Teaching the Future
Teaching is a profession with dramatic social implications and relatively drab compensation. One in which we feel like we fail more than we succeed and one in which we are never sure how the future will reveal the efficacy of our labors. One of my heroes, the author Dave Eggers, helped found something called THE TEACHER SALARY PROJECT which "is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to raising awareness around the impact of our national policy of underpaying and under-valuing educators." Here is some information from their website.
The average starting salary for teachers in our country is $39,000; the average ending salary—after 25 years in the profession—is $67,000.
As of 2015, teachers' weekly wages are 23% lower than those of other college graduates.
99.5% of teachers reported spending their own money on their students or classrooms during the 2012-2013 school year. Of the $3.2 billion spent overall on school materials that year, $1.6 billion came directly from teachers' pockets.
(I live in Colorado, so this is relevant for me. You can look up the data for your state on the Teacher Salary Project website)
Colorado
Annual spending per pupil:
$8,724
Per inmate:
$30,374
Change in average public school teachers' salaries over the past decade:
-5.5%
I work with children for a living, so I stare directly into the faces of the future every day. I wonder what the world will be like for the children before me when they are in their mid-twenties and trying to make sense of themselves, of their ideals, of the society and climate around them. I wonder what I can do or say to help prepare them for the great unknowns that lie ahead. There are the basics of morality and civility, justice, courage, virtue, honesty, kindness, tolerance, patience, persistence-- but will this be enough to give them strength to face an increasingly mechanized world or one with dwindling opportunities for the renewal of one's humanity by the graces of the whisper of a canoe on the Raquette River or the mossy soothing peace of hot sulphury springs in the Elwha Valley? I can only hope there is something timeless and innately good that will transfer from the heart of my will and sincere interest in their well-being directly to them through a medium more subtle and potent than words or numbers. After all, a square is always a square, a triangle has three sides, pi is irrational and beautiful in its mystery and the forces that emanate from an earnest and devoted heart are palpable and lasting. The children will grow, and teachers will continue to try and often feel like failures, and the world will change in ways we can see and ways we cannot imagine and the waves will roll onto the beaches of Pine Island Bay in rhythms of the sea played out in delicate replicas, echoes of a movement immense and distant.