Welcome to the Tweetswend's podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweetswend.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Welcome back to the Tweetswend's podcast. Today is World Teachers Day. Let's get started.
World Teachers Day aims to focus on appreciating, assessing, and improving the educators of the world and to provide an opportunity to consider the issues related to teachers and teaching. Another thing that aims to point out is the role that teachers play in the development of students and society. And I am all for this day, and it could be the fact that as a former teacher, I am invested in this topic. It means a lot.
I know what I've gone through. I know what teachers are going through out there. And the fact that no two teachers have the exact same experience is the part that makes it so difficult to try to explain to people, to get them to understand what it really means to be a teacher and what it means to have to go through the stuff that they go through. So in today's episode, what we're going to talk about are the internal and external factors into what makes teaching a good or maybe not so good career choice.
I love that this is our topic for today, because I feel like there are a lot of people that just don't get it. So we're going to start talking with those external factors, meaning the things outside of the school building. And the biggest one that we all have heard of, that we all know about, is the fact that teachers do not get properly compensated for the work that they do. Now, doing a little research, I found that the United States average salary for a teacher is $60,000 a year.
Now, this is working 53 hours a week. Now, yes, that is beyond the typical 40-hour work week before a full-time employee. And teachers don't get paid overtime for this work. However, they are expected to put it in because of the simple fact that you give students assignments, and you have to then turn back around and provide them with the scores on these assignments.
So let's say you're an English teacher, and you have the students, they have to write essays. Well, guess what? A class of 30 students, you have to read all 30 of those essays. You have to go through and correct them, give them grades, input the grades, give the stuff back to the students.
All of that requires time. And so if it goes beyond your 40 hours in the week, guess what? That's just what you have to deal with. Now, on top of that, if you think about the fact that, so outside of the building, I have to put in this extra time to grade these papers.
I'm also taking away time for my own family. Now, let's add to this. Now, Grina, I know I said I was talking about the external factors, but they're all interconnected. Teachers have after-school meetings that they have to go to.
They have extracurricular duties that they have to do. They may have cafeteria duty or bus duty, and all of these things the teachers are expected to do outside of actually teaching the children. All of this adds to the amount of time that they are on the clock. Because if I have morning bus duty, that means I need to get to school early enough to be there for when the buses start to arrive.
If I have after-school duty, I need to stay later than the time that it takes for the last bus to leave. All of that adds to the amount of time that one is taking away from you actually doing your educational duties for grading your papers and whatnot, because guess what? They'll even throw parent-teacher conferences in during your work period. So you may have a spot in the day that you can actually get a little bit of something done, but it may be the required lesson plans that your building requires for you to do.
All of that falls under that same salary, that same 60,000. And now that's on average. So there are places that pay less than that and places that pay way more than that. So looking on that scale, New York is number two as far as places to work, but they have the highest salary, which is around $88,000 a year.
Now when you think about it though, to work in New York, I'm thinking you probably have a lot on your plate to do and to deal with. And then you also have to think about the cost of living. So it only makes sense that someone working in New York would get paid $88,000, but how far does that 88 really take you when you think about the cost of living? Whereas in Mississippi, they rank 36, which is interesting, because their average pay is only $45,000.
But cost of living once again, in Mississippi, 45 isn't that far off from what other people in Mississippi are making, which is why they rank 36 in the list of best and worst places to actually teach. DC ranks the worst. And they do not have the highest pay. They don't have the lowest.
But you also have to think about job satisfaction, cost of living, and all of these other little aspects along the way that lead into it. Number one is Pennsylvania. And they don't get paid the most. Their pay is $70,000 on average, but they rank best, because one, they're just one above New York, which is the highest paid.
But undoubtedly, in Pennsylvania, they have some better teaching situations. Whatever it is that teachers are subjected to there are far better than what they are in, say, DC, which is actually not that far away from them. So it's all of these types of things that you have to think about when you become a teacher. And the thing is, you have to be a special person to be a teacher, not just any old Joe Shmo off of the street cannot become a school teacher.
Simple as that. You may be brilliant when it comes to computer science and writing code and whatnot. But if you cannot take that knowledge and transfer it to another person and get them to understand it, then you're not going to be a successful teacher. You're not going to be good at it.
And therefore, you can keep your expertise and keep it on the computer side of the house. We need somebody in the classroom that can actually get that knowledge across to the students. My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.
You know, Forrest Dump's mother was right about life, but her statement also is valid for education. You never know what you're going to get any given day that you walk into the classroom. Every day is different. The students are different from day to day.
And they could be the same faces that you see, but depending on what is going on in their home life or maybe en route to school, what they have to deal with. It is bullying. If it's gangs or whatever, peer pressure, you're going to have to deal with that every day. And it's never the same thing I'm telling you.
