Teacher salary has always been the subject of hot debate, and even more so recently, as Tennessee passed a law requiring every school district in the state to start their new, first-year teachers off at a minimum of $50,000 after Gov. Bill Lee signed the Teacher Paycheck Protection Act into law.
Alcoa City Schools will start their first-year teachers with a bachelor’s degree at $52,250, and new teachers with a master’s will start at $58,781.
Maryville City Schools’ starting salary for first-year teachers is $50,750 for those with a bachelor’s degree and $57,550 for those with a master’s degree.
Blount County Schools recently approved a starting salary of $50,000 for first-year teachers and $54,000 for those with a master’s degree.
The salary charts may look simple but a day in the life of a teacher can be a little more complex.
Schedule
Beth Johnson, third-grade math teacher at Carpenter’s Elementary, starts her day at 5:30 a.m. She is at school by 6:45 a.m., ready to greet the children as they arrive.
After a day of classes, children are picked up around 3 p.m. This is when Johnson starts tutoring after school. Tutoring can take her until 5 p.m. Johnson said she liked to stay an extra hour after that to prepare for the following day; sometimes, she doesn’t leave the school until 6 p.m.
Coulter Grove seventh grade math teacher Justin Cook keeps to a similar schedule. He is usually up at 5:30 a.m. and at school by 7 a.m. His day is filled with classes, tutoring, recess, planning and a literacy period.
After dismissal, Cook heads home to get ready for his second job as a coach at CrossFit Pistol Creek. Many nights, he doesn’t get home until 9 p.m.
Summer
A common misconception about the teaching profession is that teachers are paid for their summers off.
“We’re on a 200-day contract, which is essentially 10 months. So what happens in those 10 months is that we get paid once a month at Maryville City. So every paycheck, they withhold and that gets divvied back up so we receive a paycheck in June and July. It is not for unworked hours,” Cook explained.
A summer “off” is also in the eye of the beholder as many teachers continue to work over the summer.
“So far, I’ve worked every summer I’ve worked here,” said Johnson.
For some teachers, summer serves as the opportune time to complete their mandatory professional development hours.
At MCS, teachers are required to complete 19.5 hours of PD, and those hours must be outside of contracted hours, said Cook. This summer, he spent a week in Nashville studying TCAP information.
Data is usually made public in the summer, so Cook will also use that time to start analyzing student performance, including strong points and weak points. He will then look at his units and pacing guides to see what may need to be reworked to meet student needs. Once the year starts, he said, it can be hard to redesign everything.
Performance
A recurring point brought up was the fact that teachers do not receive performance-based pay. In most jobs, employees receive reviews in which, if their performance was exemplary, may receive some sort of pay raise.
Because teaching is a government job, the pay is set. The only option for making more money is through years of experience and degrees.
The more degrees a teacher has, the higher their pay.
Alcoa High School ELA teacher Roman Lay said, “I think the issue with education is that teachers make an impact that’s not really measurable.”
Cook echoed this sentiment, asking how you could measure the performance of a teacher beyond a test.
“How can you measure the impact of a teacher who inspires a kid to be a better version of themselves?” Lay asked.
Emotional workload
Teaching, said Cook, isn’t exclusively academic. It also comes with an emotional workload. Cook said that at home, he often thinks about his students’ well-being and what they are going through.
Johnson said they are dealing more and more with mental health issues. She said students seem to be dealing with more sadness and anxiety now than they have in the past.
“Meeting the needs of your kids first. If a kid comes in and they are hungry, I always have something for them. If they’re tired, I let them put their head down for a minute,” she said.
Meeting the needs of the students sometimes looks like taking on different roles.
“I constantly have to be a therapist, a counselor, a teacher — I’m fulfilling a ton of roles,” Lay explained.
Cook expressed a similar sentiment. He said sometimes he has to be a father figure, mentor, cheerleader, tough love or just a soft, safe place to land — it depends on the needs of the child.
“You do it gladly,” he said.
Calling
One thing these teachers agreed on was that they felt a calling to teach that transcended any monetary amount.
“I really had a big heart to teach,” Johnson said.
Johnson decided to get her teaching certificate later in life after working as a missionary for ten years, where she spent most of her time in Japan.
When she returned from abroad, she decided to pursue a master’s in education at Johnson University.
“I have a lot of joy in teaching,” she said.
Cook and Lay, on the other hand, didn’t always know they wanted to teach but still felt that same calling.
Lay said that when he was young, he wanted to be a paleontologist, and aptitude tests actually pointed him toward a career in science. He started thinking about pursuing aerospace engineering, but in high school, a teacher significantly impacted him. From there, he changed his career course and knew he wanted to teach.
Similarly, Cook didn’t realize his passion for teaching until he started working with kids at an after-school daycare. At Maryville College, where he received his bachelor’s degree in math, he knew he wanted to teach and added a licensure to his degree.
“I want to say teaching found me; I didn’t find it,” he said.
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