Let’s Admit It! We Hate Teachers.

Last night I was reading my hometown newspaper, the Avoca (Iowa) Journal-Herald, and came upon an article that announced the local school board’s decision to increase teacher salaries for the upcoming school year. When I saw what the beginning salary was going to be for an Avoca teacher I almost fell of the couch. The starting salary will pay $35,355.00 for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree, who might have paid that annually the last four years to earn their teaching credential. $35,355 is $645 more than a beginning teacher was paid this year.

I started teaching in 1984. I headed to Texas for an annual salary of $19,800, which was considerably higher than the Iowa average teacher pay at around $16,000. 1984 is almost 40 years ago, and my hometown district is paying $16,000 more to their beginning teachers than I made during my first year. That averages out to be around a $421 pay increase annually for a teacher in 2022 compared to my salary in 1984.

Wait. It gets worse. An Avoca teacher who goes back to college and gains 12 hours beyond their bachelor’s degree will earn $36,355.00, a reward of $1,000 for taking four college courses. An Iowa community college credit hour averages $200, while a credit hour at my alma mater, the University of Iowa, averages a bit over $800. If my math is right, it will take an Avoca teacher 2 ½ years to recoup community college costs and nearly 10 years to gain back what they paid to the University of Iowa, if they decide to go back to school and teacher pay remains relatively flat over the next several years, which is entirely possible given current trend data.

Let’s just say it. We hate teachers. And if that statement makes you wince and causes you to try to defend the profession, let’s look at five big reasons I can say it and feel relatively confident I’m right:

1. As evidenced by the Avoca teacher salary story, we pay teachers pathetic wages in this country. And, as you can see by the Avoca example, we aren’t committed to doing anything about low pay for teachers in the short-term or long-term.
2. Teachers have little decision-making power within schools. Most teachers are told what to teach, when to test, and when they report and leave. Based upon planning time, their bathroom schedules are set for them by someone else.
3. Teachers are the victims of repeated, non-supported mandates, usually from state legislatures, local school boards, and district administration.
4. Teachers receive criticism from everyone, including a media that loves to blame them for everything from critical race theory to COVID mask violations.
5. Teachers suffer most from our incessant practice of “talking the talk, but not walking the walk.” Most of us say things like “Oh, teachers need to be paid more,” or “Boy, teachers have a hard job these days,” but then do nothing to help correct their current plight.

I’m now convinced our current teacher condition cannot be fixed, mainly because we don’t want to fix it. So, to attract the necessary talent to help our kids learn at deep levels, a new type of learning leader is needed. A learning leader that embraces and practices what a past colleague once described as GREAT learning principles:

1. Growth – the expectation for all learning leaders is evidence of substantial growth in their youngsters in skills like reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development
2. Relationships – learning leaders (let’s start calling them coaches) help young learners gain substantial growth by establishing deep relationships between the learning coaches and the young learner, between the young learners themselves, and between the young learners and the greater learning community
3. Empowerment – learning coaches should be given total decision-making power regarding what is right for their learners, and how money will be spent for these “right goals” to be accomplished
4. Anytime, anywhere learning – learning leaders don’t need to report to places called schools to get their young learners to exhibit deep learning – learning can happen anytime, anywhere.
5. Technology comfort – learning leaders need to embrace technology and feel comfortable guiding their young learners through various learning platforms, libraries, and other resources

I have some experience with this type of learning coach. Back in 2014, while serving as the executive director of a Houston-based education non-profit, we launched a personalized learning lab school. We recruited and selected 50 middle school-aged learners and hired two learning coaches to lead the young learners. The learning coaches built a budget based on $7,500 per kid multiplied by 50. The learning coaches were paid on average $100,000, and made all of the decisions regarding how money was spent. At the end of the project in 2017, we saw 4 ½ years of growth in reading, writing, and problem-solving for 90% of the cohort of 50.

Teachers need to quit schools and form their own learning cohorts. If you think this is a radical notion, pay attention to a recent National Education Association poll of their members where 55% said they will leave teaching sooner than they had originally planned, 90% said that feeling burned out is a serious problem, 86% said they have seen more educators leaving the profession or retiring early since 2020, and 80% report that unfilled job openings have led to more work obligations for those left inside schools.

Some parents can pay the costs for these learning cohorts and their new learning coaches (let’s stop calling them teachers, shall we?) right now. A Colorado organization named ReSchool and the state of Michigan are working on laws giving parents a learning budget to make it possible for poor families to afford and access this new system of learning.

Future articles will lay out the plan for how we build a new learning coach cadre to replace the teachers that we seem to hate and disrespect so much.