I loved student teaching. In eleven months of graduate school, I taught second grade in the summer, fifth grade in the fall, and first grade in the spring, all within the same Silicon Valley public school district. I had amazing mentor teachers who were collaborative, reflective, and incredibly skilful with their craft. I had students who were engaged and diligent inside of the classroom, and wonderfully loving and funny outside of it. In different classrooms across the districts, I saw some of the best teachers I have seen in my life, thoughtful and nimble and knowledgeable, and all as a direct consequence of the deep investments the district had placed in providing professional development and above and beyond resources to students and their families.
Not long after I began, I knew that was where I wanted to work after graduation. I had my first in-person interview with the district on March 6, 2020, which also ended up being my last in-person. A few days later, COVID migrated my job search online. My classmates and I had no idea how the pandemic would impact the careers we had been preparing for over the last year. Were schools going to need less teachers with classrooms and students going online into Zoom rooms that could hold more kids? Would there be fewer positions for us if current teachers planning to leave or retire decided to stay given the precariousness of COVID? Were districts going to be able to afford new teachers in the midst of changing costs and expenses for the indefinite future?
Fearfully, I began to consider other possibilities. Whereas before, my options to interview were limited to districts in the South Bay that were an Uber-friendly distance, I now spent hours scrolling through EdJoin looking at positions across the Bay Area, where I was committed to staying so that I could be near my friends and have sunny weather all-year round. I sent in my resume and cover letters and set up interviews everywhere from Milpitas to San Mateo and all the way up to Oakland.
Teaching, at least in the public consciousness, is a solidly middle-class profession. It is believed to be a job that one should be able to use to support a family, albeit alongside another person’s income and a manageable amount of debt. We do not expect teachers to be millionaires or to live beneath the poverty line. But as the middle-class continues to vanish in growingly inequitable capitalistic societies, so disappears the feasibility of teaching as a financially-viable career for college-graduates entering a job market where their 22-year-old classmates are making six-figures as consultants and product managers.
The usual justifications for teacher compensation are not particularly inspired. Teachers do not produce or develop a tangible, economic good (Neither do lawyers). Teachers get the summers off (Summer school teachers remain in the same tax bracket). Teachers are part of a union that sets and negotiates salaries independently (As are police officers, many of whom make more than teachers). Teachers are actually lower-middle class jobs should be compared to the professions within their socio-economic brackets that may hold dissimilar education backgrounds (Again, police officers still make more).
There are, in my opinion, more obvious and believable explanations. The most prevalent being that many believe that anyone, anywhere, at any time can teach. This is affirmed in everything from programs that train recent college graduates for a few weeks before placing them to teach in the highest need schools, to the 2003 cinematic masterpiece, School of Rock. Teaching is a profession revered and respected by most, but there is a complete lack of political expediency around organizing or advocating for better conditions, suggesting that deeper than that reverence and respect is apathy. But not without consequence. What are the implications around teacher compensation on our schools and on our children? How do social biases and inequities appear in the economics of teacher salaries? What is needed to demand better for teachers, not only because the job is hard or because they take care of children or because they shape the future, but because they are professionals deserving of fair, living wages?
When I started at Stanford in an Elementary Education program, I forfeited my previous dream of working in early childhood. When I saw on the Oakland Unified jobs portal that Prescott Elementary had an opening teaching four-year-olds in transitional kindergarten, I saw my chance to work with the youngest learners again. As I researched the school, I realized that in more ways than one, Prescott was everything I had been looking for. It was a school with a predominantly Black staff and student body. It had 150 years of history and was the first school in Oakland to hire a Black teacher. They spoke about culturally relevant pedagogy and project-based learning, with pictures and videos documenting spoken word and African dance. The interview stood out to me first, because it was the first time that I was not the only Black person on the Zoom call, and second, because it was the only interview where I heard the word love being used in relation to pedagogy.
I got offered a position at Prescott a few days after being offered a position at the school where I was doing my student teaching and I had no idea what I was going to do. Prescott seemed great and exciting, but I loved where I was at. I was scared and sad at the thought of leaving the students and teachers who I had built relationships with, and I had already grown so much in the months in the district and knew that I would grow even more amongst the great talent they had.
