Why Teach in a Country That Doesn’t Value Teachers?

How systemic underpayment, gendered expectations, and moral exploitation drive teachers out—and why some of us stay anyway.

Why teach in a country that doesn’t value teachers? This essay explores the systemic devaluation of care work, the cost of staying, and the quiet, radical act of showing up anyway—one student at a time.

Introduction

Your kid comes home from school one day and says, “I want to be a teacher when I grow up.” What’s your reaction?

It’s meant to be a sweet moment—a sign that your child admires the person who spends the day with them, that they want to make a difference, give back, shape the future. But for many parents, it doesn’t land that way. Not anymore. The truth is, most people wouldn’t wish this job on their own child. Not because teaching itself has lost value, but because this country has never truly valued teachers.

There was a time when one in five bachelor’s degrees in the U.S. was in education. Now it’s closer to one in twenty. We’re in the middle of a teacher shortage crisis, and every year, more leave than enter. Official reports blame burnout, pay, political interference—and they’re not wrong. But I think it begins much earlier. It begins in that quiet moment at the dinner table, when a child says they want to be a teacher, and the adult smiles—but hesitates.

Why teach in a country that doesn’t value teachers?

During professional development sessions, we’re often asked to reflect on the teacher who inspired us to join this profession. For some, it’s an easy story to tell—an act of kindness, a spark of recognition, a mentor who believed in them. But for me, there was no such person. I was autistic, a gestalt language processor, and I was either ignored or punished. My schooling wasn’t a place of inspiration—it was a lesson in abandonment. So I didn’t become a teacher because I was called. I became a teacher because I knew what it felt like to be left behind.

Still, that leaves the question: is it worth it?

According to an old CNN report, the average teacher spends $820 of their own money each year on school supplies. For me, it’s more than twice that. I spend upwards of $2,000 to make my classroom safe, functional, and even mildly engaging (and tariffs will make next year cost even more). And yet, the system caps my tax deduction at $300. A billionaire can write off a helicopter. I can’t fully deduct crayons.

This isn’t just about money. It’s about meaning. It’s about how care work—especially when performed by women or feminised professions—is quietly assumed, invisibilised, and exploited. It’s about how we’re told teaching is noble, yet treated like we’re disposable. It’s about how, after doing everything we can to hold our schools together, we’re still asked to dig deeper.

So when someone asks, “Why did you become a teacher?”—what they often mean is, “Why would you do this to yourself?”

And some days, I ask the same thing.

Teaching as “Women’s Work”

To understand why teaching is treated this way, we have to reckon with its history—as “women’s work.”

In the early 19th century, education reformers like Horace Mann advocated for public schooling as a moral necessity. But it wasn’t men they imagined in those classrooms. After the Civil War, with men returning to industrial work or politics, the state turned to women—particularly white, middle-class women—as a ready-made workforce to civilise the next generation. They were thought to possess the “natural” qualities needed for the job: patience, nurturing, selflessness. And importantly, they could be paid less. A lot less.

This wasn’t an accident. It was policy. By the late 1800s, teaching had become one of the only “respectable” careers available to women. But respectability didn’t come with respect. Instead, it came with poverty wages, moral scrutiny, and the implicit expectation that good women would do the job not for compensation, but for love.

That cultural logic never left.

Today, nearly 76% of public school teachers in the U.S. are women. And whilst we’re no longer required to be single or to quit once we marry—yes, that was once a rule—the expectations haven’t shifted all that much. The work of teaching is still framed as a kind of extension of mothering. It’s supposed to come from the heart. Which is exactly why it remains underpaid.

Even within teaching itself, the gender pay gap persists. A 2024 study found that male teachers earn significantly more than their female counterparts, despite doing the same job. The gaps widen further in school leadership. Meanwhile, professions dominated by women—nursing, early childhood care, social work—consistently rank among the most vital and the most undervalued in terms of compensation.

This is not a coincidence. It’s a design.

Teaching is demanding, highly skilled labour. But it’s emotional labour too—the kind that’s hard to measure and even harder to monetise. The labour of noticing who hasn’t eaten. Of managing meltdowns with dignity. Of holding space for a child whose home is a war zone. Of knowing that your tone, your glance, your patience might be the difference between a child feeling safe or shutting down.

