Leaving Academia for K-12 Teaching, Part 5
by Russ Mayo
Welcome back to my series Leaving Academia for K-12 Teaching for Ethical ELA. My previous posts discussed the challenges of finding work as a college professor today. Because of this, I believe that K-12 teaching may be a viable alternative career path for those who love teaching but are unable to secure an academic job. As someone with experience working in both, I hope my story can offer some guidance for those considering K-12 teaching as an alternative to working in academia. Most recently, in “Finding the Rhythms as a Teacher-Learner,” I described my path to becoming a teacher in North Carolina. In this piece, I turn my focus to the financial aspects of teaching, and what ultimately led me to leave teaching in NC to pursue a PhD. In future posts, I will also discuss my decision to leave a tenure-track job and return to K-12 teaching.
Series:
- Leaving Academia for K-12 Teaching, Part 1
- Steady Diet of Adjuncting, Part 2
- The Shape of Academia to Come, Part 3
- Finding the Rhythms as a Teacher-Learner, Part 4
To be clear—I recognize that it may seem strange, even uncomfortable, to talk about the financial implications of being a teacher. It’s not just because many Americans think it’s taboo to talk about money. It’s also because, unlike virtually all other careers, teachers aren’t supposed to do it for the money. In Work Won’t Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe writes that teachers are often expected to “treat their work as a calling, to dedicate long hours outside of the classroom to it, and to do this out of care for their students” (87). We’re all familiar with this common vision of the dedicated classroom teacher who works hard while expecting little in return.
There is of course a distinctly gendered aspect to the “care” and “love” discourse, particularly when it’s coupled with low pay, and Jaffe describes how the “feminization” of teaching in the United States dates back centuries. Teachers also confront an interesting class distinction. As Jaffe notes, we “exist on the edge of a class boundary, not quite granted the respect given to doctors or lawyers, but not quite perceived as the working masses either” (87). That said, recent labor actions by teachers across the country demonstrate the powerful potential of working-class solidarity and collective action for improving teaching and learning conditions. Unfortunately, teachers who talk too much about low pay risk looking “selfish,” upsetting our place as “the ultimate laborers of love” (88). Teachers unions and their supporters are often negatively framed in this light. Just take a look at the disgusting and demeaning responses on social media when my union, the Chicago Teachers Union, fights for more resources for our schools and students.
It’s essential to understand the “teacher-as-care worker” narrative when we consider the generally low pay that teachers across the U.S. face. As Jaffe notes, our teachers average around “21% less than worked with similar education levels in other fields” (83). Unfortunately, the statistics are even worse for contingent faculty, a quarter of whom recently report earning less than $26,500 annually. Why might these highly-educated, uniquely trained individuals—particularly those with a doctoral degree—tolerate working full time for near-poverty wages, as many adjunct college professors currently do? As the late, great scholar David Graeber pointed out in 2013, there is a perverse irony for those who work in “caring” professions such as education: “there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.” What’s more, as Graeber laments, “there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be.” Those of us who went into education or other caring careers knew this trade-off from the start. While teachers never anticipated getting rich from our work, we still must make a living.
As I discussed in Part 4 of this series, I completed a Master’s degree at UNC-Chapel Hill early in my career as a classroom teacher. Completing this degree was a liminal moment for me, moving me forward on my path toward becoming the teacher-scholar I am today. But it wasn’t just about the value of learning of its own sake. Completing a masters gave me a much-needed raise. North Carolina is known for its low teacher salaries, regularly ranking around 40th in the nation—a situation that is directly related to the fact that NC teachers do not have collective bargaining rights. Since my starting pay was only $30,000 per year, that pay increase was desperately needed. Earning a Master’s degree gave me a 10% annual pay increase. Though soon after, NC became one of the first states to eliminate higher salaries for teachers with graduate degrees. This move was part of a conservative education policy that seeks to shift the basis of teacher compensation toward student performance on standardized tests and away from educational attainment and longevity pay for veteran teachers. In the end, this nominal pay increase wasn’t enough to keep me teaching in NC.
Studies on teacher attrition have found that around half of teachers say that low pay is a major reason for leaving the profession, and that was certainly a major factor for me. I was also feeling burned out and ready for a new challenge. So, in 2013, after a decade into my teaching career, I decided to pursue a doctoral degree. I applied to a handful of schools that offered fully-funded programs through paid teaching assistantships. Luckily, I was accepted to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of English the next year, and their unique program afforded me the opportunity to study both English and education. Even though I wasn’t sure if I wanted a career in academia, I knew that working almost anywhere outside of NC would lead to better pay. If academia wasn’t a good fit for me, I knew that I could find a K-12 teaching job in Chicago and earn almost twice what I was paid as a teacher in Chapel Hill. In the end, that’s exactly how things turned out.
In what ways has compensation (or lack of it) impacted your career decisions? Have you chosen to earn a graduate degree or relocate to a different district/state to help you to secure better pay? What other factors besides pay influenced your decision to work in K-12 and/or academia? Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments below, and I will do my best to respond here or in future posts.
*Note: The name of this article is inspired from the incredible 1995 album Here’s Where the Strings Come In by North Carolina indie rockers Superchunk.
Russell Mayo is an English Language Arts teacher at Burley School, a public K-8 school on the northside of Chicago. Previously, he worked as an assistant professor of English at Purdue University Northwest, where he served as Writing Center Director and Writing Program Director. Russ completed his doctorate in English Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2020. His research centers on writing studies, critical pedagogy, and the environment. Most recently, Russ co-edited and contributed to the Teaching Writing in the Age of Catastrophic Climate Change, (Lexington Press, 2024).