What Teachers Make

Tonight I was writing lesson plans for next week in a friend's room. He said, "Do you know what teachers make?"

Before I responded, I thought about how I'll probably have a much lower salary than most, if not all, of my employed friends. I thought about how I've been pulling 9 hour days at school supplemented by 3 to 5 hours of preparation (lesson planning, grading, studying, rubricking, researching) every day. I thought about how a CMA (Corps Member Advisor) told another friend of mine that no, the hours don't really go down in that first year of teaching. And I thought he was going to divide it all out for me, and frankly, I didn't want to hear, not only because I'm clearly not in this for the money, but also because even so, it would have been disheartening.

Instead of pulling out a calculator, he pulled out a poem someone had given him. It made me smile. I would like to become the teacher in the middle, without the bitterness at the beginning and end. You can read it here: What Teachers Make.