And because that kind of care work is seen as soft, womanly, and innate—it is rarely seen as worth paying for.

What We Really Do

Let’s put to rest, once and for all, the tired notion that teachers are “just babysitters.”

If we were babysitters, we wouldn’t be required to write legal documents. But we are. We’re responsible for implementing Individualised Education Programmes (IEPs)—binding, federally-mandated plans that detail how students with disabilities are to be supported. Each one is unique, complex, and monitored for compliance. Miss a service minute, fail to differentiate instruction, forget to document an accommodation, and you’re not just letting a student down—you’re opening your school to legal liability. This is part of the job now. For every teacher like me. Every day.

We’re also crisis managers. Lockdowns, fights, disclosures of abuse, medical emergencies—we are often the first responders, the ones who have to keep calm whilst protecting thirty lives in a room not built for safety. Many of us have little to no formal training in trauma response, but we are still expected to de-escalate, to support, to carry on. And then return to teaching as if nothing happened.

We are tasked with differentiated instruction across ever-expanding ranges of need. In one classroom, I might be supporting an emergent bilingual student, a child with PTSD, a gifted learner bored out of their mind, and a student reading at a first-grade level in the 11th grade. And I am expected to meet each of them where they are, without sacrificing rigour, outcomes, or pace. To do it creatively. Joyfully. With a smile.

We’re now expected to be trauma-informed too. We attend PD sessions on adverse childhood experiences, attachment theory, and the neuroscience of dysregulation. We learn how trauma impacts the brain—but not how to recover from the burnout it inflicts on ours. There’s no built-in support for the teacher carrying all of this. We are told to regulate ourselves, and then help everyone else do the same.

And then there’s language. Culture. Identity. Our classrooms are microcosms of the world—multilingual, multi-ethnic, intersectional spaces that demand far more than content knowledge. We’re navigating complex histories, varied communication styles, unspoken trauma, and often, deep systemic harm. It’s not enough to “treat everyone the same.” We must know what equity actually requires. And we must do it without training, without materials, and without time.

Meanwhile, the support around us shrinks. Specialists are stretched thin. Mental health services are waitlisted. Class sizes grow, budgets tighten, and the job description quietly expands until it includes everything no one else wants to do.

So no, we’re not just babysitting. We are teaching, yes—but also case managing, counselling, translating, mediating, responding, documenting, adapting, absorbing, and enduring.

And still, somehow, we are treated like a cost to be cut—rather than the foundation everything else rests on.

Capitalism’s Dependence on Devalued Labour

The truth is, public education runs on unpaid labour. Not in the abstract, but literally. Every day, teachers subsidise the system with their time, their money, and their health. We stay late. We mark papers over dinner. We design lessons on weekends. We buy supplies that should be provided. We write grants just to keep books on the shelves. And somehow, this has all been normalised—absorbed into the job description, quietly folded into what it means to be “dedicated.”

This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.

Capitalism doesn’t function by paying everyone what they’re worth. It functions by finding people it can underpay—or not pay at all. The reason teaching remains so undervalued is because it has always been treated as care work, and care work—especially when performed by women or feminised labourers—has always been treated as freely available. It’s not that teachers are asking for more. It’s that the system was built assuming we would never ask at all.

And so when we do—when we demand fair wages, safe working conditions, or simply the right to rest—we are framed as greedy. Ungrateful. Difficult. The same system that counts on our unpaid labour then has the audacity to present itself as generous when it gives us crumbs. A one-time bonus. A pizza party. An underfunded wellness initiative. And we’re meant to feel lucky.

It’s a clever arrangement, really. Extract enormous value from people whose work is framed as love. Punish them if they protest. Celebrate yourself for “investing in education” when what you’re actually doing is exploiting the people who hold it together.

And still, we’re told to dig deeper.

