Teaching is a Great Job

A counternarrative.

A third of teachers like their jobs, and while that’s a little less than the half of Americans who enjoy their work, it’s not so far off that we shouldn’t explore other reasons for this difference. Like, say, teachers are disproportionately attracted to the career for the public approbation and the increase in negative rhetoric makes them feel unappreciated. Or maybe certain school demographics are in fact getting harder to handle and these are the teachers now giving the job lower rating. I dunno.

Regardless, it’s rapidly becoming conventional wisdom that teachers are overwhelmingly, and righteously, upset about dystopian working conditions. Everyone seems ready to offer an explanation as to the cause of this teacher discontent: public disapproval, students rendered depressed, transgender, and feral by a pandemic lockdown, book bans, lousy pay, political mandates, whatever.

I have many opinions about these claims. Mostly, they’re bullshit. ¹²

Teaching is a joyous, wonderful occupation.

I call this a counternarrative, but it shouldn’t be. There’s a whole category of teacher movies for a reason. Nonetheless, teachers don’t get published or quoted for saying they love their job. Yes, I know, it’s only news if teachers are unhappy. But if “teachers under fire” stories are a thing, and they are, then media outlets should remember to offer up some opposing viewpoints.

So.

I love my job. It’s endless joy and loads of fun: a performance job that has me on stage four to five hours a day. Add in hundreds of behind-the-scenes hours go into that performance—building curriculum, grading tests….what else? Some meetings. I run the security lines at dances now. I work the hours I want. I want to work a lot of hours. What’s not to like?

I have held this opinion every day of my sixteen years in, regardless of the money I got to in return.

Pay heed, one and all: a teacher with no complaints about salary.

My first year salary was under $50K, which cracked me up. I didn’t think it was possible for any college graduate in my area to make under $50K as a serious salary in the late 2000s. But honestly, I found the low pay amusing, not offensive or irritating. I’d spent most of my career contracting or self-employed, so sick leave, paid time off, and pensions were magical concepts. That first year was the only time I thought my salary was ridiculously low, and I largely abandoned my tutoring business by my fifth year because I didn’t need the money. Once I started working extra preps, most of the years between 2013 and 2023, I never thought about salary again. I didn’t even know how much I made most years.

These days, I get paid a lot.

How much? Well, I looked it up just for this piece. Not counting pension payments, I’m just under the 90th percentile for my age. Counting pension payments puts me well over 90th. Irony alert: I’m making about $40K less this year because I don’t work the extra preps much. Annoying. But still.

Adjusted for inflation, my highest lifetime income was twice my current salary during my consulting years of the 90s. But cash flow was always a fear, I paid for my own benefits, no pension, my son was younger and I had more expenses. I’m economically secure today, getting a guaranteed paycheck every month, no matter how many hours I work. Plus I’ll make somewhere between 40 and 50% of my salary when I retire on my teaching salary alone, and that’s not counting Social Security and my own savings. I pay the whole nut of my health insurance, around $13K/year, but it’s really great insurance.

Am I maximizing my income? No. Not as a teacher, anyway. My district has middling pay. The district I live in, as opposed to work in, would probably hire me in a heartbeat. I’d bump my salary $20K, plus they pay the full nut on insurance, so a net boost of $30K. The highest paid district in the area, I’d get close to a $55K bump, if they’d hire me, which they probably wouldn’t. You only hire young ‘uns at that pay.

(Lest you think I’m bragging, please recall teacher pay comes from a table. I can take credit for going to ed school in my 40s and maintaining employment despite fairly rampant age discrimination, but after that, it’s row x, column y. For what it’s worth, I’ve had four straight evaluations of “Outstanding” and that’s quite rare.)

My comfortable salary actually led me to change my near future plans. Ultimately, I want to retire while I’m still young enough to work as a teacher in another state—something that used to to be a pipe dream, but never think that teaching shortages are all bad. From 2020 on, two things kept me in place: my mom and my commitment to my school. My mother’s dementia is a lot for her husband to handle, and I wasn’t leaving the area until she either died or was safely in a facility, which she is and doing very nicely. Last year saw me leave the school I loved so much. Retirement and relocation should have followed.

Except I looked at the teaching salaries in other states and like, what the actual fuck. Why walk away from this money? Save more! So I cut back on sushi and bumped my savings. Three years max and then I really do hope to kick in the retirement move.

So I love my job and enjoy my high pay.

Until I landed work in my current district, the only negative emotion I felt was existential fear that I wouldn’t be able to teach. I got laid off from my first two jobs, despite being a damn good new teacher, but while the job hunt wait was terrifying, I never altered my³ bedrock certainty of the awesomeness of my job.

Realize, too, that I’m not one of those milk-of-human-kindness martyrs longing to do good. Trump voter, immigration restrictionist, IQ realist, hardnosed boomer who swears like a truckdriver and thinks school libraries and cafeterias are a boondoggling waste of taxpayer dollars.

I have no real point to this essay.

