Is Your Teacher Happy?
The National Education Association reported some disheartening news from a 2023 RAND survey of K-12 public school teachers; the majority reported feeling overworked and underpaid. Half said they wouldn’t recommend…
The National Education Association reported some disheartening news from a 2023 RAND survey of K-12 public school teachers; the majority reported feeling overworked and underpaid. Half said they wouldn’t recommend the profession to a younger person.
In the survey, teachers estimated they worked 53 hours a week on average — seven more hours than the typical working adult. Less than a quarter were satisfied with their total weekly hours.
The survey also found that 66% say their base salary is inadequate and about a quarter of teachers’ time is uncompensated.
According to the NEA Rankings and Estimates 2023 report, the national average public school teacher salary in 2021-22 was just under 67K. Adjust that for inflation and there’s a decline of 6.4% over the past decade.
When the Pew Research Center surveyed 2,531 U.S. public school K-12 teachers they found that 77% of teachers considered their job was ‘frequently stressful’ and 68% said it was ‘overwhelming’ with many citing the lasting negative impact of the pandemic. Overall, only 48% of teachers said they were somewhat satisfied with their job, with just 33% saying they were extremely or very satisfied.
Despite working those extra hours, the surveyed teachers reported they just don’t have enough time to get their jobs done properly. Time they would spend on lesson planning, collaborating with colleagues, and grading work is now shared with performing non-teaching duties like answering email, lunch duty, and covering other teachers’ classrooms.
They also reported that poverty, chronic absenteeism, and anxiety and depression are serious problems affecting their schools; issues that impact academic performance and behavior problems and grow worse by high school. Eight in 10 teachers say they must address students’ behavioral issues at least a few times a week.
Other challenges today’s teachers face include wandering students, a tendency to get up and walk around — a growing problem reported by almost one-quarter of elementary and middle school teachers. These grades were also the ones showing the most disrespect to their teachers according to the survey. Many of the responders say they’ve experienced verbal abuse or been threatened by a student.
Teachers, are you looking for 21 Children’s Songs That Won’t Make You Want to Stick Play-Doh in Your Ears? BoredTeacher offers a humorous look at the profession with videos such as ‘5 Ways You Know You’re Definitely a Teacher’ and ‘If We Treated Santa the Way We do Teachers’ mixed in with thoughtful essays on teaching and education current events.
So, what do teachers like about their job? Their students and interaction with their fellow teachers. Surprisingly, despite the negatives, more than half of the teachers polled say they find their job to be fulfilling extremely often or enjoyable. Newer teachers are the most enthusiastic, with two thirds considering their work fulfilling. Readers Digest asked teachers why they love their job to learn that being a role model, inspiring learning, and helping shape their students futures made a big difference to them.
Finally, when asked what they most want the public to know about teaching, they offered a variety of answers: they want more government support; they are underpaid; they care about students and need more parental support. But most of all, more than half of the teachers said they wanted you to know that teaching is a very difficult job.