The Cultural Gaslighting of “Calling”

We’re told that teaching is a calling. That we do it for the children. For the future. For love. The implication is always the same: if you’re doing it for any other reason—like financial stability or professional respect—you must be doing it for the wrong reasons. It’s not a job, we’re told. It’s a vocation. And that single phrase—it’s a calling—has excused decades of exploitation.

But let’s look at what the country really values.

In the decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street firms built an entire economy out of risk and illusion. Investment banks engineered complex financial products like collateralised debt obligations—CDOs—that bundled together subprime mortgages, sliced them into tranches, and sold them off as high-yield, low-risk investments. These weren’t accidents of innovation. They were deliberate financial weapons—built to extract maximum profit from poor and working-class communities, especially Black and Brown homeowners who were targeted with predatory loans. And when those loans inevitably collapsed under their own weight, the financial sector profited twice: first from the selling, and then from the collapse itself, having placed bets against the very products they sold.

The fallout was catastrophic: millions lost their homes, their pensions, their jobs. Teachers and public sector workers saw their retirement funds decimated. Local governments slashed school budgets, eliminated positions, and closed libraries to offset the damage. And yet, not only did few bankers face any meaningful consequences—they were publicly lauded for their “innovation.” They received bonuses, golden parachutes, and, eventually, the stability of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

They caused irreparable harm. And they were rewarded.

We, on the other hand, offer care. We hold space for grief. We teach reading to students in trauma. We adapt daily to crises—family eviction, food insecurity, deportation threats, untreated disability. We give what we do not have because we know what will happen if we don’t. And we are paid in platitudes.

The contrast couldn’t be more revealing.

One form of labour generates harm for profit. The other generates care for survival. And yet it’s the former that commands respect, authority, and obscene compensation. The latter? Barely enough to get by. Teachers are told to be grateful for their “noble” profession, even as they work second jobs to pay for groceries. Finance is cast as the beating heart of the nation’s economy, even when it bleeds the working class dry.

That’s not a rhetorical oversight. It’s a mirror.

The United States doesn’t just underpay teachers—it punishes them for trying to live. It builds billion-dollar empires on the backs of the most vulnerable, then demands that educators fill in the gaps with moral fortitude and personal debt. This is not a failure of budgeting. It’s a declaration of values.

Because here’s the truth: in this country, harm is rewarded. Care is not.

So when someone tells me teaching is “a calling,” I no longer hear admiration. I hear the quiet expectation that I should work without rest, without protest, and without pay. I hear the assumption that my exhaustion is a feature of the job, not a crisis to be addressed. I hear the justification for why it’s acceptable to value hedge fund managers over child development experts. And I see clearly, now more than ever, that the real difference isn’t in skill or effort—it’s in who the system is designed to serve.

So Why Teach?

So why teach?

That question echoes louder each year—especially as conditions worsen, wages stagnate, and the public discourse around education becomes increasingly hostile. It would be easy to say “because I care,” but that doesn’t even begin to capture the complexity of this choice. For many of us, it’s not about idealism. It’s about survival. Identity. Legacy. Something deeper and older than any job description.

For me, teaching offers something rare: semi-stable employment and health benefits. That shouldn’t be remarkable, but as an autistic adult, it is. Most workplaces are hostile in ways big and small. Teaching, for all its stress, still gives me access to a structure—a rhythm—that can hold me. It also gives me something I need as a gestalt processor: the opportunity to learn new things every single day. That’s an autistic joy no one talks about enough. Every lesson, every child, every unsolvable puzzle—it’s never the same. And that variation, that complexity, that sensory richness of ideas? It feeds me.

But it’s more than that.

I teach because I was that student—disabled, brilliant in ways that didn’t translate, repeatedly misunderstood. I grew up never seeing people like me in adulthood. And now, I show up every day as that person. The adult with an IEP. The teacher who scripts most everything. The one whose desk is too messy (yet knows when something has been moved), who uses colour-coded schedules and loops music when overwhelmed. The one who isn’t hiding.

Some days, that visibility feels like a risk. But I also know this: somewhere in the back of the room, a student is watching. And maybe, just maybe, they’re thinking, “Oh. So I can exist.”

I don’t teach because it’s a calling. I teach because someone has to. Because I remember what it felt like to need someone and not find them. And because I cannot let that silence be the end of the story.

