I’ve always wondered why professional athletes get paid millions upon millions of dollars every year while teachers make next to nothing. Why should the people who entertain us make more money than the people who literally teach us how to prepare for the job market?

I know I’m not the first one to bring up this topic, and I’m sure people who know much more than me have spent hours debating this monetary issue. This may be the case, but the topic of payment within the realm of education hits home for me. Most of my dad’s side of the family are in the education field: teachers, counselors, band directors, and principals. I’ve heard so many accounts of struggles managing kids; for my dad who’s a principal, the parents can be nightmares.

On top of that, they each have such a large amount of work outside of the classroom every day. Contrarily to what you may think, my principal dad works every day during the summer (yeah, only teachers get the perk of summers off).

Teachers cannot have a second job (unless it’s in the summer) to balance out the lacking pay because they’re so busy grading, lesson planning, and maybe having a life outside of teaching.

Because of the unequal ratio of work to pay, many teachers are getting burnt out early on in their careers. Seeing my family work in education, I wanted to try it out but quickly realized the field wasn’t very promising. Now, I’m avoiding the education field like the plague.

There certainly are students who are still interested in working in education, but some have to be bribed to do it. Programs at Illinois State like Golden Apple and the Special Education department offer scholarships for education students to get through college without paying tuition IF they work in the education field in Illinois for a certain number of years after graduation.

These programs are good to motivate students to go into the field, but the incentive is through money and not through the students’ passion to teach. We need education professionals who truly want to teach future generations not just for the money.

The bottom line is that those who work in education are overworked and underpaid. If something isn’t done about this epidemic, our entire education system will be at risk. Let’s start the conversation and support education professionals so they can continue to send informed students into society.