Let's shift from thinking about pay regarding teacher retention over time to understanding pay as a support for immediate improvements in classrooms today.
Not "If," but "When"
Paying teachers more is important. In case you're hesitant about this starting point, here's some recent work by the Economic Policy Institute about the role of higher pay in attracting high-quality candidates and by the Learning Policy Institute regarding increasing retention rates. While may states made post-COVID moves to increase pay, these efforts generally only raised wages such that educators were still making 80% of what their peers made in non-teaching fields, and are effectively making less than they were in 2010, as said wage increases have not kept pace with inflation.
From a national, structural standpoint, it's clear that teachers need salaries commensurate with their professional duties. Unfortunately, addressing teacher pay from a 30,000 ft/ order-of-decades view misses the immediate classroom impacts and improvements in current student outcomes that increased pay would bring today.
Students are Impacted When Teachers Are Stressed
Learning is a social enterprise, and we are a social species. As a social species, we attune to each other's stress levels without even knowing we're doing it. Under the best of conditions, this is great news, as we can use our built-in attunement to help each other "co-regulate." We can calm back down in the presence of someone else who is calm and focused on helping us to regulate our own nervous system.
According to polyvagal theory, both social-emotional learning and enduring conceptual learning happen under low-to-moderate "eustress" conditions; learning requires some stress, for sure. But too much stress, when students are in a fight/flight/freeze mode, makes enduring learning impossible.
Stressed teachers are less able to self-regulate, and are therefore less able to co-regulate a classroom, increasing the probability that high social stress impedes learning.
Even the Best Teachers are Impacted by Too Much Stress
A well-prepared, connected, and focused teacher is no match for the way our nervous systems pick up on each other's stress.
Even in expertly-facilitated classrooms, hard-working and well-loved teachers can accidentally impact their students with their own non-verbal indications that they are under stress. Even if this subtle signaling doesn't initiate a full-blown fight-or-flight response, it could bring on a fawn response, motivating students to be careful to not increase the teacher's stress even more. When students become caretakers of the adults who should be caretaking them, they are less available for learning.
In classrooms where teachers' stress levels are untenable, the resulting chaos is a surefire way to contribute to students' fight/flight/freeze behaviors.
Money Buys Calm
When any professional is navigating unmanageable amounts of stress, the first question in an stress-reduction conversation is often "what can you let go of, and what can you delegate?"
Teachers don't have the option to let many things go and still do their jobs well, so often the pieces they "let go of" are essential components of their personal lives. Which is stressful. Similarly, delegation is tough when you're the only adult in the room, and so even delegating the delegatable tasks is only an option in teachers' personal lives. Which requires money.
Imagine if every teacher:
Could make rent without having to regularly donate plasma
Could afford high-quality child care for their own children
Could afford to use summer months for rest, recharge, and reinvigorating curriculum (instead of getting a second or third job)
Could afford a reliable vehicle
Could buy themselves and their families healthy meal-prep deliveries
Could pay someone to help with cleaning and yard work during the school year
Now imagine how much lower current teachers' stress levels would be if we could ensure that level of stability for all current, in-classroom educators.
Students deserve teachers who are well rested, well fed, who have safe, reliable commutes to school, and who have the physiological bandwidth to absorb the inevitable shifting needs of a classroom community.
Teachers deserve material support to allow them to create sustainable lives that prioritize their self-regulation so that they can be available to both model - and support students who need help accessing - a well-regulated nervous system.
Teachers need to be paid salaries that go far beyond livable; teacher salaries must honor the essential role teachers play in rearing, regulating, and constructing the collective intellect of every community. Teachers need to be paid well. And paying teachers well TODAY will have positive impacts TODAY, as well as years and decades in the future.
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