Episode 8. The Teacher Shortage Mess: Take This Mess and Shove It!

In this episode of the K-12 Confidential podcast, veteran educators discuss the dire state of the U.S. K-12 education system, focusing on the systemic issues driving teachers away. The episode features an interview with Kelvin Mack, a high school English teacher who left the profession after two years due to low pay and structural problems. Through this conversation, listeners gain insight into the challenges teachers face, such as emotional labor, lack of fair compensation, and the struggle to effect meaningful change within an oppressive system. The episode also touches upon the generational shift in attitudes towards work-life balance and the exploitative nature of the teaching profession. Key themes include teacher pay, structural sexism, neoliberalism in education, and the lack of teacher agency in curriculum and policy decisions.

00:00 Introduction to K 12 Confidential

01:25 Interview with a New Teacher

02:27 Challenges and Realizations

04:05 Reflections on Teacher Pay

06:43 Generational Differences in Teaching

09:19 Systemic Issues in Education

18:46 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

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Transcript

 Welcome back to the K 12 Confidential podcast, the show made by current veteran K 12 teachers to shine a light on the ignorance, apathy, corruption, and greed of our leaders, and in defense of a national K 12 educator governing board. Today's episode includes an interview with a new teacher who chose to leave the profession after just two years due to low teacher pay.

And the deeply systemic structural problems inside of K 12 education. He got a sneak peek of our introduction to the Teacher Pay Mess episode, which we have not released yet, and responded to it in this interview, which our listeners are also gonna hear next week. We called this episode, take This Mess and Shove It.

It's sort of a sneak peek of the introduction to the Teacher Pay Mess episode Coming along soon. Thanks for listening. 

K 12 Education is a mess. Us literacy rankings are in the bottom half of the world and are a hidden cause of the erosion of our variability to effectively self govern. How did we get here?

America's teachers can tell you and the answers will shock. This is K 12 Confidential.

So my name is Kelvin Mack. I was a high school English teacher for two years, and I have recently resigned and for the meantime do not plan on returning to teaching. I think that my motivation for becoming a teacher actually started when I was in high school. I remember observing my teachers and thinking, but they have this curriculum that seems to have nothing to do with.

What my future will look like. Right? Just like, for example, like my, my English curriculum was like pure literature. I love literature, but also felt, what am I gonna do with this? I actually am not sure the purpose of this class and the work I do seems so abstract and removed from real life. So I remember thinking, you know, if I were to ever become a teacher one day, I think I would have some pretty good ideas.

Uh. I kind of just like kept that stowed away in my subconscious for a very long time. After I graduated with a degree in English, I worked as a private college consultant, so I was helping. Kids apply to college, helping them with their essays, brainstorming which colleges they wanna apply to. And after a while I felt, I think I could really, really enjoy working and mentoring the kids.

So then I had this idea that, you know, I think the teaching profession is calling to me a little bit. Uh, you know, so I did the whole credentialing and master's program combination thing went into teaching. And realize that it would be very hard to make a difference in this very strained and like you said, Trina oppressive system.

I think I kind of just saw that, uh, this might not be for me with the things that I've encountered in, in teaching. So, 

Kelvin, your experiences with. This very oppressive profession are so valuable to us because I believe in my heart and I know for a fact that it's gotten more oppressive for the younger group that's coming up.

Like I'm, you know, gen X and I got into the profession late. It's a second profession, but I've been in it for years now. It is only getting worse, isn't it? Do you wanna react to some of the things that came up for you in the episode? Like what was. Something you hadn't considered, or what was something that you've been experiencing that just felt really great to hear someone else say.

What do you think other teachers might not agree with or maybe things you didn't agree with with us, please? 

There were a couple things that were extremely validating. I think it was Trina's quote where you might've said, young, educated, self-possessed people are not gonna start a job that gives you a fraction of a full salary.

And I'll be honest, uh, that. Same exact thought had been running through my mind since I started. Uh, when I thought about, wow, I'm working so much, it's, I'm working, you know, during the school day, I am doing planning after hours. And it's not even just the labor, but it's like the emotional energy that it took and that it continues to take even when you're done, even when you're off.

At night, like after dinner, I'd be thinking before I go to sleep, oh man, how's tomorrow gonna go? Uh, what do I need to do to talk to this kid about this thing? What's my, what's my late policy for this assignment? Do I need to change up my classroom management? I felt I was doing a lot, a lot of labor, and I am, I think, yeah, I just, I recently turned 29.

I'm looking at my friends. Who are in other jobs, in other sectors, lots of like, uh, software engineers, people who work in marketing, et cetera. You know, they're also extremely busy, but they can negotiate salaries. They have unlimited PTO. Uh, we have summers, but it's not quite the same. And, uh, but I'm watching all my friends basically save enough money to have a life and I'm just here.