But in the end, two concerns were top of mind. At the moment, I was in a district where just over 1% of the students were Black and less than 1% of the teachers were Black. I spent so much time thinking of how I could be a mirror to Black students who might likely never have a Black teacher throughout their entire schooling time, in addition to providing a window to their predominantly Asian and Latinx students classmates. But with Prescott, I had an opportunity to not be the only one, to not have to explain everything, where I could just be. The second concern came when comparing salaries and saw that in Oakland, I would be making at least $20,000 less. And the more that I considered both of these concerns around race and pay, the more I saw how closely the two were related.
The five largest school districts in the Bay Area are San Francisco Unified (55,592 students), Oakland Unified (46,600), Fremont Unified (33,878), West Contra Costa Unified (30,071), and San Ramon Valley Unified (30,068). Of the five, West Contra Costa has the lowest starting salary ($50,922) and the highest proportion of Latinx students (57.2%). Oakland has the second lowest salary ($52,905) and the highest proportion of Black students (20.8%). San Francisco has the median salary ($57,679) and the second highest proportion of White students (13.5%). San Ramon has the second highest salary ($61,257) and the highest proportion of White students (34.5%). Fremont has the highest starting salary ($77,542) and the highest proportion of Asian students (65.3%). When comparing the five largest school districts in the Bay Area, the ones educating predominantly Black and Latinx students pay less than the ones those predominantly educating White and Asian students.
Compensation is crucial in the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. Teachers who are hired from a competitive pool of candidates. Teachers more likely to stay in their school and district. Teachers excited and motivated to show up and do their best because they feel like their work is valued. Students need teachers who are prepared and skilled and committed, but by underpaying teachers, particularly public school teachers serving Black and Latinx communities, we ensure that the same students continue to be shortchanged by an education system that denies them the teachers that they need and pushes out the teachers that they have. This problem, however, does not stop with students. Predominantly Black and Latinx schools tend to have higher teachers with similar demographics, and it thus follows that it is Black and Latinx teachers — most of whom are women — who are underpaid in comparison to their counterparts, perpetuating both racial and gender pay gaps.
This would explain the lack of political agency. Beyond the tireless work carried out by unions, there remains minimal advocacy and organizing around teacher pay, and I would argue that this in large part because those who are impacted most disproportionately are women and children, and Black and Latinx ones at that, with long histories and continued legacies of marginalization and underrepresentation. Teachers on average are underpaid, but the problem of compensation is not created equally, and as long as some teachers make exceedingly more than their counterparts based on where and whose kids they teach, the problem will remain one that only affects some of us and not all of us, when the reality is that what happens to children today affects all of us tomorrow.
I would love to say that I chose the job at Prescott solely based on principle. That I wanted to live out the pedagogical values and political ideologies drawing me towards being a Black teacher and a Black school and I was happy to shrug off economic sacrifices in the name of my beliefs. In truth, however, I was able to take the job at Prescott, the job that I ended up wanting more, because of privilege. Because I grew up never worrying about money and I remain (impractically) laissez-faire when it comes to money, aided by a complete lack of financial responsibility to anyone but myself and the possession of the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if it all fails, I can just move back home. These privileges underlining my choice matter just as much as the principles that guided it.
Regardless of how my job search concluded, I was another teacher working in a profession with stagnant wages and increasingly complex conditions. I spent the summer before work began attending panels, reading up on new research, and lesson planning for hours unpaid in an attempt to at least guess what I would be walking into for my first year of teaching that would begin on Zoom school.
In my first staff meeting, I stared at the faces of my new co-workers and felt an immediate sense of belonging, like I was in the absolute right place. Before I even got the chance to introduce myself, the first grade teacher sent me a private message in the chat. She told me how happy she was to see my chocolate face and that she was so glad that I was at Prescott. There was nowhere else I would have rather been. I felt so, so loved.
Prescott is so lucky to have you, too. I wish there was a broader movement to increase teacher pay that parents could plug into. Obviously supporting unions is key, but something even broader would be awesome.