
nuisance, inflexible, whiney, and belligerent.
The effects of de-professionalizing teachers are not pretty.
They are already widespread and damaging to the core of our education systems
nationally because this isn’t just a problem in North Carolina. When teachers
aren’t treated like professionals on a national or state level, this attitude
eventually trickles down. Parents and students won’t view teachers as professionals
and this creates the us vs. them militaristic relationship that exists in so many
schools today. De-professionalizing teachers creates a sense of mistrust, and
the parents and students see teachers as idiots or the bad guys. They are
working against the parents and students instead of working with them. By
de-professionalizing teachers, our society has ironically created a
teacher-centered classroom. Teachers are the problem. Teachers are the
solution. So what are the students? Teachers are so overwhelmed and exhausted,
it’s hard for them to even see past their own difficult circumstances and focus
on the act of teaching. (Just ask any of the classes I taught during my last
year in North Carolina. I’m not proud, but many of them could tell you more
about the budget cuts than they could dramatic irony. Because of my discontent,
my classroom had become very teacher-centered). If we continue to de-professionalize
this important profession, the relationship between teachers, students, and the
act of teaching and learning will continue to deteriorate even more.
When we de-professionalize teachers too much, our students
will no longer be taught by professionals. And then no one will wonder why
schools in the United States are falling so far behind globally.
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