I feel like not being fairly compensated for my labor. So, uh, really, really listening to that quote validated me. I think I'd rather just do less and get paid a fair amount. I guess like, one more, one more thought about this quote. I think there's been kind of like a shift in attitude, I would say, especially for, uh, millennials onward, where life is no longer about working.

It's like you work to live, you don't live to work. I think that like puritan, like Christian attitude that has influenced American attitudes towards labor. You know, where the more you work, the harder you work, the more, uh, prosperous you'll be and you'll get what is fair. That's kind of going away. I think that mentality, it's going away and people in my generation and I think from now on like onwards realize you, you work to live like clock in, clock out, just gimme my paycheck and I can do the things I really want to do outside of work.

I think like the previous generation was very much like, this is your life. Your work is your life. So 

I think those are incredibly important insights. It's it, it's absolutely essential that teachers who have been in the profession for a long time here. Honestly what a younger teacher has experienced, and for me, going into the profession, I was always like just flabbergasted by the reaction of baby boomers.

They had just had a very different experience with climate and culture of their campuses. A very different experience with the amount of debt they had to take on to become a teacher. And you know, not only was cost of living more affordable, childcare, education, healthcare, all of that was more affordable then, and it was less debt to become a teacher there.

They were compensated more fairly. And so it wasn't great. I'm not saying it was great, but it was better. Right, and your experience with why you departed from the profession is gonna intersect with a number of the topics we're gonna be discussing. Can curriculum and school cultures are definitely a part of why you departed, not just the pay and the preparation process.

So we're gonna hear from you, thankfully react to a number of our episodes, but I think the term that I use. Which is really revolutionary of considering teacher pay as incomplete until you top out is an important term because it names the thing for what it really is. 'cause in education and you know, in society we like to play around with labels to cover up realities and truths.

There are not other professions that pay you out like this. And I mean, when I talk about other professions, having considered it, you know. Nurses, the nursing industry considered it, and again, a female dominated field considered paying one specific union fought back against this idea of, uh, step and column for their nursing staff.

The idea of some nurses making a lot more money 'cause they've been in the profession longer, was insulting to them. That's the structural sexism bit because this po, this whole profession was built up around the idea that there's these married women who have husbands with money. 

Yeah, it's, I did not know that, that that's how Horace Mann, this guy who thought, who had such noble ideas, right, like make education accessible to all.

It could also, you know, have this insanely, um, sexist like teaching income policy. I really did not know that. And it appears that this attitude just, just remained for some reason in the teaching profession. It made me think a lot about like, why is it then that I, I think in the previous episode it was mentioned unions fight to increase the salary at each step on the pay scale, but why not just like, do away with this and allow teachers to.

They negotiate salaries or allow teachers even just like pay teachers a full income. I found it incredibly ridiculous. I remember when I first looked at my first, you know, salary schedule, thinking it tops out at 120,000 or so after 25 years. I think someone outside of the education sector can get there in five years, six years maybe.

If they worked really hard and like jumped companies and negotiated well they could get there in six years. I, I, it's, it's such a bad deal economically to. Be a teacher and it's so sad to say, 'cause I love this job, but 

I know Yeah, hearing, hearing your reaction is so validating for me too because I was thinking about you and your generation when we were talking because also like I'm whatever, halfway through it and I know I'm not set up and the way I need to be to provide just the basics for my aging parents, my son.

We don't have any wealth. We don't own a home. So I was, I was thinking like, why would any young person wanna do this? It's only getting worse. It's only getting more expensive to become a teacher and to live. But you also talked about like this work-life balance that your generation is so like wonderfully and beautifully considering.

And you're right, it is very white puritanical, this idea that we're supposed to sacrifice so much. But the deal here is that, yeah, a lot of us, me included. Signed on for a job, which we knew we weren't gonna necessarily get a ton of money. I remember my very first class in my credential to become a teacher.

It was a boomer, and she said, you're never gonna be rich, but you're always gonna be able to own a home, take vacations, and provide fear of family. That was the promise that they were given. That's not the promise now, but you, and then you get into the profession, you realize, I'm broke. I'm in debt. I'm never gonna get ahead.

This job is meaningful and important, and then you see all the social justice problems in our society mirrored and exacerbated in our classrooms, and nothing that you are able to do makes anything better because they don't listen to us or respect our experience, our expertise, when we give them real good solutions to making our school safer and more equitable, it's all baloney.

