When lockdown hit in 2020, many parents suddenly found themselves in a new and unplanned role as a supervisor of their children's learning and school life. Remote learning was hard and, for most of us, increased our appreciation for just how hard teachers really work! Having to help kids navigate everything from silent letters to sixth grade math, made it clear that teaching is a real skill.
Sadly, there are still some folks out there who think teachers are basically glorified babysitters. One of the teachers who posts on the TikTok account @bored_teachers, broke down one of the major differences between babysitters and teachers and it turns out that it's a math lesson that just might shock the average parent.
This teacher is ready to do some math.
"Ok, we get it," says one TikTok teacher. "You want to treat teachers like babysitters. Absolutely, let's do it, but first let's talk about salary." The teacher is holding a dry-erase marker. A teacher with a white board and a fresh dry erase marker is always a good sign that some knowledge is about to drop, and this teacher was not afraid to let a bit of math help her prove her point.
Now, before we get into her math, a quick reminder that the average salary in the US for a teacher is about $65,000 per year, although that varies a lot by state and school district. Teachers in South Dakota, for example, have an average salary of under $50,000, while teachers in New York are leading with an average of just over $87,000 per year. We're not sure where this teacher is from, but it's about to be clear that she's probably underpaid!
The math starts with a discounted rate for babysitting, a mere $10 an hour.
As our teacher explains, $10 an hour would be a reasonable discounted rate for seven hours of babysitting. With $70 a day per kid and a very lowball number of 20 to 25 kids in a classroom (seriously, where are the schools with 20 kids in a classroom?), she estimates the glorified babysitters should be making $1,400 to $1,750 per day and up to $8,750 per week.
Man, even the New York teachers would be happy to sign up for that.
If teachers were paid like babysitters, they'd be making big bucks!
Although our TikTok teacher doesn't do the math for an annual salary, we remember enough multiplication to do it for her. With the average number of school days in a year at around 180, a teacher who was paid like a babysitter would make somewhere between $252,000 and $315,000 per year, using her small class sizes. A teacher with a more realistic class size of 30 would make a whopping $378,000.
We suspect there wouldn't be such a concern about teacher shortages if teachers really got paid like this.
But it isn't just about the money.
The comments section was lit up by other teachers chiming in with the other ways babysitters just might have it better than teachers.
"Plus, I don’t think babysitters write reports, write lesson plans, or go to meetings so …," noted one commenter.
Another reminded everyone that babysitters can say "no," unlike teachers, explaining, "Don’t forget that as a babysitter I can turn kids away or call parents and say ‘this isn’t working anymore, you need to look elsewhere.’"
The real mic drop came from someone who correctly pointed out that even care providers for pets might have a better deal, arguing, "They’ll pay that much for a dog in doggy daycare but not their child that is about to be a grown human in our society."
Yep, this might be just the reminder we all need to thank a teacher today and to never argue that they are overpaid or glorified babysitters.
