How a New Teacher Spends Over $500 Before You Even Teach A Class

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I ran away from it for a very long time because I knew that there was really no money in teaching. You are expected to get a bachelor’s degree for a field where, at least in Arizona, you will not get paid even $40,000 per year. I was coasting for a really long time. I was just doing whatever job tickled my fancy, and believe me there were a lot of different ones. It was starting to get ridiculous.

After having my third child, a college recruiter came to me and asked me to go to school. At the time, I thought it might be cool to work for Child Protective Services. So I went for my Associates Degree in Human Services. While working on that degree, I had to take a psychology class and fell in love with it. I decided that I wanted to be a Psychologist, which was another one of my high school dreams. I had taken a basic psychology class in high school, and I remembered how much I loved it. I got my Bachelors in Psychology.

The thing about Psychology is in order to actually practice Psychology in my area, you have to have a Masters degree. I decided to go for it, but I changed schools. I thought a well known university would be better than The University of Phoenix, when it came to that career. I decided to go to Grand Canyon University instead. This drained all of my student loans because the school is so expensive. So I dropped out.

I don’t like to leave things unfinished, so I was extremely depressed at this moment. I started to go to therapy where I was diagnosed like so many of my cousins and other family members with Manic Depression. It became debilitating. I felt like I had a degree that I couldn’t do anything with and my money was beyond funny. I started hating all of the little jobs that I was doing. I hated everything about the way my life was going. My therapist was the person who told me that it was possible to become a substitute teacher with a Bachelor's degree. I did my own research and found out that she was correct, so I did what I had to do and got my certification.

This starts how teachers spend a lot of money to become teachers. First, you have to get your Fingerprint Clearance Card in Arizona. It’s called something else in other places, but it is a federal card to make sure that you are not in any government system as someone who should not be near children. I get it, but it does cost $67, and it takes 4-6 weeks to come back. This does not include the fee for the fingerprint themselves. You have to find a place to do them and pay whatever fee they have. Then you need your official school transcripts. The transcripts cost $15 plus shipping unless you go to pick it up. Once the transcripts are opened they are no longer official. This becomes an issue because you need the official transcripts for everything you do. That’s at least $15 every time you need them. Lastly, you have to pay for your certification, which is an additional $60.

I paid all of this, and substitute taught for the first year, where I wound up in a long term position where I had basically become the teacher because the principal had fired the regular teacher for threatening a student, and she didn’t really have a back up plan. I did this for $120 per day that I actually worked. On the days that there was no work, I did not get paid, but I liked working with the students even though I was constantly stressed over money. This showed me that I could do this for a living and I decided to finish school, but this time, I would go for my degree in Education.

I continued to substitute while being in school. The other part of substitute teaching is that if you are not doing a long term position, there are no guarantees that you will have a job on any given day, you don’t get paid the $120 per day, it’s more like $90, and you can wind up having to travel so far that it is not even worth it to go. Also with the long term positions, you are only allowed to work 120 days in the same class per school year.This can also cause an issue when subbing. The great thing is that you can choose when you want to work. You don’t have to ask anyone if you can have a day off. If you want to go on a vacation, you can just go. You simply don’t pick up a job.

I was forced to pick up other side jobs though. This did very little for my mental state because I was beyond exhausted, but the jobs that I chose were jobs that I didn’t mind losing because by this point I knew that my path was to become a teacher. I had learned that if I teach for 10 years and pay on my student loans on time, I could have student loan forgiveness for the rest of it. I had learned that as a teacher, I would be paid salary according to my contract. I could be paid for the school months or all year around, depending on my contract. I would no longer have to struggle during the summer months or in December when there was only 2 weeks of school. I wouldn’t have to be at the mercy of the school districts for when there would be work so that I could get paid. My life would change once I became a full time teacher, or at least I believed.

