Teaching In America: The Impossible Dream

By ZP Heller, AlterNet. Posted September 15, 2005.

The new book Teachers Have It Easy, which collects roughly 200 interviews with educators from around the country, couldn't have a more ironic title. Co-written by former teachers Daniel Moulthrop and Nínive Clements Calegari, and author Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), the book highlights the bleak reality that not only are America's teachers grossly underpaid, but that teaching is simply not a sustainable profession it its current form.

Through compelling accounts, Teachers Have It Easy dispels one of the biggest myths about teaching in public schools -- that the paltry salaries educators receive are adequate compensation for summer vacations and "shorter work days." Instead, the book paints a Dickensian picture of our educational system, in which teachers routinely work 10-12 hour days that don't end when the dismissal bell rings.

The idea for the book arose from conversations between Eggers and Calegari, co-founders of the non-profit 826 Valencia, which offers tutoring and writing workshops for youth. (A new center, 826NYC, recently opened in Brooklyn.)

"The idea was Dave's to begin with," Moulthrop told me. "When he was in his twenties, he had friends, including his sister, who were teachers and loved their work. For them it was the best job on the planet. A few years later, they all quit because of the money. It was just a travesty."

Eggers' friends were not the only ones who discovered how impossible it can be to eke out a living as an educator. A recent study by the University of Pennsylvania, as noted in the book, found that 46 percent of teachers leave within their first five years. Such high turnover and instability undoubtedly wreaks havoc on public schools and their respective communities, in which teachers play a vital role.

"If teachers are just leaving at the peak of their game," Moulthrop says, "their students were ill-served by the system."

While Moulthrop is a noted journalist, and Eggers' reputation is well known in the literary world, Teachers Have It Easy succeeds because it allows the underpaid, unappreciated teachers to speak for themselves.

Take Jonathan Dearman, who was the only African American teacher at San Francisco's Leadership High School, a public charter school. Dearman, like so many public school teachers, was beloved

"There was a teacher who was integral to the culture of school and the community," Moulthrop said of Dearman. "He set absolutely the highest standards ... kids failed his class and yet they still did all of the work all year long."

After five years as a teacher, however, Dearman, who has a master's degree in education, was making just over $40,000 a year. As is often the case with public school teachers, Dearman neglected his wife and kids to raise other people's children. He also accrued $15,000 in credit card debt, most of which was spent on supplies for the classroom. At times, Dearman even sacrificed his own health because his world revolved around his students. Once he forgot his daily insulin injection and ended up spending a night in the hospital. Still, he made it to school the next morning in time to teach all day.

Now a realtor, Dearman makes about $80,000 -- double the annual salary he earned as a teacher -- in only two months. Yet it was his newfound liberty that Dearman recalled as being the major upside to leaving the field of education. "That was one of the first things I realized when I got out of teaching," he said. "I can leave when I want to. I can go to the bathroom when I want, I can go get a cup of tea when I want, and I can eat when I want. I couldn't do that when I was a teacher."

Zack Pelta-Heller, a graduate student at The New School, taught school for two years in Manhattan. His mother taught in the Philadelphia public school system for over 35 years.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »