14 September 2018 - Life on a Teacher's Salary in the US
'I Work 3 Jobs And Donate Blood Plasma to Pay the Bills.' This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in America
Katie Reilly (TIME Magazine, 13/09/2018)
Hope Brown can make $60 donating plasma from her blood cells twice in one week, and a little more if she sells some of her clothes at a consignment store. It’s usually just enough to cover an electric bill or a car payment. This financial juggling is now a part of her everyday life—something she never expected almost two decades ago when she earned a master’s degree in secondary education and became a high school history teacher. Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her school in Versailles, Ky., then goes to a second job manning the metal detectors and wrangling rowdy guests at Lexington’s Rupp Arena. With her husband, she also runs a historical tour company for extra money.
“I truly love teaching,” says the 52-year-old. “But we are not paid for the work that we do.”
That has become the rallying cry of many of America’s public-school teachers, who have staged walkouts and marches on six state capitols this year. From Arizona to Oklahoma, in states blue, red and purple, teachers have risen up to demand increases in salaries, benefits and funding for public education. Their outrage has struck a chord, reviving a national debate over the role and value of teachers and the future of public education.
13 Stories of Life on a Teacher's Salary
Katie Reilly (TIME Magazine, 13/09/2018)
Despite nationwide walk-outs and protests in the spring of 2018, most teachers face the same conditions — including low pay, crumbling facilities, and outdated textbooks — as they return to their classrooms this fall. But those conditions don’t only make their work difficult. TIME spoke with teachers across the country about their personal financial situations to see how wage stagnation has affected their day-to-day lives.
The Second Shift: What Teachers Are Doing to Pay Their Bills
Jaime Lowe and Brian Ulrich (The New York Times Magazine, The Education Issue, 06/09/2018)
Some teachers devote 60 hours a week to the classroom, then go to work elsewhere. The hours can be long, the labor physical, the pay close to minimum wage. Teachers across the country are now baristas, Amazon warehouse employees, movie-theater managers and fast-food grill cooks. They’re entering the gig economy in off hours and struggling to stay awake during school days. Here are some of the things they do, the 16 percent of American teachers who have second jobs, to make ends meet.
The disturbing truth about teaching in America
Lily Ames, George Shelbourn, Jane Spencer, Pascal Wyse, Tom Silverstone and Laurence Topham (The Guardian, 07/09/2018)
'I've had hungry students who couldn't concentrate; I've filed tax returns for kids' parents. You're the only adult they trust – the only adult that talks to them like they're a person': a perspective of life as a teacher in two different US states.