For some, teaching is a family tradition. For others, it’s a lifeline. For me, it’s a strange kind of defiant belonging—a way to carve out space not just for students, but for myself. Not despite being autistic. Not despite being trans. But because of those things.

So yes, it is hard. And no, it is not fair. But still, I return. Not because I believe the system deserves me—but because the students do.

What Would It Take to Stay?

What would it take to stay?

Not to survive—to stay. To remain in this work, not out of obligation or inertia, but with dignity intact. That’s the real question. And the answers are not extravagant. They’re not a wishlist. They’re what any reasonable society would already be doing if it truly valued its educators.

Start with pay. Not symbolic raises. Not one-time bonuses tied to test scores. Actual compensation aligned with the expertise we hold. We are highly skilled professionals—trained not just in content, but in pedagogy, child development, linguistics, special education law, trauma-informed care, and so much more. If we were compensated even half as well as the consultants who come in to tell us how to do our jobs, we’d be in a different world.

Then: classrooms funded like they matter. Not through DonorsChoose projects and bake sales, but as a public good. I shouldn’t be spending thousands of dollars a year to make my classroom habitable. I shouldn’t have to scavenge furniture from retired colleagues or write grants to replace broken pencils. A classroom is not a charity case. It’s infrastructure. It deserves investment.

We also need mental health support that isn't just corporate wellness kits and access to an under-resourced EAP hotline. Support that understands burnout as a systemic outcome—not a personal failing. Support that honours neurodivergence, trauma, and the sheer emotional load of holding dozens of young lives in your care, every day.

And time. Time to plan lessons that are thoughtful, not reactive. Time to collaborate with colleagues without sacrificing lunch. Time to call families when something beautiful happens—not just when there’s a problem. Time to rest without guilt. We are not robots. We are not saints. We are people. And people need time.

None of this should be radical.

But when you're in a profession built on the unpaid labour of women, when your role has been framed for generations as selfless service, even asking for these basics is treated as outrageous. So let me be clear: this isn’t a wish. This is the floor. This is what justice would look like—not just for teachers, but for the children we serve.

Because when we talk about what it would take to stay, we’re not just talking about adults making career decisions. We’re talking about whether we’re willing to fund a future where children are safe, seen, and supported by people who aren’t barely holding on.

Final thoughts…

To become a teacher in the United States is to choose a path of resistance.

This choice isn’t made out of ignorance or naïveté. It’s made with full awareness of what the job entails—and what it costs. You don’t stay in this profession because it’s easy. You stay because you know what happens when no one does. Because you remember what it felt like to be unsupported. Because, for some of us, being in that classroom—visible, grounded, surviving—is its own kind of testimony.

There’s a graphic that goes around, comparing teacher pay to babysitting rates. It breaks the job down to $10 an hour per child, eight hours a day, 25 students, 180 days a year. The total? $360,000 per teacher. Multiply that by the 3.2 million public school teachers in the U.S., and you get $1.152 trillion per year.

It sounds outrageous—until you realise the country could have paid that figure every year for decades, and still come out ahead.

According to a 2024 RAND report, if wages for the bottom 90% of earners had simply kept pace with productivity since 1975, workers would have earned $3.9 trillion more in 2023 alone. That’s not a typo. In a single year, nearly $4 trillion that should have gone to workers instead went upward—to investors, executives, and the already wealthy. Over the longer period from 1975 to 2023, the cumulative wage theft—because that’s what it is—amounts to $79 trillion.

That is the context in which teachers are told to accept austerity. To do more with less. To prove their worth, again and again, while the wealth they generate fuels a system designed to ignore them. We are not underpaid because the money isn’t there. We are underpaid because the money has been taken.

And yet, in spite of it all, we teach.

Not because we’re martyrs. Not because we believe the system works. But because we still believe in the radical act of showing up for children. We still believe that visibility matters. That care matters. That someone has to interrupt the silence.

So when someone asks, “Why teach in a country that doesn’t value teachers?”, my answer is simple:

Because someone has to.
And until it changes—let it be me.