Fourth-grade teacher reveals just how poorly educators are paid in the US and it's a shame

Teachers are being paid a pittance

It's a well-known fact that educators in the country are severely underpaid. This represents a very sad state of affairs considering just how important an educator's job is when it comes to shaping future generations. It's also very unfair to the educators themselves, who put themselves through many years of training by taking student loans to perform at their dream jobs. Many of them take years to make some kind of decent salary and, even then, find it difficult to pay the bills.

"I made $31,000 as a fourth-grade teacher"

Kyle Cohen, a 4th grade teacher, recently shared a video on his TikTok about how much he made at his job. He reveals that he began teaching at a charter school located in Cleveland and made just $31,000 starting off. He sarcastically continues by saying how he had to teach a class of 16 students, with each kid having a wide range of "special needs." Cohen further added that he got paid so poorly despite having a college degree and experience.

'But you only work 8-9 months a year'

Cohen then made a follow-up video where he responded to a commenter's justification for poor pay being that they worked only for 8 to 9 months in a year. He begins by saying, "You are absolutely correct. Us teachers we do only work eight to nine months of the year. It is ridiculous." Cohen reveals that he calculated how many hours he actually worked at his job over a year. He mentions his previous video where he mentioned that he had made $31,000 a year. 

Doing the math

Cohen states that he worked for 10 hours a day, which totaled 50 hours over a week. He says, "Multiply that by four, which is about 200 hours that I work a month." But his hours do not end there as he has to attend many meetings mandatorily. He talks about how some meetings would go on till 8 PM in the night and 200 hours was just a minimum figure of how much he actually worked. Cohen further added that he had to account for all the time he spent planning ahead for teaching and meeting with parents. According to him, all of these add-ons came out to roughly 240 hours a month.

The numbers speak for themselves

He continues by multiplying the 240 hours in a month for the entire school year, which comes out to a staggering 2160 hours of work. Cohen says, "If I take that $31,000 salary that I earned in my first year of teaching. $31,000 divided by 2160 that is $14 an hour to your fourth grade classroom teacher." But he's not done, as he adds that this was the figure without accounting for taxes. He concludes by saying that he didn't want to sound ungrateful, but his calculations showcased just how unfairly educators were being compensated in the country.

The desperate need for better pay 

Cohen's calculations gave people a clear idea of just how unfairly teachers were compensated and they shared their thoughts in the comments section. @heyyitsmeg said, "Waiting for the day that teachers don't have to prove their worth." @muzikalromanze added, "Let's also not talk about the amount of money many teachers spend on their students out of their paychecks." @dirtiedanny commented, "The fact that an educational PROFESSIONAL gets less than $15/hour is atrocious."