Margi Bhansali
When schools first shut down and flipped to remote teaching, parents got a glimpse of what teachers do. As they watched through their children’s screens, praise for teachers skyrocketed. TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes famously said in a tweet, “Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a year. Or a week.”
I felt valued when my students’ families said they appreciated the at-home learning materials I put together and how well I was able to engage their preschoolers through a screen. Friends made comments such as, “Wow! I never realized how much energy you need as a teacher, but now I see.”
We are now almost done with the first “normal” school year since the start of the pandemic, and unfortunately, perceptions of teachers are going back to how they used to be.
We see headlines like “The major teacher shortage” and “Crisis in education.” It seems, as a nation, we’ve forgotten what we realized about educators in 2020 — that teachers make an essential contribution to the functioning of society.
This change in public perception has caused many educators to leave the classroom, and fewer students are enrolling in educator preparation programs.
There are two big things that teachers need: better pay and more respect. We won’t attract and retain highly-qualified teachers if we don’t make the working conditions better.
Pay, while not easy to raise, is the more straightforward answer. A study published in March 2022 found that students perform better when teachers are paid more. There are measures nationally to increase the starting salary of a teacher, but that is not enough. We need to elevate the profession.
The profession needs three things to attract top talent and address the issue of respect: purpose, autonomy, and impact.
Purpose: A 2019 report from a human resources company that looked at people’s mindsets and how they affect our daily experiences showed that 97 percent of people feel more engaged when they have a purpose.
A clear example is firefighters. Firefighters know that they provide an invaluable contribution. Even though being a firefighter is stressful, dangerous, and not necessarily well-compensated, they feel a sense of purpose. Being a firefighter also draws a lot of respect, which adds to the person’s sense of self-worth.
What educators are asking for is the same acknowledgment: They provide a much-needed service to our community. A once-a-year Teacher Appreciation Week is not enough. While many educators enter the profession because of a calling, they quickly find out that rather than teaching what really matters, they are given scripted curricula.
Autonomy: Consider people who have a doctorate. The jobs they take have a similar starting salary. Yet, they are highly respected and seen as experts. Doctorate holders dedicate a lot of time so they are the best of the best and are treated as such.
What educators are asking for is to be treated the same — as experts in our fields. Instead, we are micromanaged even though we’ve spent countless hours learning how to teach.
Teachers can take a group of 30 children with different personalities and needs and create individual relationships. We teach so much, from how to read to the importance of our history to how to measure the area of a room. Teachers are experts both on how to teach and on our students — we should be allowed the autonomy to teach how we know is best for each child.
Impact: Teachers want our voices to be heard — we want a seat at the decision-making table. My current CEO has never taught in a classroom. This is true for many school board members and state-level superintendents.
I can’t think of another profession where the voices and experience from the field are so undervalued that they aren’t even required for leadership. I believe all school leaders need to have classroom experience as a qualification. Teachers should be on decision-making boards at all levels — local, state, and national.
What keeps me in the classroom is feeling that I make a difference in the lives of my students, working at a school where my principal gives me autonomy, and having a strong belief in the impact of a great foundation in early childhood. A combination of the three is what garners respect. What we do deserves respect, and as educators, we can’t go around just demanding it; we have to be given it by society as a whole.
What if the headlines instead read, “Teacher vacancy rates at lowest level in years” and “Teacher retires after 40 years, with more than 1,000 former students and families coming to celebrate his career?”
Margi Bhansali is a Chicago Public Schools teacher and parent.