Are teachers underpaid?

Underpaid? Are school teachers underpaid? I believe that American school teachers are. With the rising cost of college going to school to be a teacher is slowly becoming a less and less sought out job. Even if perspective teachers pursue their dreams and graduate and get a teaching job, they are almost indefinitely going to need a night job to keep them ahead of their bills. The summer is an even worse since teachers have no source of income. Really the only way a teacher can obtain a decent raise is by getting a master’s degree. Even then the teachers that do that might not be able to cover the cost of the student loans and the regular bills. School teachers in Finland are paid like doctors and are respected twice as much. The country of Finland does this because they recognize teachers as the sole educators of the next generation of politician’s, scientist, and engineers. So for those and many other reasons I believe that American school teachers are underpaid. “Public-school teachers earn less in wages on average than non-teachers with the same level of education.”

The typical starting salary of a teacher in Iowa is about thirty-three thousand dollars. An average home cost more than that. So that raises the question, how can teachers afford to pay a mortgage when then can barely pay for the house? With the rising interest rate it makes making the payments even more stressful and can drag is out for longer than you originally planned.

To make the payments on the bills most teachers will pick up a night job and use that to cover extra expenses such as doctor visits and other miscellaneous things. Most teachers will pick up little jobs like clerks or waiting tables at night and even throughout the weekend if necessary. The thing that teachers need to do is learn how to manage their money and start small and accumulate things over time. This is the best advice that somebody can give a teacher. This gives them the confidence to pursue their career without having to worry about being afraid of the income in the future. If they just start in an apartment right out of college then there is nothing to be worried about because that is what most college graduates do. If they are married on the other hand the spouse is going to need to be able to help with the mortgage so that they can both tackle it together.

College is a wonderful thing it gives you so much more out of your career then you could possibly imagine. College is also something that can ruin you financially if you don’t get the right job right away, causing them in a worst case scenario to file bankruptcy. This is why going back to college can be a risky call to a teacher that is already struggling to make ends meet and is thinking about furthering their degree to try to make more money. The typical college student graduates in about 4 years, and then add the master’s degree program and that’s another 4 years and if you want your PhD that is even more time to be taking out student loans. All in all it adds up to an almost unpayable amount. You need a very high paying job to be able to pay those loans off or you could be paying them for the rest of your life.

So say you go to college and everything is great. You apply for many jobs and you think you have a very good resume. And they go to the interview and you believe everything goes great and you have all the confidence in the world. As they await the call back their phone rings and they look at the I.D it says that it is the office of the school. They answer and they give you the news. This can either go two ways, they get the job, or they don’t. Well what if you don’t get the job? Then what are they supposed to do just let all those years of college go to waste? This is what

many teachers are faced with when they get that fateful call and they get the bad news. The moral here is there is always a chance you might not get the job. You might have to have another job to hold you over while you search for the perfect job for you.

If they do go to college and they get all the degrees necessary to get that top notch job. Even go above and beyond with the schooling and get their PhD to really solidify that they deserve the job. With all those years of schooling you come out with three main things, these include degrees, experience, and debt. The main thing people acquire of the course of college is a lot of debt. Then they have to pay those after six months of not being in school. What if no school is hiring around them or if they didn’t do enough internships. Then they are going to have a problem paying those loans back. The interest of those loans are at an all-time high and they are rising yearly that’s why some students don’t even go to school or go for those low paying jobs.

Most teachers apply for the loan forgiveness. They get this if they teach in the state they got certified in for five years. While teaching in the state. When most college students think about the future they don’t imagine staying in their home state for all of their lives that’s just the way that most young people are. This will get a lot of people to stay no matter what and that means there will always be competition for a teaching job. The teaching profession will always be one that you can count on being here. Getting that loan forgiveness is probably the best thing you can do as a student looking for a job out of college.

Now with this argument there are people that say teachers are actually paid enough. This goes with saying that they are employed in a different country. College professors make a lot more than the average high school or elementary school teacher. Teachers in England earn about four thousand more than their counter parts. (Tim Ross 1) This accounts for the education gap that compares the other countries to the United States. They also have about 100 hours less of teaching. (Ross 1) This shows that teachers don’t need all that time in school to learn subjects. This also keeps the students from losing interest in what they are being taught. Teachers in other countries are mostly about 40 years or older.

Teachers who get a master’s degree will earn about 5 percent more than a teacher who doesn’t. This can be a lot to someone who didn’t get a very good starting salary. This can be a driving factor to go those two years in graduate school and take on those student loans. With added experience you can add a lot of boosters to your salary. If your class had good test scores and how well they did on standardized test. That is what they judge you for how much they are willing to pay you for your services. So there is a really good opportunity to get a really good salary, but that is only if you have tons of experience and are a very good teacher.

Teachers in other countries a very highly regarded even as high as doctors and judges. They get this way because they are seen as the teachers of the country. The people that do their jobs today might not be able to do them tomorrow and that is why the teachers are so important to them. They teach the people that will take the current employees place when they can no longer work.

So this paper talks about a lot of things. With those things are teachers are not paid enough to live in the Americas. They cannot afford the many things in life that you. So this is a call to the government to think about getting teachers a higher salary since they are state employees. To the public I say this. Who are you to blame the teacher for your child failing a class. Maybe they just don’t pay attention to the teacher that is in front of the class. So maybe you need to respect the teacher to make sure that your child gets a better education to be more successful in their lives.comp