Well, wait. I have been absolutely blocked for months and even before then putting out new articles has been a huge effort. I do research, read up, and then when I’ve got the data I want I sit watching TV, away from my laptop, AWAY FROM TWITTER, rather than realize I can’t write. I am busy. I have a lot of interesting living going on. But that never stopped me before. Just putting something on paper….hahahaha, see what I did there…..seemed important. So I walked away from all the interesting writing projects to focus on straight conversational mode, no analysis or deep dives. See footnotes for how much effort that required.

Then, I wanted to kick off my substack newsletter.⁴ Please subscribe. I will never ask you for money for the same reason my Twitter moniker will never have the blue check. I value my pseudonymity. Well, maybe after I retire, but if I ever get around to passing the hat feel free to remind me of my great retirement package.

Finally, the meta-point—and where would we be without meta? (no, not Meta): Instead of telling, I’ll show. The next time you read an article about the dire state of schools and teaching—or better yet, the next time you write an article on same—take a look at some absolutely authentic teacher tales, all but a couple from my experience teaching low income students at a high functioning Title I high school in mostly math, but also ELL and US history. All of them propaganda moments that movies would be proud to include. All of them a totally normal part of my daily teaching life. Remind yourself of the third of teachers who think the job is amazing, because we don’t tend to show up much in the media.

You don’t have to quote me or cite me or link me (although any of the three would be nice). Just keep the awareness of happy teachers firmly in mind.

Classroom Connections:

• A Clarifying Moment: a student returns two years after graduation to rebuild from a painful failure.

• Graduating My Geometry Class: First graduation I ever attended, at the school where most of these stories took place.

• Push the Right Buttons: prodding two young men into productivity while subbing.

• When It Had To Be You: How two credentials helped me help a young Chinese kid who “didn’t get the memo”.

• Teaching Trump: I taught US History the semester after Trump won in 2016. This was the first lesson.

• From Dead Animals to Disney: It’s good to help a student. It’s even better to make it clear that nothing is more important in that minute than helping that student.

• Song Blue: ELL students and metaphors

• What it Looks Like In Practice: Fine, you’re transgender. Pick ONE name, thanks.

• 2020 Thankfulness: only part of this is about teaching, but I spent my entire 18 months teaching during the pandemic in a state of fury, and the one thing that kept me sane was teaching and making a difference.

• Post Pandemic Update: Apart from tardies the first year and absences the second, everything’s ok. (Two years later, the absences are still a bit much.)

• All Geometry All the Time: Changing schools was upsetting, and a terrible loss. But leave that aside. The really awful thing was just one prep.

• Ending the Year a Decade Later: But it got better.

Conversations with Teachers:

I love talking about teaching. Here’s some of my best exchanges.

• Two Math Teachers Talk: I’m pleased to say that Dale and I have maintained our friendship for thirteen years, through three job and location changes for both of us. We still meet up for barbecue and beer a couple times a year.

• The Day of Three Miracles: I kept my mouth shut and achieved an unexpected consensus.

• Teacher Federalism: A geniune epic about a group of unlike-minded teachers finding a manageable consensus that lasted formally for three years and informally for six.

• In Which Ed Explains Induction: Bart was my very best teacher friend. He left the job after the pandemic because he found a girlfriend in a different state. I still miss the guy.

Math Specific

Unlike ELL and History, some math articles need expertise, but these are still some great propaganda moments.

• Gwen and Bob and Lines of Best Fit: I know an unseemly amount about musicals, but rarely do I find a way to mix my fixation with math.

• The Charge: Thirty minutes before a rally, kids won’t shut up, and shazam. It’s too bad you have to know the math to get this story.

• Teaching as Stagecraft: For me, *all* teaching is stagecraft, but this 15 minute lesson on making kids realize they’ve “seen” pi never fails to deliver.

• Max, Homer, and Wesley: the intellectual joy of using tests to see progress.

Teaching is an intellectually challenging, emotionally satisfying way to make a living. Few careers available to ordinary folk have more impact on more lives. I’d ask the media, reformers, policy wonks and the rest to remember that and try to represent the enormously complicated field with a bit more nuance.

To teachers: If you don’t like the job, go do something else. If you choose to stay in the field because you love it so much, quit complaining.

Advocate for change, absolutely! Demand more money and change jobs if the pay isn’t enough. I’m not proposing anyone subserviently accept bad conditions. But never forget you get a ton of time off, benefits, and job security the rest of America can’t even really comprehend. Try to keep that in mind.

1. As an example of what’s been *killing* my writing output for a couple years: I started to give examples of bullshit then began looking for links to cite then thought gosh, I should reorganize this and rewrite and refocus it and then an hour was gone. Stepped away from the keyboard, I did.

So I will not be specific about the claims and education common wisdom these days that is complete and total bullshit, as opposed to mostly bullshit, as opposed to correct but misdiagnosed, because I don’t seem to be able to produce these pieces right now.

2. Then I had to intervene a second time because I wanted to delay to develop four paragraphs describing these various categories of bullshit.

3. Damn, got distracted for another hour trying to find ancient articles about that anxiety.

4. Note to Wordpress: Thanks for 13 years. But I hate the banner.