Now is not a good time to be a teacher in much of the western world. Depending on the state, in the US, public schools teachers earn roughly between $45,000 and $87,000 a year. And while that sounds not all that bad, remember that being a regular office worker can net you $63,500 a year on average, and that’s minus the responsibilities, stress, workload, and red tape involved in a teacher’s job.
Oh, and don’t forget that many teachers often find themselves having to spend their own money to finance things like teaching supplies and handouts because schools apparently don’t cover these costs. So, I’d wager nobody would blame them for thinking why even bother? at this point.
But this is only part of the problem. The difficult job is also supplemented with entitled parents, or just parents who are struggling to do adulting right, school systems and management being all up in their faces, and having to fight LGBTQ+ cases against school districts, just to name a few complications.
And, sure, there are teachers who do a very lackluster job at teaching, and someone should tell them to run ten laps around the school to correct this. But given all of the reasons above and some more here, it’s hard to blame them for not really caring about teaching at the end of it all.
Quite recently, folks on Twitter have been discussing and debating this issue. For the most part, it was people explaining why teachers are jumping ship, and how this could possibly be remedied.
At the top of the list, it was salaries, followed by a work environment that least much (like, way much) to be desired, and the high level of disrespect from the system, the management, and the parents.
Many have actually went on to say that there isn’t a teacher shortage per se as much as it is a shortage of people actually willing to work in the industry given the less-than-desirable conditions. So, according to them, there’s enough qualified people, just that nobody’s really up for it.
As to what are they doing instead of teaching? One woman, now a pastor and bartender, quit teaching to do bartending for 15 less hours and more money. Oh, and she also “get[s] blamed for way way less and get[s] told thank you way way more.”
Others went into entrepreneurship, writing, and some even straight up retired. It seems like anything is better than this, even if it is for a lower pay, as long as there is a more sensible life/work balance.
