I have a vivid memory of sitting in one of my teacher college courses. Inside a dimly lit classroom, my professor is lecturing on the “burn-out” factor. It was not a lecture of discouragement, but one of warning.
“Look around you,” my professor said. “Statistics show that in 3 years, 2 out of every 3 of you will no longer be teaching.”
In my recollection of this day, I remember my 4.13 GPA within the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College; my competitive attitude; my stubbornness. Not me, I thought.
As I finished my third year of teaching and signed my contract for the upcoming year, I celebrated. I made it through the first three years and still had a fire growing inside of me that kept my passion for teaching warm. The statistics were in my favor. I was the 1 in 3. And certainly, it seemed so. Through Facebook I saw several of my graduating peers leave the profession, for what they deemed to be better and brighter careers.
Not me, my mantra seemed to become. Not me.
And then my fourth year of teaching hit me like a freight train. I am exhausted. I am angry. I am burnt out. My fifth year of teaching has left me aching. It has forced realizations on me that I did not want to see. See, Doug Ducey, I love teaching. I love education. I know that how passionate I am about both practices eclipses any feelings you have toward these topics. However, the financial burden of teaching is pushing me to the edge of this profession. The strain of my career on my livelihood has broken my heart and my spirit.
Now Doug, don’t get me wrong here. Every year of teaching has had its obstacles. Since you have never been a teacher, I will confide in you some of the hardships that are typically only shared amongst educators- because they are stories only other people in this profession fully understand. My first year of teaching, I came home every night with the weight of my students’ worlds on my shoulders and drank. And then I cried. I cried because the job was hard. I cried because some of my kids were mean to me. I cried because sometimes my lessons tanked and I thought I was wasting my students’ time. I cried because I worked so hard and so many students didn’t care. When my students sleep, when they check out, when they don’t pay attention, all I can think is that I have failed at my job. That if I was better at what I did, they would pay attention to what I wanted them to do, and what I had to say. I cried because I had no way of knowing if I was even doing a good job. It’s frustrating to go from being a straight A student who can easily track their progress to being a teacher whose only feedback comes from students and an evaluation system that measures the wrong aspects of teaching.
But more than any of those combined, I cried because too many of my students were going through things that they should never have to go through: abuse, neglect, the death of their parents or siblings, fighting the urge to commit suicide. At the end of my first year, a student wrote a letter to me telling me that on the day he had decided to end his life, he spoke to me after school, and what I had said to him (completely unaware of the choice he was about to make), made him change his mind. When he walked across the stage at graduation the following year, I cried again.
You see, Governor Ducey, it is not just essays that I take home with me every night, but the fate of some of my kids’ lives. His is not the only letter I have received in my five years of teaching. Several letters have told me that it was my influence, my interaction, my own letters to my kids, that have saved their lives. You see, being a teacher means being vigilant at all times. I must balance all of my lessons and grading while alwaystrying to make sure that my students don’t slip between my fingers.
This balance became a bit easier the second and third year. Still hard, certainly. Within teaching, there is so much responsibility. But I accepted this and tried to better myself. I have continued to cry every year, but not every day. I have worked rigorously to be the best teacher and role model I can be for my students. I played the game and gave up my precious serving job in the middle of my second year so I could dedicate more time to teaching, and I persevered.
This year, however, has felt much different. My fourth year has given me a taste of teaching bureaucracy I don’t have the patience for, and my fifth year has made me loathe you as you pat yourself on the back for the pennies a day you've tossed to teachers, feeling certain you've done something more than insult us and our work. This latest slap in the face has reminded me that most friends I have who never obtained a bachelor’s degree make a considerable amount more than I do. That I spend up to 10 hours a day working, sometimes 60 hour weeks, and cannot be rewarded for it. That I work in a system which rewards the group, and never the individual. That I am told dismissively and jovially by other people that “it must be nice to have summers off,” while they all seem to neglect that I am not paid overtime, that I always leave later than my contracted hours, that I still work and research teaching methods or attend professional development during my time off. This essentially equates to working a year-round job, but I'm only paid for 9 months of the year.
Other pieces of information have worked their way into my mind as well, like realizing that in 2017, I make what is considered a “lower class” income.
Doug. I’m college fucking educated. I can’t even hit a middle class salary? When you slashed budgets across Arizona, I want to know if it was with a smile. If it was with a song in your heart. Or if you merely washed your hands of it because when it comes down to it, you, and most people of Arizona, just don’t care. You can say whatever you would like, but your actions have already spoken for you.