I think I often felt that. There was no avenue for me to ever, you know, speak up or, you know, provide constructive criticism. I felt like it was very hard to communicate, like, Hey, I think this thing could be improved. I'm noticing this. What can we do about it? Like, the systems to give good criticism to improve our schools didn't seem to be very present.

It, it felt like. Everyone is kind of siloed away or just very, very busy. Uh, like people don't have the time or energy. It was just like, just put your heads down and you know, do what you can for the kids. But yeah, it seemed very hard to create any, like, structural change. There was no outlet for, for me, I often felt so, 

yeah.

So the sort of unseen. Compensation of knowing you're doing something that's good and important, isn't there? You know, if you're a really, really good teacher and you put your head down and you do what you're told, you can impact the lives of dozens of individual students. Or if you're a school leader, dozens of teachers and families, which is awesome, but it's not enough y you need to change the system.

And if you are a person who is super self-possessed around actually changing this and making it like getting us away from the school to prison pipeline, for example, or just making our schools safe and producing human beings that can compete in the world economy, right, that are well-trained, which our schools are not even doing that right now.

If you're a person who insists on that, it is crazy making. So there isn't that, that feel good benefit of knowing that you're having an important impact on the world because you're not, 'cause our schools don't let us do that. It's like, what is the, what is the point? That's what I feel so much of the time.

Yeah. No, I wanna, I want to echo that. I came in with so much idealism thinking like, well, I think I could really make a difference and. I think emotionally I did, I think I was there for my kids. I really enjoyed building, uh, relationships with them. But curriculum wise, skills wise, I felt, you know, like, wow, I'm not sure why.

Again, like as someone that loves literature, why I really don't, sometimes don't know why we're teaching, like how to analyze a book when we could be analyzing, for example, the rhetoric of a presidential speech or more like a rhetorical analysis type of, uh, skills that. Our biggest in real life. Those are the things that, those are the skills I think that you need to be an informed citizen and to participate in our civic life.

But I wasn't sure, like, how do I talk about this? How do I say this? Who do I talk to? I don't know. And I was so busy. Eventually I was just like, eh, like I guess I'll just let it pass for now. But, you know, it stays with you. Uh, you just eventually feel like, huh, there doesn't seem to be a point. In what I'm doing.

I, I came up against that a lot, so. 

We we're gonna talk a lot more about why you experienced your school culture and the educational system at large this way because it has been set up to exclude teacher voice. There is a strong vibe that I actually studied in, um, my master's program, which is regarding a term you may have heard of, known as neoliberalism.

It is opening up our profession to the capitalistic marketplace with this idea that. Someone else other than us, other than the people inside of our schools who work there know more about what we need to teach and how we need to address the kids and how to fix our problems than we do because, and there's no expectation that anything they do is actually effective because people move on so quickly from their positions of leadership that nobody's actually going in and authentically investigating the efficacy.

And just wait until we talk about reading education. I don't wanna reveal, but. We are doing a very poor job of teaching our kids the very mo, arguably the most important thing. Which is how to read. 

I did, um, like an entire unit on chat, GPT, and I was like, let's analyze like the history of this. Let's talk about how, um, like AI has come about.

The final task of this unit is a Socratic seminar. Let's also like teach you how to use this effectively. Also, like what are the implications of these technologies, you know? And I think near the end, I really went off script because I kind of knew that I wasn't gonna return and I was like. Screw it. I think I'm actually just gonna teach what I myself think is incredibly important and I ended up leaving that unit with, with everyone at my, at my school and 

feeling very, very polar opposite feelings about Calvin leaving.

Is that like. Darn it. We need you. But like run for the hills, Kelvin, get out. We love you. You deserve better. But wait, we want you No. Get away. No, we want you. 

There was one thing that I did want to mention and this, this, this has kinda stayed with me. My mentor teacher told me this really great quote saying that teaching is one of the few professions that rewards idealism.

And I think that. That's exactly what allows the system to prey on teachers. I don't disagree with my mentor teacher. I 1% agree. Like truly, truly, I have never felt so connected to people in my, in a job as teaching. But also I think that's exactly why the system is so difficult to change. 'cause all these teachers, they show up for their kids, they show up for the profession 'cause they love it.

And I think the system may not individuals, but like the systems. We'll pray like on quote unquote the weakest link. And that's maybe, uh, what makes us most vulnerable is that we love and we love our kids and we love our job. So that's, that's all I wanted to say. 

That was beautiful. I got chills. I like, I feel like our love and compassion is exploited.

Yes. Yes. 

Absolutely and, and then we're not able to do anything with the knowledge we gain as we go to make things better. Not really and truly. It is absolutely infuriating, honestly. To watch all of society's problems coalesce in front of you. Know what you need to do to start making it better, not fix it and then not be able to do it.

It is demoralizing.

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