I had made a decision. I love being a free bird, and I loved the freedom that substituting gave me. I could still be in the classroom, but I could pick up and go whenever I feel. I decided to be a teacher for the 10 years that it would take for loan forgiveness and then go back to substitute teaching. My children would be grown by then, and I could just pick up and travel whenever I wanted. I would come back, work a few sub jobs, and go wherever the wind took me. It is still a beautiful dream of mine, that I fully plan to implement by the time I turn 50.

I kept working and going for my degree. I would have to miss days of work because one of the stipulations of the degree is to observe other teachers for 100 hours. Sometimes I would observe during a free period one of the other teachers in the school that I was already at, but this was not always possible and one or two hours per week was not going to get me 100 hours. So I would miss some time. This was great as a substitute because I could always just not pick up a job so that I could do my observations, but this was about the time that I started to worry about student teaching. I would have to student teach for 12 weeks and there was no way that I could substitute teach and student teach. I felt like I would have to either save up enough money to not have to work during this time or get a second job. This became a great stressor for me.

Finally, I got a long term substitute job for a different school district. The pandemic had hit so I was able to work from home. I learned that I loved being in the classroom, and had decided that I would no longer work from home. It was this school district who offered me a job as a teacher although I was not completely done with my degree yet. The only thing that was missing was my student teaching. When I told them this, they told me that this was not an issue for them. They would get me an emergency certification and that there would be no problem for me to student teach in my own class. I jumped at the idea because it felt like it was all coming together for me. I no longer had to worry about how my children and I would have to survive during those months of student teaching. I didn’t have to worry about coming into an already established classroom as a student teacher and disrupt what the students were already doing. I felt truly blessed.

Then I learned the truth about the teacher contracts, but let’s go back a little to what it would take before the contract would even come into play. First, you need the fingerprint clearance card. My card was still valid, so I didn’t have to worry about that. Then you need your official transcripts for school for the job. Then you need those same transcripts for the Department of Education, even though you gave them your transcripts for you to get the substitute license. Yeah, they want those again, and remember once they are open, they are no longer official, so I had to purchase these twice. The emergency certification is only good for one year at a time, and you can only hold it 3 times, which isn't too terrible for me because I will have my full certification after this school year, but for each of these times that I have to see the Department of Education, I will have to pay the fees again.

Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the testing fees. I had already taken my tests because you have to do that before you can teach, and I was already preparing for that, but there were two tests that I needed to take. Actually 3 because I had tried to teach in California where I’m from, but I couldn’t pass the math portion, which I had planned on taking again, but the pandemic made that an impossibility. I would have to pay the fee again, which I still plan on doing. Remember I don’t like to leave things undone, and I only failed the test by two heartbreaking points. All of these tests are about $95 each not including study material costs.

Now for the teacher contract. Yes, we get a stipend for school supplies. This stipend is for the district's warehouse and for other teacher specific school supply stores. We could not get things from Walmart, Target, or Amazon. There were only specific things we were allowed to get. That was fine for me, I guess, but what I didn’t know is that I would not receive this stipend until after school started. So as a new teacher with nothing, I needed to do a lot of shopping to get ready for those first couple of weeks. If it had not been for the old teachers leaving a lot or the teachers still there being willing to share, I would have had even less than nothing.

Then there are all of the “benefits” and their costs. I spend over $200 in medical, dental, retirement, etc. before I even get my check. This does not include the taxes that everybody pays. After all is said and done, I leave making almost the same amount I made as a substitute with less freedom.

For all the times that I said that teachers do get paid, it’s just not enough, I apologize. I was wrong. Teachers don’t get paid even close to what it costs to become one. They can barely take care of themselves on their salary. Then they have to deal with students, parents, administrators, and the board on top of all of that. It can almost seem not worth it. Except there are all these bright spots that make the job itself fulfilling. Nobody gets into teaching for the pay.

I have to take the bad with the good though. I had to think about the fact that I didn’t get benefits as a substitute. I didn’t get paid if there was no school, and now I do. I’m actually getting paid to student teach, not everyone gets that privilege. I’m usually off when my children are off, so I don’t have to worry about that. I can make plans in advance because I know what my schedule will look like. I absolutely love what I do, and that is priceless.

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