Arizona, this profession is not sustainable. It’s not financially viable. And it breaks my heart because I absolutely love it. I love teaching. I love my students. But the actions of this state are slowly squeezing the breath out of all of us. I am suffocating- choking on the apathy of people who don’t care about education, who don’t care about educators. This indifference harms us all- not just teachers- and most importantly, it is a disservice to our youth who are being pushed through this shattered education system; the broken shards snagging them as they move along.
Teachers need a workable wage, or the really great teachers won’t stick around. I am smart, I am a hard worker, I know within a business profession I would be promoted and recognized for the sweat and tears I put into my work. I am in the fifth year of my college-educated career, and I still need a roommate because I can’t afford my mortgage without one. The only reason I was even able to buy a house is because I saved all my money from serving in order to have a down payment. I am so glad I do not want children of my own one day, because in the teaching profession, I would never be able to afford children. My bills deplete everything I make in a month. Many teachers I know work two or three jobs in order to sustain their families, and I don’t understand how you can be so blind. So disconnected. So inexcusably hurtful to this career.
I am more than enraged. I am seeing red. When I think about the inequality in teaching, and the apathy associated with it, it makes me want to scream until my voice is gone. Perhaps my voice is gone. When Arizona legislature stole millions of dollars from taxpayers and our education system, I thought no one else was screaming. I find it possible now, that we are all screaming, but those who make the laws and keep our money have hit the mute button.
Governor Ducey, treating our teachers like lower class citizens is repugnant, but more than that, it is a huge disservice to America’s youth. Great teachers are not going to stick around much longer. This may be because they leave the field to join a profession that celebrates them. It may be because they allow the heart break and stress to bring down the caliber of their teaching. When this happens, you will have no one to blame but yourself. My fourth year, and now my fifth year, have shown me that “While the hourly rate of the typical educator in Phoenix is $8.12 an hour above the poverty rate, over a 40 hour work week a teacher, who has earned at least a bachelor’s degree, makes only $328.80 a week more than an individual living in poverty” (azed.gov). Do you see now, why a 2% raise over a 5 year stretch is such a joke? Do you understand that your "efforts" sound much more like a fuck you than a thank you?
Telling Arizona's teachers they are unworthy to be paid a fair wage is repulsive, but doing it as you congratulate yourself adds an element of tackiness that I can't let go of. I understand why Arizona teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Our profession is handled by people who have never been teachers, which is a problem, Doug. You see, many people assume they can do my job because they were once students. This is like saying I know how to perform surgery because I’ve watched all of Grey’s Anatomy.
On top of this, it seems to be a great teacher, I have to sacrifice every other part of who I am. Because teaching is never done. There are always more lessons to perfect, always more papers to grade, always more research to read, always more ways to try to get students interested in what I have to offer them, always more parents I could be contacting and more professional development I could be attending. I am a workaholic and a perfectionist and because of this, every other component falls to the wayside so I can try to be the best teacher I can be. Everyone who assumes they know what it is to be a teacher, please stop. Unless you have been in the trenches with us, you do not know anything valuable about this profession. Stop saying you are on my side or that you understand. Your actions show differently.
Governor Ducey, I have gotten to the point where I am terrified, that I will die one day, and still never even know who I am. That I will leave this life knowing who I was as a teacher, but never who I was as a human being. This is not only from the complexities of this profession, but from the inability to save up money to do what I want to do in my life. I want to expand my horizons, I want to travel the world, hell, I want to be able to replace my tires without trying to decide which is worse: the bill or a blow out. I know I am not the only teacher who feels this way.
After your self-congratulatory press about education (spoiler alert, the extra $4.13 on my paycheck that will start rolling in next year does not help me, when I don't even make enough to independently make ends meet), we teachers are treading in a sea of uncertainty, being yanked down by your indifference to our career and value, drowning in your apathy towards Arizona's children. And you seem to be blind to the fact that we are slipping slowly under the surface, as the waves of indifference from our politicians threaten to keep us under.
Mr. Ducey, my new mantra this year seems to have become who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And the truly beautiful and horrifying thing is that without teaching, I really don’t think I have an answer.
Which is why I am choosing to speak up. You see, Doug, if your plan is to sweep me out to sea, I will call for help until I drown.
Sincerely,
Mallory Heath
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