“Almost every teacher at my school has some kind of side gig to supplement their income.”

By: Elizabeth Toye
K-12 educator, Southeastern, MI

As a high school teacher in southeastern Michigan, educator shortages have directly impacted my ability to do my job in two crucial ways:  

1. When there is a teacher vacancy in a class or multiple classes at my school, it disrupts the structure and flow of students’ school day.  Most times when kids go into a room and there is a substitute, very little (if any) work gets done, and it’s almost always rowdy.  This makes it harder on teachers because when students finally make it to their class, so much time and energy goes into reeling kids back into a flow of structure.  Additionally, when my school can’t fill the teacher vacancy with a long-term substitute, teachers are routinely asked to cover classes during the time designated for us to prepare for our own classes. When this happens on a regular basis, it greatly hinders our ability to do our job well.   

1.  As a ninth-grade algebra teacher, teacher vacancies in middle school make it very hard to teach students grade level content.  Several of my current students and their parents expressed to me that they didn’t have a math teacher for the past two years leading into ninth grade. I know the true significance of this, because before I started teaching high school math, I taught middle school math for four years. In seventh and eighth grade students learn the foundational skills necessary to do and understand algebra. Without this foundation my students that didn’t have a math teacher for seventh and eighth grade have really struggled to learn this year. This is due obviously to not having the prerequisite skills for algebra, but also in large part due to students’ lack of confidence in themselves to learn. The underestimated consequence of putting kids in a class they’re not prepared for is the effect on their self-esteem. To be expected to perform at grade level when you haven’t had the proper education in the previous years is extremely intimidating and demoralizing for many students. That leaves me with the impossible task of bridging the gap between grade level content and multiple years of learning loss in one school year in a subject that is already difficult and intimidating to many kids.   

Teacher salaries can be a factor for some teachers staying in the profession or staying in a school and it has greatly impacted me. In the six years I’ve been teaching, I have always had to have some other stream of income to supplement what I make as a teacher. My first year teaching I made less than $50,000, and now with six years of experience and a master’s degree I only make $75,000, which is not enough to be financially stable in today’s economy. I work over weekends, after school, and over holiday breaks when I should be resting, just to attain a level of financial security; on top of already being overworked as a teacher in an urban school district. Consequently, I am often tired and frustrated especially when I don’t have the energy to plan/implement engaging lessons I know my students would enjoy.  I often feel guilty when I don’t have the bandwidth for students to be as patient as I would like to be.  And this is not just my reality, almost every teacher at my school has some kind of side gig to supplement their income. And all students see are overworked and stressed-out teachers all day every day.      

As the cost of living continues to rise, I have come to the unfortunate realization that if I’m not able to find a way to make a significant amount of money outside of teaching or teachers are not paid significantly more, I will be forced to leave the profession in the next two to three years. This is devastating to me, because I love teaching. But I also desire to be financially stable and to enjoy a certain level of comfort. With teacher salaries being capped at under $100,000, even after having over a decade of experience and a master’s degree, it makes it hard to want to continue to stay and work as hard as I’m working when I could get a job in the private sector making three times what I do now. Many of the teachers I started my career with have left the profession to pursue careers in fields where they are much better compensated for their labor and expertise. That makes it even harder to ignore the parallel reality of working in a higher paying field, when so many of my friends have made the shift and are living better because of it.