And so with that in mind, to be a teacher means that you have to be a very special person. You have to be able to be empathetic and sympathetic as well as tough and show tough love. But then there's just so many parts to it, so many facets that it is by far the most underpaid profession for all of the expertise that you need to have to be able to be successful in the classroom. Because when I tell you that there is nothing in your education program that you went through to become a teacher that prepares you for the things that you're going to experience once you get in that classroom, you may be like, you know what you're playing?
You're just being over the top exaggerating, but no, I am so serious. There's nothing they can teach you that's going to help you get through those tough times with the students when things are falling apart in their lives and then they bring it to you and it starts falling apart in your own life. For example, case in point, the TikTok Slap a Teacher Challenge, O-M-G. Seriously, so for those of you that haven't heard about it, this is something that's just recent, it's pretty new, and the challenge is to slap a teacher in the back of the head.
Let me tell you something. If I was in the classroom and I'm walking down the hall or something like that, because you know it would have to be in a crowded area like that where people can kind of get missing in the crowd in the shuffle. And I got slapped in the back of the head, I don't know that I would continue to stay in that position. I don't know that I would continue to stay in that job because I'm thinking about the amount of money I get paid and what I am expecting to do.
Because you know, if somebody slaps in the back of the head, you're gonna be expected not to react. Seriously? How do you not react to something like that? When somebody assaults you, how do you not react to that?
With the automatic backhand slap? Does your hand not automatically work? When somebody hits you, you automatically, because if not, tell me something because I think my hand automatically flattens out and it automatically flies, somebody's gonna get slapped. It could be the wrong person if it's in the back of my head and I just turn around and whoever's the closest person to me.
And then that's a big thing because now a teacher has assaulted a child. Not to mention the fact that the child has assaulted the teacher, you know? So I look at stuff like that and the fact that like, student violence is not a rare occurrence. Threatening teachers is not a rare occurrence, but we are expected not to report these things.
I will admit, I have been threatened before. But the way I navigated through that was acting just as crazy as the student. Now would I recommend that for everyone? You know, I wouldn't because you may just have that student that is wanting you to make their day.
I wanna teach her to step to me and make it seem like they're bigger and better than me. And as soon as they open them out to say, you know what, if you big and bad and bold, you just try it and they go and try it because then they're testing your gangster and then you're gonna have to do something. You're gonna have to react in some type of way. So you can't talk big and bad.
And then when they bring it, that you don't have it to bring back to them, right? So I wouldn't recommend that for everybody. But I was new in the classroom and I felt like I had to solidify my footing. I had to let them know who was running things.
As a matter of fact, who run it is like my school anthem. That's the song, Three Sixth Mafia. I listen to that first day of school. It's like, yeah, I gotta get my mind right when I go in this classroom because I need to let them know who's running things.
Because as soon as you let them know, then it's pretty much smooth sailing for you. You become an urban legend and the things that you did get blown up and blown out of proportion, but it's all right. Because it allows you to then teach. You don't have to worry about the nonsense and the behavior problems.
You can go in there and teach and not have a problem because everybody's afraid that you just might snap on them and they don't want to be made the example. So I say all that to say that, you know, as far as the assaults in the classroom and in the school building, some of them are intentional. While others are due to mental challenges of the students, but you never really know what you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis with that. So because of that, you know, I just say, once again, in order to be a teacher, you have to be a special person.
Do do do do. To wrap this episode up, let me give you this little tidbit. 69 million more teachers are needed worldwide in order to reach universal education by the year 2030. And in my personal opinion, I think that places where the parental involvement is high, as well as the administrative is supportive to their teachers, those are the places where teaching is safer and more fulfilling.
And so to me, in order to reach that goal by 2030, we need to make sure that those things are in place, as well as let's go ahead and see if we can't raise the salary for teachers. Or if we can't raise the salary for teachers, let's get some legislation in there where teachers are automatically put in the lowest tax bracket. And not just teachers, let's do all civil servants. Let's get police officers and other people, like firefighters, let's get them all put in the same category.
They get in the lowest tax bracket. And by doing that, you're not increasing their pay per se as far as on the pay scale. However, they'll have more money that they take home. Therefore, kind of bumping them up a little bit closer to the type of respect we give doctors and lawyers and that sort of thing.
Because when you think about it, teachers, and what all they contribute to as far as society, by trying to raise up these students because some parents, that's what they leave the parent, the teachers to do to raise their children. And so to say that teachers have such a stronghold on how society plays out, I really think more needs to go into taking care of our teachers and making sure that their job satisfaction is high so that we can keep them in the classrooms and we can get more people to come to the profession. All right, well, I don't know. You got any teachers out there that want to give their two cents.
By all means, please look me up. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram at HEVET. That's at HEVET or you can always just look for the hashtag tweet trends. Enjoy your world teachers day.
Show a teacher that you care. Show them that you appreciate what they've done, especially a teacher from the past. Reach out, find an old teacher of yours, and let them know how much you really appreciate them. I'm sure they will absolutely love it.
You will make their day. All right, do that for me. And I'll see you guys back here again on Thursday.