Teachers are increasingly being asked to pick up the slack of school funding—both in supplying their own classrooms, while being offered salaries that buy less and less. This shifting of responsibility is treating teaching less like a profession, and more like a calling. It is turning teachers into artists.
This comparison is not flattering. Artists are not valued. There are rarely good supports for an artist to live on while perfecting their chosen craft. It is difficult to get by on creating and selling artwork alone. The examples of wealthy artists are very few, and many are more entertainers than artists.
For teachers even as more lip service is given about the difference they make, the action of public policy does not value them. Too often teachers are not given the training and resources to do the job expected of them. Their opinions are not valued. Teaching is considered to be a mystical ability endowed upon a chosen few. Those that are good teachers dreamed of being a teacher when they grew up, and impart wisdom flawlessly without effort. This is like the belief that artists are in possession of a passion and creativity not found in the hearts of mere mortals, and could not possibly be understood by the simple non artist.
A few good teachers are upheld as the ideal, who are showered with praise. Teaching is supposed to be a joy—the only reward should be knowing you have impacted the lives of your students. Desiring to maintain a professional middle class lifestyle when you have a bachelor’s degree and certification on top of that, well that’s just being selfish. The joy of teaching should be enough. It is the same way we treat artists. A few who become popular are considered the ideal, but none of that trickles down to those growing underneath. The joy of creating in your craft should be enough. To be paid enough for your work to be able to make ends meet is, well, simply too much to expect.
Being a writer, painter, crafter, or musician is a skill. Some people may have a greater natural talent, but even they needed to learn and hone their craft. Prince did not sit at a piano one day and compose Purple Rain without years of study and practice. Teaching is the same. Teaching is a specific set of skills that are learned and improved upon through experience and training. For every hour teaching in the classroom, every teacher has spent many more preparing their lessons, grading papers, and filling out paperwork. Teachers do not get the summer off—their summers are spent planning lessons, training, and working a second job to make ends meet.
Treating art and teaching as a natural talent instead of a learned skill allows us to treat their labor as worthless. If it is a joy to create, then there is no issue with buying art to only cover the cost of materials. Dangling the word “exposure” as an excuse to exploit free labor from an artist is not treating what they do as work. If teaching is a calling, it is fine to only pay them the minimum to survive and expect them to supply their own classroom. This means not treating a school like any other workplace. After all, teaching is supposed to be a teacher’s reason for living.
If we expect good teaching, we must pay for good teachers. A teacher can not feed their family on heart and soul, any more than an artist can. We must treat them like professionals and ensure they have resources they need to do their job. If we believe teaching is important, then we need to act that way. Education of children is a forward investment that any civilization makes if it is concerned about the future. One way to demonstrate that is to pay our teachers enough that they don’t have to sacrifice their mortgage payments to educate young minds.